Representation, representativeness, and accountability in EU-civil society relations

Contribution to the CONNEX Final Conference "Efficient and Democratic Governance in a Multi-Level Europe", Mannheim, March 6-8, 2008; Workshop 5: Putting EU civil society involvement under scrutiny; Panel: A normative view on civil society involvement

The evolution and transformation of European governance

'Kernthese des Beitrags ist, dass sich in der EU ein spezifischer Typ des Regierens entwickelt, der sich - wenn auch in politikfeldspezifischen Variationen - deutlich von der Art des Regierens in den Nationalstaaten unterscheidet. In Weiterführung von Lijphart und Lehmbruch wird eine Typologie entworfen, die aus der Verknüpfung kontextspezifischer Leitideen über angemessene Verfahren der Entscheidungsfindung (Mehrheitsregime bzw. 'consociatio') und politischer Sinnhorizonte (Identität bzw. Interesse) gewonnen wird. Die Besonderheit des europäischen 'Regierens in Netzwerken' liegt in ihren dynamischen Effekten, nämlich zum einen in ihrer Verbreitung in die nationalen Systeme hinein und zum anderen in der Beschleunigung der Vergemeinschaftung im Sinne der Expansion eines genuin europäischen politischen Raumes, der den EU-Staatenverbund zunehmend überlagert.' (Autorenreferat

Does participatory governance hold its promises?

"With the ratification of the Reform Treaty, the European Union will be based on two complementary principles: the principle of representative democracy and the principle of participatory democracy. Even though the two respective sub-headings in the draft Constitutional Treaty (Article I, 46 and Article I, 47) have been omitted, the Intergovernmental Conference did not introduce any change in substance. Article 11 of the Reform Treaty pledges to give citizens and representative associations a voice 'in all areas of Union action', and to 'maintain an open, transparent and regular dialogue with representative associations and civil society', and it demands that the Commission 'carry out broad consultations with parties concerned in order to ensure that the Union's actions are coherent and transparent'. With Clause 4, it now also endows citizens with the right to initiate an action. However, first, that action is of one type only, i.e., 'where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties'. Second, that action is valid only when 'not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States' engage in it. Third, and most importantly, that action is only an invitation to the Commission, one which the Commission is not obliged to accept." (excerpt

The richness of CONNEX research in a nutshell

"In order to do justice to the complexity of EU governance, research was organised in six Research Groups each approaching the 'problematique' of efficient and democratic multi-level governance from a different perspective. Researchers addressed the institutional architecture of the EU system as well as the nature and effects of old and new instruments of governance. They put the ways and means of enhancing democracy in the EU system under scrutiny and examined the gains and challenges of civil society participation. By bringing together a multi-disciplinary and multi-national group of scholars the diversity of approaches came to the fore and added to a highly differentiated picture of the European governance system. The productivity of CONNEX is manifest in an impressive publication output. The richness of research findings is visible in the summary reports of the individual Research Groups which are documented in the second part of this chapter." (excerpt

Civil society in EU governance - a remedy to the democratic accountability deficit?

"It is widely acknowledged that accountability is a key to making democracy work, and luckily a consensus definition of accountability has emerged: According to Bovens (2007a: 450) 'Accountability is a relationship between an actor and a forum, in which the actor has an obligation to explain and to justify his or her conduct, the forum can pose questions and pass judgement, and the actor has to face consequences.' Unfortunately, when applied to the European Union (EU) we face a reality that is far more complex than this straightforward relationship suggests. The EU is noted for its policy-making by negotiations in networks that take in a multitude of actors and span over different territorial levels of jurisdiction. Yannis Papadopoulos (2007) has drawn our attention to the many accountability problems of network governance. The multi-level feature of EU governance and the composition of policy networks work to the detriment of accountability: The lack of visibility of the responsible actors impedes accountability, but what makes matters worse is that many actors share responsibility and only some of them are at least in principle politically accountable while in practice they are more often difficult to reach due to a long chain of delegation from the level of citizens up." (excerpt

Civil society contribution to democratic governance: a critical assessment

"Civil society ranks high in academic and political discussions on democracy. It is perceived as a remedy to the legitimacy crisis of national systems and as a promise to turn international governance more democratic. But civil society is an illusive concept and contending conceptual frames govern the normative reflections and political recommendations which give legitimacy to civil society engagement. Therefore, researchers in RG 4 set out to exploit existing research comparing theoretical and methodological approaches intended to justify and measure the democratic value added by civil society participation. Furthermore, they engaged in comparative research to analyse the rise and metamorphosis of civil society in different parts of the world and compared it with the incantation and uses of civil society in the EU." (excerpt

Assessing the democratic value of civil society engagement in the European Union

"The title indicates an empirical question, but the main problems to solve are of a theoretical nature: Only when this preparatory work is done, we can - with the help of a theoretical model - investigate the democratic quality of civil society engagement in the EU empirically. So this paper is mostly on ‘asking the right questions’: First, a normative conception of democracy is outlined, which is in our view appropriate to measure and assess the changing quality of European democratic performance (1). Then the interpretations of civil society and its latent democratic functions are introduced (2). In a next step, different conceptions of the EU and respective roles of civil society involvement are discussed because the potential democratic function of civil society varies with the conceptions of the EU as polity (3). Based on these deliberations we develop an analytical model of the 'civil society-EU democracy' relation and specify the relevant questions in order to measure its democratic performance (4). Finally, we discuss the implications of our theoretical model for empirical research and try to give some very rough indications concerning the overall democratic performance of the civil society involvement in the European Union (5)." (excerpt

Introduction

"'Efficient and Democratic Governance in the European Union' was the topic investigated by the international research project CONNEX during the four years (2004-2008) of its life time. Multi-level governance stands for the high interdependence of political responsibilities executed at regional, national and European levels in close collaboration of public and private actors. Efficiency and democratic legitimacy are not easily attained since multi-level governance incites complexity. Furthermore, governance with stakeholders and civil society by-passes established mechanisms of representation and blurs responsibility. Democratic representation and accountability, however, are the very foundation of legitimate governance. The papers contained in this volume were presented at the network's Final Conference which took place at the University of Mannheim on March 6-8, 2008.1 The plenary sessions were dedicated to the core issues of the CONNEX governance research: (1) Institutions and instruments for efficient EU governance, (2) Accountability and representation in a multi-level system and (3) Civil society involvement, social capital and interest intermediation." (excerpt

Ilka von Zeppelin 18.1.1936–7.7.2009

Nachru

Civil society organisations under the impact of the European Commission's consultation regime

Contribution to the CONNEX Final Conference; Mannheim, March 8th, 2008; Workshop 5: Putting EU civil society involvement under scrutiny; Panel: Civil society organisations in EU governance: lobby groups like any other