The New Politics of European Civil Society by Ulrike Liebert & Hans-Jörg Trenz

Author:Ulrike Liebert & Hans-Jörg Trenz [Liebert, Ulrike & Trenz, Hans-Jörg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781283589833
Goodreads: 17008901
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

7 Civil society and EU constitution making

Towards a European social constituency

Hans-Jörg Trenz, Nadine Bernhard and Erik Jentges

Locating European civil society: from participation to representation

Recent reform agendas have emphasized the role of civil society participation as a means of enhancing the legitimacy of the European Union (European Commission 2006b). The Lisbon Treaty (Article 11.3) establishes that European institutions are to seek dialogue with the citizens and stipulates consultations with civil society associations. With regard to the enforcement of this principle, the European Commission’s role as a gatekeeper of civil society participation and dialogue is reconfirmed (Saurugger 2008a; Kohler-Koch 2009). This would give a technocratic understanding of civil society as a tool of ‘good governance’. New modes of participation in decision making should enhance the output and the input legitimacy of the European Union – that is, feed European decision makers with knowledge and expertise, and include plural interests and considerations. The underlying notion of civil society as a partner in EU governance has also fed the research agenda. Analysts have mainly addressed the participatory dimensions of European civil society in Brussels in terms of organizational structures, strategies and resources of European networks and umbrellas, as well as their performance in formal consultations with the Union (Kröger 2008; Ruzza 2004a; Smismans 2007a).

The constitutional process that was initiated with the Laeken agenda of 2001 has ascribed a different role to civil society – not only as a partner in governance but also as a constituent of the emerging EU polity (Fossum and Trenz 2006). This process can be understood as an attempt to renegotiate the legitimacy of this new kind of social and political order. Civil society appears in this process primarily as the structure for the voice that articulates polity preferences and that claims to represent European citizens in debates about the institutional and constitutional reform of the European Union. Civil society as ‘social constituency’ refers to all kinds of concerns, claims making and collective actions that address the basic legitimacy of the Union and its modes of allocating legal and political authority. Such a shift from civil society as a partner within governance to civil society as social constituent of governance has three implications for redefining our research agenda.

First, civil society as ‘social constituency’ implies the need to reintroduce the classical intermediary function of civil society as the sphere of searching and articulating the collective will of the citizens. Research should therefore address not only the participatory performance of civil society organizations (CSOs) as partners in formulating and implementing EU policies, but also their representative performance as generators of ideas, meaning and discourse.

Second, the research focus on civil society as ‘social constituency’ implies the need to turn to national politics as the principal arena of intermediation of EU legitimation discourse. It needs to be analysed to what extent the principal national CSOs become involved in EU polity building and how they give expression to all kinds of public expectations, opinions and attitudes that are shaped in their daily encounters with European governance.

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