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This book explains how and why European non-governmental development organisations (NGDOs) engage in advocacy towards the European Union (EU).It analyses the heterogenous structure of the sector, with examples ranging from large multinational networks to essentially single person NGDOs. The book provides a detailed map of the topics which have featured in NGDO advocacy since 2006, arguing that NGDOs have generally been reactive in their advocacy towards the EU. The author explains how they have contested a number of policy issues on the agendas of the EU institutions, especially around the diversion of aid to manage migration and leverage private sector investments. Furthermore, some NGDOs have used the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to re-package their pre-existing policy demands. Based on an analytical framework focused around three variables, namely moral vision, funding concerns, and the need to build/maintain a ‘good'reputation, the book explains these advocacy choices, and argues that much of NGDO advocacy seems to be consistent with funding motivations. The author highlights the importance of moral vision and reputational concerns in moderating how far NGDOs will go with funding-driven advocacy, arguing that motivations need to be looked at in their complexity, and within the specific policy context.Drawing on a range of quantitative and qualitative data sets to provide a rich and varied picture of the advocacy work of European development NGOs, European Civil Society and International Development Aid is a key reference for researchers and practitioners working in the field.

Amid widespread awareness and discussion of “the democratic deficit” and “shrinking civil space,” the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) becomes increasingly important. Yet the precise legal status of such bodies is ill-defined. Here, for the first time, is a thorough commentary and analysis of the position of NGOs and European civil society in the European Union (EU) constitutional system, bringing to the fore existing and desirable means of public participation in EU lawmaking. Recognizing that NGOs have historically been designed to meet the ends of civil society, the analysis focuses on the following topics and issues: means in EU law of advocating for the collective interests of civil society; unofficial means of influencing the EU institutions; access to documents and the European Citizens'Initiative as means of exerting pressure on EU legislation; relations between the EU institutions and NGOs, including lobbying activities; bringing actions in the common good before courts and other institutions; the special role of NGOs in environmental protection; complaints to the Commission and the European Ombudsman; EU funding for NGOs; and transboundary philanthropy. Drawing on a broad spectrum of sources of law, including CJEU case law and relevant legal literature, the book offers insightful proposals leading to the democratization of the EU's internal procedures that will allow enhanced cooperation of civil society representatives across national borders. In its thorough examination of legal tools that can respond to the “democratic deficit,” this book makes a distinctive contribution to the public debate on the future of the European Union, especially in the context of emerging threats to further integration. It will prove of great value not only to civil activists, academics and policymakers but also to everyone interested in European integration and affordance for social participation.

Vu les échecs à obtenir de l'Union européenne une solidarité intergouvernementale, d'autres priorités citoyennes apparaissent. Face à l'imbroglio institutionnel créé par nos dirigeants, leur inaction, l'absence de souveraineté européenne et la menace de la Chine, remettre de l'ordre démocratique dans l'UE est une priorité. Il s'agit de refonder l'Europe comme un authentique Etat de droit. Le Charte des droits fondamentaux de l'UE donne de nombreux arguments en faveur d'un changement de structure du pouvoir. En réponse aux Gilets jaunes en colère devant le Parlement européen, la société civile européenne peut et doit étoffer ses revendications de projets de réforme. Elle peut réaliser son propre projet de Constitution d'un Etat de droit européen : les Etats-Unis d'Europe.

Notwithstanding its many successes since 1945, the project of European integration currently faces major difficulties, from financial crises and mass immigration to the departure of the UK from the European Union. At the same time, these challenges have spurred civil society organizations within and across Europe, revealing a shared public sphere in which citizens can mobilize around refugee rights, opposition to austerity policies, and other issues. Europeanization in Sweden assembles new empirical research on how these processes have played out in one of the continent's wealthiest nations, providing insights into whether, and how, the “Swedish model” can guide European integration.

This volume draws on a Foucauldian understanding of governmentality to explore how EU civil society funding policies depoliticise civil society organisations. It questions whether international civil society funding always depoliticises civil society organisations, as the literature on governmentality and international civil society policies argues. The author examines how the liberal and neo-liberal rationalities of EU funding have both politicising and depoliticising effects on the human rights organisations funded, and demonstrates that whether the effects help or prevent the politicisation of human rights depends on how legitimate or contested the issue is domestically and how the civil society organisations act in this political context. These themes are explored through an in-depth analysis of the case of Turkey and EU funding of organisations working in the fields of women, LGBT and Kurdish rights.Unpacking liberal and neo-liberal governmentality in EU democracy promotion and civil society funding, this insightful contribution to the literature will be of interest to scholars of International Relations, Middle East Studies, European Studies and democracy promotion.

