Measuring the Success of the European Citizens’ Initiative? Transferring Tools of Analysis for National Instruments of Citizen Participation to the European Context

The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is the first transnational instrument of citizen participation and agenda-setting worldwide. Scholars (Szeligowska/ Mincheva 2012; Conrad 2011; Głogowski/ Maurer 2013), think-tanks, EU institutions and stakeholders have emphasized its potential for creating a European public sphere and alleviating the democratic deficit. Such high expectations reflect normative criteria which form a difficult basis for empirical measurement. As the ECI is a complete novelty, a systematic account of how its success can be operationalised is still missing from the academic debate. However, there is an extensive literature on national/regional forms of citizen participation such as popular initiatives, referendums and plebiscites. Studies of Switzerland, Germany and other European countries explain the usage and success of such participatory instruments. This paper transfers analytical tools developed for the national/regional context to the ECI and makes these national benchmarks usable by adapting them to the specific institutional setting of the EU.