Initiating transnational deliberation? The role and impact of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI)

Four years after the introduction of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), much of the initial enthusiasm about what was hailed as a significant participatory-democratic innovation has given way to a sense of disillusionment, as the ECI has so far failed to generate any concrete legislative proposals by the European Commission. One aspect that has not been addressed sufficiently in previous empirical research is the question of the ECI’s deliberative impact, that is: the extent to which it can foster transnational normative debates in the increasingly Europeanized public spheres of the member states. Such questions are particularly salient against the backdrop of debates about the feasibility of transnational demo(i)cracy in the EU, as the ECI has been modestly successful at least in its agenda-setting function and has prompted normative debate on issues such as privatization of water services and the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The aim of this paper is therefore to analyze the deliberative role and impact of both the ECI as such and of specific ECIs, such as e.g. Right2Water and Stop TTIP. Taking as a starting point the Habermasian emphasis on communicative power generation in the public sphere as well as James Bohman’s emphasis on the relevance of the ability to initiate deliberation as a crucial requirement for transnational democracy, the study analyzes the various ways in which ECI organizers have succeeded in identifying, staging and amplifying controversial issues in various arenas of the public sphere.