Adherence to basic human rights norms has become an expected feature of states throughout the world. In Europe, the promotion and protection of human rights through national governments has been enhanced by the diversity of intergovernmental organizations committed to this cause. The latest addition to the continent's rights organizations arrived ten years ago when, based on the EU's Lisbon Treaty, the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) was created as a functional institution to highlight and improve human rights within EU member states. In contrast to other regulatory agencies in the EU, the FRA provides a research-based advisory function for EU institutions and legislation and performs a public-diplomacy function in promoting fundamental rights across EU member states.The linking of civil society with internal rights policies has yet produced very little scholarship. Markus Thiel's European Civil Society and Human Rights Advocacy not only fills this vacuum: it also offers a timely analysis in the context of Europe's proliferating human rights challenges, like the current refugee crises and the nationalist responses that geopolitical changes have provoked. European Civil Society and Human Rights Advocacy examines the interaction between the FRA and hundreds of transnational civil society organizations working with and on behalf of vulnerable populations in EU member states and probes the high normative standards of human rights attainment and transnational participatory governance in the EU.Thiel surveys how networking among civil society organizations takes place, to what extent they are able to set the agenda or insert themselves into EU decision-making procedures, and how they are able to exploit the opportunity structure presented by the FRA's institutionalization of a voice for civil society. Thiel draws conclusions for the larger issues of human rights promotion, transnational citizenship, and participatory governance in the region, reflecting broadly and critically on the legitimacy of EU human rights norms through a political sociology perspective.

Basierend auf vergleichenden empirischen Erhebungen untersucht Sarah Bastgen in einer zwischen EU-, NGO- und Kommunikationsforschung zu verortenden Studie, inwieweit der Professionalisierungsgrad die Beziehung zu den Stakeholdern des Organisationshandelns von auf EU-Ebene ansässigen NGOs und damit deren Linkage-Leistung sowie ihre demokratisierenden Effekte beeinflusst. Dabei wird nicht nur ein Konzept aus der Parteienforschung auf zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationen übertragen, sondern es werden auch zwei insbesondere auf empirischer Ebene vernachlässigte Themen der NGO-Forschung adressiert: die Kommunikation mit Mitgliedern, Basis und Öffentlichkeit sowie die Professionalisierung von auf EU-Ebene agierenden NGOs.

Im Zuge fortschreitender Integration steht die Europäische Union vor der Herausforderung, hinreichende Akzeptanz der Bürgerinnen und Bürger zu erreichen. Eine Möglichkeit hierzu liegt in der verstärkten Einbeziehung zivilgesellschaftlicher Organisationen in die europäischen Gesetzgebungsprozesse. Eine solche Einbeziehung bedarf aber rechtlicher Vorgaben, um unkontrolliertem Lobbyismus vorzubeugen. Anhaltspunkte für eine Reglementierung lassen sich möglicherweise aus anderen Formen zivilgesellschaftlicher Partizipation gewinnen. Insbesondere dem Merkmal der Repräsentativität kommt dabei entscheidende Bedeutung zu.

This book is about both the symbolic and the real struggles for the control of the EU's agenda on participatory democracy in the last fifteen years. The book analyzes how civil society organizations contributed to an agenda which has implications for the regulation of interest groups to the institutions and for the democratic legitimacy of the EU.

This volume provides a novel and relational sociological approach to the study of EU civil society. It focuses on the interactions and interrelations between civil society actors and the forms of capital that structure the fields and sub-fields of EU civil society, through new and important empirical studies on organized EU civil society.

Mit der Offenen Methode der Koordinierung (OMK) im Bereich der sozialen Eingliederung steht im Fokus dieser Arbeit eine zentrale sozial- und gesellschaftspolitische Programmformel der EU. Sie wird anhand eines neuen Falles, des Beitrittslandes Bulgarien, untersucht. Mittels einer Fallstudie und des Vergleichs von zwei Politikfeldern gelingt es vor allem, spezifische Merkmale der OMK-Wirkung zu identifizieren. Ursprünglich als ein Lerninstrument konzipiert, fungiert die OMK in ihrer Einführungsphase als Transferinstrument. Ihre Wirkung zeigt sich als stark feldabhängig. Im schwach besetzten Feld der Roma-Politik ist sie ausgeprägter und die Akteure lernbereiter. Das stark besetzte Feld der Behindertenpolitik ist wirkungsresistenter und weist tendenziell mehr Konfliktpotentiale auf.

