Democracy at Stake: Multipositional Actors and Politicization in the EU Civil Society Field

Abstract

The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) has the potential to significantly change the dynamics of interaction between EU institutions and civil society, which we conceive as a field. This article analyzes how the EU civil society field has been re‐shaped by the ECI, the creation of networks and relationships between EU and national organizations and the effects of politicization. Using interview data and online documents from five ECI cases, we argue that an ECI can potentially transform the meta‐field of civil society and democracy by altering what is at stake. We show that the five cases compete in a single field of civil society in the EU where incumbent organizations react to challenges. However, the field cannot be characterized in terms of a competition between insiders and outsiders. Rather, the ECI favours actors able to combine activism in different spheres – which we call multi‐positional actors.

From the 2005 Constitution’s ‘Permissive Consensus’ To TTIP’s ‘Empowering Dissensus’: The EU as a Playing Field for Spanish Civil Society

“…The new value of mobilisation resources at national and EU level allows organisations to combine national and EU activism rather than having to engage in a venue-shopping strategy choosing between vertical channels through EU level groups and national protest. As for horizontal networks, the ability to engage both in national and EU campaigns is not a novelty in itself: successful advocacy groups are those that can combine grassroots mobilisations and inside lobbying, by using the European citizens initiative, for instance (Oleart and Bouza 2017). However, what we consider an 'empowering dissensus' is different in that there are also national advantages associated with EU contention.…”

“…Our second hypothesis is that the 'empowering dissensus' context has an effect on the cooperation and competition patterns in the field, increasing the value of collective action. This change would empower national actors to engage in the EU policymaking process through dissensus at the national level, contributing to the generation of new critical forms of engagement with the EU (Oleart and Bouza 2017). In this way, politicisation would have transformed the meaning of EU-critical protest at the national level: unlike in previous EU-critical campaigns, to mobilise against TTIP would not imply opposing the EU as a whole.…”

The European Citizens’ Initiative: Mobilization Strategies and Consequences

“…Strikingly, some of the major organizations that abstained from supporting Stop Vivisection in the first place attended the Commission’s conference, underlining the continuation of divisions within the movement. Unlike Stop Vivisection, these organizations kept their strategic approach of focusing on close contact with EU policy makers – pointing to the difficulties activists may face in changing the ‘EU civil society field’ (Bouza García, 2015; Oleart and Bouza García, 2018).…”

“…Despite many ECI campaigns already initiated, most studies of the instrument do not focus on the political players involved (but see Greenwood, 2018; Oleart and Bouza García, 2018). Many that do focus only on the potential role of political parties in ECI campaigns (Hrbek, 2012), or overlook the internal dynamics of specific campaigns (Bouza García and Greenwood, 2014).…”

Framing TTIP in the wake of the Greenpeace leaks: agonistic and deliberative perspectives on frame resonance and communicative power

“…Empirically, this process is illustrated by an analysis of the extent to which frames advanced by the 'self-organized' Stop TTIP initiative have resonated in mass media coverage on TTIP in four EU member states in the wake of what has become known as the 'Greenpeace leaks' in May 2016. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the United States (De Ville and Siles-Brügge 2016), along with the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), has been among the most contentious projects in European integration in recent years (Oleart and Bouza 2018a). As such, TTIP has received considerable academic attention, including a special issue in this journal, which has focused on TTIP and CETA as testimony to the broader phenomenon of 'contentious market regulation' (Laursen and Roederer-Rynning 2017;Hübner, Deman, and Balik 2017;Dominguez 2017).…”