Civil Society Organizations' Participation in the EU and Its Challenges for Democratic Representation

"Online consultations and the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) are tools that have been put into place by the European Union (EU) in order to increase the participation of citizens and Civil Society Organizations (CSO) in its politics and policy making. The current CSO representation at the system level of the EU is claimed to be biased in favor of the interests of economic producers and CSOs coming from old member states. The central question of this article is whether these tools help make participation more representative of the diversity of societal groups within the EU. The concept of 'actor representativeness' as well as 'discourse representativeness' will be applied in order to answer this question." (author's abstract

What drives the politicization of ART in Western and Northern European countries?

Engeli et al. (2012) developed the “two worlds of morality politics theory” (TWMP) in order to explain why morality issues in some Western European countries are addressed in the arena of parliamentary politics and lead to passionate debates between political parties, whereas in other countries, these are left to expert committees to decide on in relative silence. As ART also counts as a morality issue, first, this chapter will address the question of whether this theory also fits with some of the cases of ART policy making as addressed in our compilation. The TWMP’s hypothesis that a religious-secular cleavage in the party system drives the politicization of morality issues is confirmed – more or less – by comparing the Dutch and the Austrian country cases – both belonging to the religious world – with the Swedish. However, the Austrian case offers a puzzle, as in comparison to the Dutch case, it shows a much lower degree of politicization of ART issues. Second, this chapter tries to solve this puzzle by addressing insights about wedge issue politics.<br/

Avoiding ideological debate:Assisted reproduction regulation in the Netherlands

Since the 1960s, the Dutch have been discussing regulation regarding assisted reproduction. In a country with a religious-secular divide, one would expect ART to reach the political agenda via single-issue movements and political parties willing to accept their views. However, ART proved different in this respect. Nevertheless, the discussion and regulation of ART fits into Dutch political culture: Trying to find a regulation that almost everyone can approve, which often results in a procedural approach. The Dutch regulation of ART can be characterized as permissive regarding the people who may have access to ART (couples, singles, homosexuals), moderately restrictive regarding the techniques permitted (for example, with respect to embryo research and pre-implantation genetic testing, and human rights-oriented (protection of life, right to personality, equality).<br/

Indirect moral governance in prostitution policy:How regulators incorporate stigmatized actors in intermediation processes

Regulatory intermediaries have received attention in the analysis of different policy fields recently. Yet, their role in morality-based national governance arrangements is hardly addressed, neither is the question of how regulators incorporate stigmatized private actors. The current special issue contributes to closing this research gap by examining the three-party relationship between public regulators, private intermediaries, and targets in prostitution policy implementation. This introduction presents a typology of indirect moral governance, which is based on two dimensions: (1) the extent to which regulators perceive intermediaries as being trustworthy and (2) their operational capacities. Leveraging examples from the papers in the special issue, we elaborate on how the two dimensions lead to four forms of intermediation. Thus, the typology offers an innovative analytical tool to systematizes regulators' responses to governance and implementation problems in the case of morality policies and value-laden issues more generally, including the responsibilization of stigmatized actors