This book provides a critical analysis of the European Union's approach to ‘governance', focusing on the way in which civil society is incorporated within the EU decision-making process and arguing that it is not conducive to the democratisation of EU governance. Using a governmentality approach, Kutay demonstrates that civic actors are not incorporated into EU decision-making processes as they are; rather, they are formed, manipulated and guided by political programming. The author explains how this acts to prescribe and construct particular types of subjectivities, thereby limiting and constraining the types of participation that might emerge as part of European civil society and the process of political participation.Governance and European Civil Society will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union politics, global governance, civil society and democracy, Central and East European studies and political and international theory.

The role of civil society organisations in Brussels is debated. Some view them as representatives of their members and thus as legitimising agents for policy-making in the European Union. Others see them as being elitist and out of touch with their membership bases, therefore ill-suited to promote democracy at the EU level. Taking civil society organisations in the EU's external relations as an example, Meike Rodekamp submits these controversial views to a reality check. Interviews with representatives of civil society organisations in Brussels and their member organisations in the EU show that the Brussels offices have not lost contact with their members. However, member organisations differ substantially in their participation in internal decision-making processes, which raises doubts about the legitimacy gains through civil society participation in EU policy-making.

The European Union clearly matters for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). EU officials and European political entrepreneurs has been crucial in the promotion of funding and access opportunities, but they have been proven to have little capacity to use CSOs for their own purposes.

Drawing on interviews with Civil Society organizations and in conjunction with an examination of EU Civil Society Policy and the legal and institutional environment in Turkey this book examines EU policies on Turkish Civil Society organizations and highlights the significant constraints and limited impacts of these policies.

For the European Union of the 21st century, the search for sustainable prosperity and stability includes the challenge of reconciling democratic ideals and practices with the construction of a European constitutional order. From the 2001 Laeken Summit to the 2009 Lisbon Treaty and beyond EU leaders have repeatedly set out to bring citizens closer to EU governance by making it more democratic and effective yet several national ratification referendums have shown that publics are divided about whether and why to endorse or veto complex EU reform packages imposed from the top down. Despite these limitations people do effectively engage in the making of a European polity. By initiating national court proceedings active citizens are promoting fundamental European rights in Member States'practices. As party members they contribute to shaping mass media communication about, and national publics'understanding of, European political alternatives. As civil society activists citizens help build social networks for contesting certain EU reforms or advocating others. Last but not least, as voters in national and European elections they choose between competing party visions, and national parliamentary stances regarding the role of democratic citizenship. This original contribution to the debate about democratic citizenship vis-à-vis the challenges of economic globalization and European political integration presents critical explorations of different fields of direct, representative, participatory and deliberative democratic citizenship practices that affect the transformation of Europe.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the way that Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) define their roles within multilateral institutions, both at the global level and, more specifically, within the European Union framework. The author argues that the use of conceptual categories such as global civil society and global governance is necessary to explain what is currently happening in the international political system in this era of globalisation. The argument is built on the premise that CSOs are significant actors for democratic change in the architecture of world politics, standing out for their capacity to aggregate a varied range of political demands, particularly in waging high-level political/legal campaigns within more closely structured networks and in autonomous forums during major United Nations conferences. On a worldwide level, CSOs are gaining recognition for their political impact, above and beyond formal consultative status. This book shows that the European Union, as a laboratory of innovative multi-level governance, offers many opportunities for CSOs participation, recognising them as an important part of the democratic process.

Die partizipative Demokratie, also das Regieren gemeinsam mit der Zivilgesellschaft, ist ein Kernpunkt der europäischen Verfassung. Die Autorinnen untersuchen diesen Anspruch auf Bürgernähe empirisch, analysieren, auf welche Weise die zivilgesellschaftliche Einbindung tatsächlich erfolgt, und prüfen, inwieweit die politische Praxis das Qualitätsmerkmal'partizipative Demokratie'verdient.

Mapping the European Public Sphere combines theoretical and empirical perspectives to address three relevant issues that are marking the European communicative landscape: the role of media and journalism in shaping the European debate, the function of public communication in promoting institutional activities, and the implications of processes of inclusion to and exclusion from the public sphere. The volume offers a timely reflection on the communicative arenas that are structuring the discourse on Europe and its future and provides a map of existing communicative spaces to provide a better understanding of the development of a European Public Sphere and to identify critical issues. Situated in a timely debate and providing well-grounded empirical evidence, the book will be particularly valuable to social scientists researching European integration issues. At the same time, the book is relevant to those actors who are studied in the research, in particular European institutions, media groups and NGOs.

