Participatory democracy within the EU : a solution for democratic gap?

english

2010

volume 3, issue 2

Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

Authors in the first place reveal when and how participatory democracy entered the field of the European political debate. After that, they aim at conceptualizing its evolution and forms in the European political arena. More precisely, they focus on the period, when participatory democracy gained its attention in several papers and documents published by the main European institutions. On the basis of published documents and papers on the democratic gap between the rulers and the ruled by The Commission, the European economic and social committee, the European parliament and the Committee of the Regions, authors researched which main European institutions introduced the concept of participatory democracy as a source of their legitimacy. Because of the coincidation of several different aspects, the tendency towards participatory democracy became stronger at the time of The European Convention. During the work of The European Convention, when a new political and normative document was in an establishing phase, the participatory democracy gained its expression in the title Democratic life of the Union. Through the establishment of article 47 in the Constitutional Treaty and later 8b in the Lisbon Treaty, where participatory democracy gained its normative expression, authors show which forms of participatory democracy came to normative institutional design. At the end of the article authors speculate if the theory of participatory democracy could contribute to bridging the gap between the rulers and the ruled

20.12.2023