Building Bridges? Meta-Civil Society Networks and their Role in Bridging the EU-Citizens Gap

In recent times multiple pressures have led to a massive crisis of trust towards EU and its institutions. The EU’s growing democratic deficit has determined many voices to insist on the need to bridge the gap between Brussels and the European citizens. Through a process of aggregation, membership-based networks encompassing civil society organizations are thought to help narrow this gap and further reduce political inequality. These organized networks are the last link in the communication chain between citizens and the EU, or more specifically, between civil society organizations (CSOs) and EU institutions. These meta-CSOs (i.e. networks of and for CSO networks) stand at the core of the developing transnational civil society system. This research was designed to determine the effects of organizational, contextual and networking factors on the activity of meta-CSOs. Firstly, the analysis investigates how the general network structure of a meta-CSO informs us about its activity and behavior. Secondly, contextual and organizational factors also impact upon the configurations of networked CSOs and, in turn, these factors influence their capacity to bridge the gap between the EU and its citizens. The results reflect the crucial trade-off between external effectiveness (output function) and internal representation (input functions), which can undermine the potential of CSOs to represent interests and influence the democratic public sphere at the EU level. Particularly, the project systematically explores networking factors (type, shape, ties) along with resources, institutional and policy opportunities within several cases of transnational CSO networks operating in Brussels. The cases are selected across policy sectors, comprehensively covering the civil society space in the EU. The analysis of relational factors with the help of social network analysis based on survey data, will map the selected networks and expose patterns emerging from the transnational civil society space, inferring on its potential for defining political representation in the EU.