WP38 Responsible

CR24 - University of Trento, Department of Sociology and Social Research (IT)

WP38 Responsible for Spread of Excellence

CR24 - University of Trento, Department of Sociology and Social Research (IT)

WP38 Objectives

With specific reference to the EU level, this work package addresses the question: To what extent do the activities of public-interest associations, activist coalitions, and social movements bridge the large gap between the European citizenry and European level policymaking?
EU-level NGOs represent European civil society through a complex set of organisations whose role in policymaking is to provide alternative policy knowledge, coordinate voices in civil society, provide legitimacy and act as sources of advocacy in the policy process. In order to do this they have to convey at EU level opinions and sentiments that emerge in Member States. They have to be able to address different phases of the policy process and maximise their chances of inclusion and impact on the policy process. We wish to assess how effectively organised civil society performs, its constraints and opportunities, its aggregating mechanisms and its representation strategies. Our objectives are therefore:

• To examine the extent to which and the reasons why civil society organizations are successful.
• To examine whether they can usefully supplement ordinary European political decision-making.

These objectives can be achieved through a research strategy which on the one hand defines the institutional constraints and opportunities that organised civil society encounters in different institutional settings, at different stages of the policy process, and along the chain of representation that connect local and national NGOs with EU umbrella groups and their role in the policy process. On the other hand we need to ground these dynamics by identifying specific sectors as test cases of the interaction between civil society and EU policy makers. We propose to concentrate on four policy sectors: environmental policy, anti-racist policy, minority languages policy and consumer protection policy. These policy areas provide a sufficiently broad spectrum of the public interest associations represented at EU level, and the policy environments they encounter.

WP38 Description of work

An international conference will be organized and will be subdivided in five separate sections. There will be a first section which will focus on how specific institutions (the Commission, the Parliament, the ESC, the COR and some of the agencies) react to pressure from civil society organizations. This section will be entitled ‘EU institutions and the participation of organised civil society’ and will be open to scholars working in all policy fields. Then there will be four additional sections of the specific policy fields previously described.

WP38 Participants

• CR24 - University of Trento, Department of Sociology and Social Research (IT)

• CR29 - Institute for Social Research (NO)
• CR28 - Tilburg School of Politics and Public Administration (NL)

WP38 Documents

For documents of this work package, please go to CINEFOGO Database and type WP38 in the Search field.