Creating a European Demos? The Representativeness of European Umbrella Organisations

Abstract

Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have been viewed by many as a means for democratising the EU and for overcoming its widely perceived democratic deficit. At the EU-level, it is mostly European umbrella organisations of CSOs that contribute to EU policy-making. These umbrella organisations ground their legitimacy partly on the claim of being representative of large constituencies. Similarly, the European Commission hopes to increase the legitimacy of its proposals through consultations with European umbrellas and has systematically contributed financially to establishing them in the first place. However, we lack information on how well these umbrellas link to their national members and who is represented through them in EU policy-making. Arguing that active involvement by their constituencies is crucial for the legitimacy of European umbrellas, this article addresses the degree to which national organisations link to their respective European umbrellas. Three types of political representation by CSOs are identified, which are exemplified respectively by organisations active in the fields of agricultural, environmental and anti-poverty policy. The analysis explores the ways CSOs contribute to political representation across different governance levels in the EU, and the various types of representation the related practices embody. Findings show that the umbrella of agricultural groups is much more representative of its constituencies than those of environmental and anti-poverty groups, casting a doubt on the latter's capacity to forcefully contribute to the construction of a European polity.

A genealogy of EU discourses and practices of deliberative governance: Beyond states and markets?

“…As Kohler-Koch et al (2008, p. 6) put it: '[t]he dominant picture [within European civil society] is that of "EU-level lobbying professionals".' There may, then, be a disjuncture between grassroots civil society and their representatives at the European level (Kröger 2013(Kröger , 2018Parks 2015). The distance between such organisations and the publics they supposedly represent are, therefore, often extremely large and the lines of accountability to such publics are, at best, extremely long, particularly in a multi-state organisation such as the EU.…”

Strengthening the local representative system: the importance of electoral and non-electoral representation

“…However, the viability of this aspect of representative democracy has been called into question, as electoral authorisation and accountability have begun to face increasing problems. These problems include parties losing their roots in society, the nationalisation of local elections, declining voter turnout and a growing reluctance on the part of citizens to become politicians (Mair 2005;Hendriks 2009;Saward 2010;Kroger 2013;Grimberg and Vollaard 2016). In the meantime, non-elected actors are emerging increasingly often as potential representatives in local governance networks (Sweeting and Copus 2012), thus challenging traditional electoral democracy.…”

EU Civil Society

“…Some scholars argue that the participation of CSOs follows a transmission belt model, meaning that EU-level organisations could be transmitters of EU information to domestic members/actors while acting as collectors of knowledge and information from the domestic level and bringing it into the EU debate (Kohler-Koch, 2010;Kröger, 2013;Rodekamp, 2014;Steffek and Hahn, 2010;Steffek et al, 2008;Tomšič and Reik, 2008). The transmission belt model has, however, been questioned in recent empirical research (Johansson and Lee, 2014;Johansson and Schütze, 2014), demonstrating that the expected transmission between EU and domestic CSOs is less obvious that the theoretical models envisage.…”