Is the European Citizen's Initiative advancing EU legitimacy? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of ECI organisers’ strategies

The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is the first transnational instrument of citizen-participation and agenda-setting worldwide. From scholars and think-tanks to representatives of EU institutions and stakeholders – all 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. Tackling this difficulty, the paper sets out to explain the success of initiatives and in doing so it assesses if and how the ECI can be an institutionalised input mechanism for European citizens. Viewed from this perspective way, the instrument could raise awareness for and create a common discourse on European issues and thus result in enhanced EU legitimacy. The paper starts by providing an overview of the theoretical expectations towards the ECI and argues that by collecting as many signatures as possible, an initiative enhances the chances of meeting these normative expectations in reality. Literature on national/regional forms of citizen participation and social movements as well as literature on interest group strategies in the EU provide the basis for deriving a set of hypotheses about how an ECI can maximize its amount of signatures. A survey conducted with representatives of initiatives provides the data for drawing preliminary conclusions. Information on resource endowment, publicity strategies and framing serve as starting points for a Qualitative Comparative Analysis to shed light on the factors influencing a successful signature collection campaign. The study finds that organisational capacity and media activities are crucial for fostering support.