Civil society

JCER

85

From Civil Dialogue to Participatory Democracy: The Role of Civil Society Organisations in Shaping the Agenda in the Debates on the European Constitution
Luis Bouza Garcia
Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen - College of Europe, Bruges

Abstract This article, based on ongoing research, explores the role of civil society organisations in the debate about participatory democracy inthe European Constitution (TCE). The findings are based on the qualitative analysis of position papers and interviews in order to determine the ways in which civil society organisations contributed to shaping the model of participatory democracy (article 47 TCE). The article focuses on the debate on the role of civil society for democracy in the EU (Greenwood 2007b; Kohler-Koch 2007; Maloney andVan Deth 2008), by addressing its ability in fostering citizens’ participation. It considers firstly the place of civil society in the European public sphere. It then presents the role of civil society in shaping the agenda on participatory democracy before the debate on the European constitution. It particularly investigates the formation of coalitions of organisations which aimed to includethese debates in the Convention’s agenda. It considers that although the Convention’s structure could have been appropriate for coalitions to voice demands from the general public, which is one of the expected functions for coalitions in the literature (Mahoney 2007: 375), this was not the case both because of the inability of European civil society organisations to mobilise the public and the highefficiency of insider strategies. Keywords Civil society; Participatory democracy; European Convention; European Constitution; Public sphere

EUROPEAN INSTITUTIONS ARE INCREASINGLY ACTIVE TO PROMOTE A EUROPEAN public sphere.1 This interest is linked to the path towards politicisation that the EU is following (Hooghe and Marks 2009). The turning point in this tendency is the year 1999: the debateabout the democratic deficit of the Union, which arose around the Treaty of
1

In this sense, see the Commission’s plan D (European Commission 2005) or the Parliament’s Citizens’ Agoras.

I am grateful to Professors Justin Greenwood and Peter McLaverty for their support while I was preparing this article. I would like to express my gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers of the JCER for theirconstructive comments and to Eamonn Butler for his patience. Bouza Garcia, L. (2010). ‘From Civil Dialogue to Participatory Democracy: The Role of Civil Society Organisations in Shaping the Agenda in the Debates on the European Constitution’, Journal of Contemporary European Research. Volume 6, Issue 1, pp. 85-106. Available at: http://www.jcer.net/ojs/index.php/jcer/article/view/202/193

86JCER Bouza Garcia

Maastricht, takes form and visibility in the resignation of the Santer Commission, conveniently relayed by the media (Bastin 2002; Georgakakis 2004). Whereas the scholarly debate about the democratic deficit is far from being over (Follesdal and Hix 2006; Moravcsik 2006), EU institutions2 and Member States now consider it necessary to involve their citizens closer with theEuropean integration process. This point is made in the Laeken declaration (European Council 2001) and is a relevant theme in the debates on the European Convention that met in 2002 and 2003 and proposed the Constitutional Treaty. EU institutions seek to “close the gap” with citizens through two strategies. Strengthening representative democracy is considered the first objective. However, itsshortcomings in some aspects at EU level have led the Commission to consider complementary models of direct and participatory democracy (European Commission 2001). Since 1999 a number of initiatives have been taken to promote the existing mechanisms for the consultation of civil society into complementary models and practices of democracy in the EU. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the institutions have...