Is Europe Listening to Us?

Raphaël Kies is a researcher at the University of Luxembourg. His main research interests are citizen's participation, electoral studies and theories of democracy with a focus on e-democracy and deliberative democracies. Patrizia Nanz is Professor of Political Theory at the University Bremen, Germany. Her research interests are democratic theories, political deliberation and public participation.

• Introduction, RaphaëlKies, PatriziaNanz; Part I Contextual and Theoretical Framework; Chapter 1 Europe’s New Communication Policy and the Introduction of Transnational Deliberative Citizens’ Involvement Projects, MundoYang; Chapter 2 European Governance and the Deliberative Challenge, DawidFriedrich; Part II Case Studies; Chapter 3 European Citizens’ Consultation, RaphaëlKies, MoniqueLeyenaar, KeesNiemöller; Chapter 4 Toward a European Public Sphere – The EuroPolis Project, PierangeloIsernia, JamesFishkin, JürgSteiner, DaniloDi Mauro; Chapter 5 Talking with the Wind? Discussion on the Quality of Deliberation in the Ideal-EU Project, JulienTalpin, LaurenceMonnoyer-Smith; Chapter 6 Combining Inclusion with Impact on the Decision? The Commission’s Online Consultation on the European Citizens’ Initiative, RomainBadouard; Chapter 7 The Deliberative Quality of the Agora, LéaRoger; Part III Comparative Analyses; Chapter 8 Designing Democratic Innovations at the European Level, GrahamSmith; Chapter 9 A Comparison of Deliberative Designs and Policy Impact in the EU and Across the Globe, JohnGastil;

’Europe is at the crossroad: either it develops citizen participation in order to increase its political legitimacy, or its existence will be threatened. This book helps us to better understand how the first path could be made credible.’ Yves Sintomer, Université de Paris 8, France 'The answer to the question posed in the title of this new volume is a resounding ’No’, and it is, in itself, an expose´ of the lengths to which the EU will go to pretend that it has any interest at all in the opinions or will of the ’citizens’, or the idea that they should be able to influence the policy-making process. ... The authorial team deploy a wide range of research techniques in order to identify the legitimising potential of these initiatives to connect people to the authoritative institutions and to allow them to contribute to the emergence of a more substantial and participative EU ’citizenship’. It is an exhaustive and thorough piece of work that includes some international comparisons with the way in which other polities approach these questions.' Journal of Contemporary European Studies 'This book makes a timely and original contribution to debates about the effectiveness of deliberative experiments at the European level. ... The foreword of the book by European Commission Vice-President Viviane Reding suggests it may potentially have a practical impact among European practitioners by highlighting the successes and failures of EU citizen consultations, which have the potential to inform future practice. In addition it could have a much broader audience amongst scholars of deliberative democracy and European studies, and will undoubtedly be of particular interest to those concerned with the EU’s democratic deficit and how this might be remedied.' Journal of Common Market Studies This book probes into the question that has captured policy-makers and citizens alike: how to bridge the gap between the European Union (EU) and those it is to represent? The