Citizens’ Initiatives in Europe: Improving Democracy?

Abstract

Citizens’ initiatives exist at the European, national and local levels of government. Some political systems have had them for a long time, others have recently introduced them and yet more are contemplating doing so. Important differences exist among citizens’ initiatives but they share the ambition to involve citizens by allowing them to initiate policy proposals that can set the agenda for political decision making. Despite their popularity, it is still unclear whether citizens’ initiatives help sustain the legitimacy of representative democracy. In this panel, we therefore invite contributions that examine how citizens’ initiatives affect democracy. Possible questions include, but are not limited to: What factors affect the success of individual citizens’ initiatives? Do citizens’ initiative engage otherwise passive citizens? How do citizens’ initiatives interact with traditional decision making among political elites? How do citizens and political elites evaluate citizens’ initiatives? Do initiative campaigns shape deliberation in the public sphere? We invite theoretical and empirical contributions that examine these questions in a comparative perspective or through single case studies.

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