This book examines accountability in the EU from different perspectives and considers whether EU citizens have real opportunities for holding decision-makers accountable. This book critically analyses five arguments which claim there are sufficient means for holding decision-makers to account in the Union.The main conclusion is that the current institutional set-up and practice of decision-making in the EU is one that merely creates an illusion of accountability.Using a strict framework focusing on the difference between formal mechanisms and actual opportunities for accountability, this highly coherent volume will be of interest to students and scholars of European politics, especially those interested in the democratic foundations of the European political system.Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The European enlargement process culminating in 2004 was - as a follow-up to die Wende and the implosion of the Russian empire - an event of the same magnitude as 1815 and 1919. Like 1918-19, it was an “exit into history”, a momentous event in post-Westphalian Europe. Even if acceptance of ten new countries was premature, it was appropriate to the moment history provided. The presence of the “New kids on the block” meant both problems and prospects. The end of the cold war meant the fall of the iron curtain – but a mental remnant of the curtain remains, in terms of attitudes regarding civility, corruption, and transparency, and expectations for democratic politics. Several of the “new” countries are “late children of 1848”. For them, entering NATO was more important than joining the EU, and also preceded EU-membership. Poland is bigger than the other 2004 countries together and has a heavy historical legacy. It is - as Germany used to be - imprinted by its special path between East and West and fear of being encircled by enemies. Although the Building of Civil Society and Democracy in countries in transformation can draw on experiences from the countries already within the EU, there is no primrose path for EU-integration. It is, moreover, an irony that the new member states, as a result of the expectations for post-Communist politics, build institutions of a kind that are no longer sufficiently efficient for “old” Europe. The new countries became a full-scale experiment in rule by experts: now by neo-liberals instead of Communists. A common European public sphere and civil society might emerge, but its form remains visible only at the horizon.

The research presented in this book - based on new primary data - demonstrates that in terms of civil society actors adapting to the European political space the Europeanization process has an uneven development. This innovative book integrates'top-down'approaches for the study of relationships within the developing EU-multilevel system (i.e., the consequences of Europeanization for civil society at the local level) and'bottom-up'approaches (i.e., the consequences of civil society for the process of European integration and democracy in the EU). The contributors argue that exploration of these recursive linkages requires a rethinking of the relationships between (local, national, and trans-national) civil society on the one hand, and multi-level governance on the other. In analyzing the opportunities for civil society associations to contribute to European integration and decision-making from various perspectives, the following findings are presented, amongst others:engagement with and confidence in the EU (compared to national institutions) is relatively weak among associational membersparty elites play a key gatekeeper role in the European spacethe EU and interest groups have had limited success in stimulating the development of citizen engagement, civil society and social capital in various countries.In the rapidly expanding field of research on democratic decision-making in Europe, this book will be welcomed by academics and scholars alike at postgraduate levels and above. Experts working in the field of European decision-making (such as lawyers and lobbyists) who are looking for conclusions based on high-quality empirical research will also find much in this book to engage them.

The European Union today stands on the brink of radical institutional and constitutional change. The most recent enlargement and proposed legal reforms reflect a commitment to democracy: stabilizing political life for citizens governed by new regimes, and constructing a European Union more accountable to civil society. Despite the perceived novelty of these reforms, this book explains (through quantitative data and qualitative case analyses) how the European Court of Justice has developed and sustained a vibrant tradition of democratic constitutionalism since the 1960s. The book documents the dramatic consequences of this institutional change for civil society and public policy reform throughout Europe. Cichowski offers detailed empirical and historical studies of gender equality and environmental protection law across fifteen countries and over thirty years, revealing important linkages between civil society, courts and the construction of governance. The findings bring into question dominant understandings of legal integration.

Gender considerations and civil society are both major issues in the current debate about the implementation of EU development policy. This volume provides a new perspective and focus on the increasingly important issues of gender equality, democracy and participation to explain how they impact on policy. This book will appeal to those interested in the European Union, in EU external relations, gender issues, civil society, and development.

Clearly discusses the impact and uses of interest representation in the development of the EU system.• Examines the complexities of representation at EU level, a vital issue for potential lobbyists and interest groups• Charts new trends and issues such as enlargement, Europeanization and Central and Eastern Europe• Contributions by acknowledged experts with a proven track record of research and publication in this field, including seven current and past practitioners of EU politics with experience as lobbyists from either institutional, NGO or corporate perspectives• Places interest representation in its historical and theoretical context.

The European Union is the first full-length treatment of European integration from a sociological perspective. It redirects the core concerns of political sociology away from nationally bounded societies towards a'sociology beyond societies,'capable of making a valuable contribution to thinking about the nature and problems of the European Union. Within this broad objective the book concerns itself with such key issues as the relation between the EU and globalization, the nature of the EU state, and the question of whether a European society can be said to exist. Students, scholars, and sociologists interested in the history, development, and legacies of the European Union will find this to be a unique and informative text.