'All About Doing Democracy'? : Participation and Citizenship in EU Projects

Participation, citizenship and democracy form a triad consisting of multiple conceptual and practical links in political life and theory. The popularity of the concept of participation and various participatory practices is growing, and in the administration of the European Union, one way of increasing participation is the EU programmes through which funding is distributed for citizens’ co-operation across the member states in different fields. The chapter investigates conceptualisations of participation at the level of individual projects funded by two EU programmes, Europe for Citizens and Culture, in the programme period 2007-2013. Union citizenship as a conceptual change and a political innovation embodies the complexity of citizenship, and EU projects like these can be seen as attempts to give practical contents for the concept of Union citizenship. The chapter seeks to analyse the conceptions of citizenship produced through the conceptual choices related to participation made in the textual material of the selected EU projects. Particular attention is paid to the links built between participation, citizenship and democracy. Such an analysis provides a practical level contribution to the debate on the quantity and quality of democracy in the context of the emerging EU polity. Analysing EU projects is useful for exploring the extent to which the participatory practices organized by the EU administration may create spaces for new forms of democracy. The conceptual reading of the project texts shows that participation is primarily conceptualised as networking, cooperation and exchanging information. Such activities can be seen as prerequisites for democratic action, but this understanding of participation does not seem to meet the ideas of republican, radical, participatory or input types of democracy. It also lacks many of the forms of participation that are generally viewed as central for democracy. This represents a depoliticised conception of both participation and citizenship and a conceptual discontinuity from understanding them as instruments of change and sources of democracy. EU projects thus exemplify the complex relations to democracy and politics typical for participatory governance: they may offer opportunities for more direct democracy, but they may also mean participation under the conditions defined by the administration. peerReviewed