7. Follow-up on 'Civil Society and European Democracy'

Democracy, Dialogue, Debate: Reflections on the European Commission approaches to civil society and communication

Comments to the article by EU Commission Vice president Margot Wallström

Carlo Ruzza and Cristiano Bee, University of Trento (Italy)

In her passionate speech entitled 'Closing the gap: will it work?' given at the ECAS Conference on 1.2.2006, Ms Margot Wallström asks for support for the string of initiatives aimed at improving the relation between the EU and its citizens that have characterised the EU communication policy in recent years and which in addition to the White Paper on Communication also include key documents such as the White Paper on Governance, and the document on Plan D. They are finalised to better connect EU policy making with public opinion in Member States throughout the different levels of governance. In her speech, which was included in the last issue of this newsletter, Ms Wallström advocates the coming together of EU institutions, the member states and civil society representatives to discuss what joint action to take in order to tackle the disaffection of European publics with what is often referred to as 'the European project'. This speech and the related documents are worthy initiatives. They are part of a global re-thinking of the scope and functions of the European Union - a task, which was deferred for too long with obvious negative consequences.

European governance and the citizens

After the impasse with the ratification of the Constitutional Treaty and fully realising the extent of the problem, the Commission marked the beginning of the so-called "period of reflection" with a series of innovative statements and action plans. The 'White Paper on a European Communication Policy' has to be framed in this context together with the so-called Plan D and the related Action Plan. These documents constitute an attempt to develop a full-fledged information and communication strategy and progress it along the lines originally established in the nineties with the Euro-campaigns while addressing their shortcomings. In particular, early initiatives were often criticized for an approach, which was generally felt to be marred by strong propagandistic undertones. In the last five years the Commission sought to establish an information and communication strategy, which draws a direct connection between communication and the recently elaborated governance principles, which should now be structuring the entire EU framework. Networking, decentralisation, closeness of citizens to decision-making are some of the keywords on which the current approach to EU governance is centred and which are reasserted in several key documents focusing on how to 'close the gap' between institutions and citizens. However, we believe that these documents are often somewhat internally inconsistent and the action plans they advocate are in need of clarification before they can be implemented with success. In this short note we would like to indicate some of the areas that we believe are most in need of attention.

Focus on increasing involvement of citizens and local level governments

In general, the recently produced documents represent an effort to popularize the EU and centre on two strategies. A better involvement of citizens in EU affairs is advocated through what has been described as a 'citizens' centred approach' and through a better involvement of lower levels of government, particularly the local level. Both approaches seem laudable but are fraught with difficulties. We will here briefly address two aspects that are directly related to these goals. One is relations with civil society - which in recent years has also been upgraded to a EU policy as evidenced by the dedicated Commission's website. The second aspect concerns the scope and functioning of communication policy. With regard to communication policy, issues that seem particularly problematic include how to deal with networks, with the Internet and with definitions of the public sphere. With regard to civil society one need to clarify what should be the relations between organized groups and unorganized citizens, how to aggregate preferences in civil society and the precise meaning of terms such as accountability and representativity.

Civil society

Input legitimacy vs. output legitimacy

References to civil society recur in Ms Wallström's speech and in several key EU documents because civil society can improve EU governance and communication in several related ways. Among them, it can notably help with addressing concerns with output legitimacy, which is crucial in a European institutional architecture that many see as hindered by insufficient input legitimacy and therefore particularly dependant of policy effectiveness. Civil society can help advancing output legitimacy by improving the two-way flow of communication from society to policy making activities, and also through monitoring transposition and by providing feedback on policy implementation throughout different levels of governance. These functions are particularly important at EU level for well known reasons of scarce resources to acquire information and deficit of political legitimacy⁽¹⁾. However a problem emerges when a stress on civil society is advocated in conjunction with an emphasis on both accountability and representativity, and also effectiveness.

A certain ambiguity occurs with the frequent but often vague references to the highly contested concepts of accountability and representativity - one has to identify more specifically the ideal community of reference⁽²⁾. Also, representativity is emphasised by several EU institutions and the key documents that Ms Wallström prises. However, if the dominant EU view emphasises representativity, there is also an awareness that good policy advice is in principle a different issue from representativity - it has to be effective. The Commission recognises that "representativity, though an important criterion, should not be the only determining factor for membership of an advisory committee, or to take part in dialogue with the Commission. Other factors, such as their track record and ability to contribute substantial policy inputs to the discussion are equally important"⁽³⁾. In other words, good policy ideas are not necessarily representative ones - and the Commission recognises and acknowledges this fact. Thus, considerations of output legitimacy - that is effectiveness - can conflict with considerations of political legitimacy, which are directly connected with perceptions of representativity.

EU level vs. local level civil society networks

In the same vein, the often reiterated emphasis on representativity as a deciding criteria for including civil society organisations led the Commission to argue that in principle consultation with representative bodies such as trade unions and employers' organisations have to be considered more important than non-representative organisations⁽⁴⁾.  But whilst this is possible in the context of the social dialogue, it is less attainable with the civic dialogue (which concerns civil society organizations) where representativity cannot be easily checked without the introduction of a regulation of the third sector and state controls which would run against current practice and the current EU conception of civil society. In addition, criteria such as accountability can be utilised instrumentally to justify a preference for large umbrella organisations, which include the possibly more controllable but somewhat remote Brussels-based EU-level civil society networks.

The current EU preference for interacting with peak associations in the social dialogue and with EU-level associations in the civil dialogue indicates a preference for a centralised model of state-civil society relations in which the task of aggregating internal preferences is left to civil society itself. It is, however, a preference that conflicts with the recently EU stated objectives. Ms. Wallström emphasis on the local dimension is not easily reconciled with a system that institutionally seems to prefer EU level networks. This might well be understandable, as consulting organizations in Brussels is obviously easier and quicker than creating a system that relates directly to civil societies at the local level. However, the dispersion of power along vertical and horizontal lines that recent EU documents emphasise might well reflect aspirations that still need to be clarified and acted upon.

In any event, there is no agreement within the NGO community on what constitutes evidence of representativity - for instance how to count members and identify eligible organizations, and whether only representative organisations should be consulted. Some civil society actors point out that increasingly civil society expresses fluidity in the type of formations that represent its values and opinions. New organisations often emerge quickly with strong popular support and dissolve or change into different organisations in a short time. Therefore, an insistence on calculating memberships would exclude an important part of civil society.

European governance as social interventionism

Another related issue that is connected to the EU stated attempt to construct a public sphere is also problematic. In its views of civil society, the Commission seems to advocate an interventionist role on the part of public authorities in fostering embryonic forms of civil society. For instance, a key document reads:

"…it should not be assumed that less-advantaged stakeholders are already in existence as relatively easily identifiable entities, and organised to a greater or lesser extent. It may be the case that, as an issue arises, important stakeholders are not at all organised, and may not be at all well-informed about the potential impact of them. Redressing material and cognitive imbalances may therefore, first and foremost, involve public actors in assisting the emergence of stakeholders as organised entities in order that they may make a meaningful contribution to the policy process"⁽⁵⁾.

Here one can identify a kind of social engineering intent, whereby if civil society is absent it could, and maybe should, be created. This could be an innovative and effective approach to European governance.  On the other hand, and particularly in times when state interventionist approaches are often seen as unjustified, many institutional and civil society actors would dissent from this approach. Even the neo-liberal ethos that often pervades EU institutions does not sit easily with social interventionism. Asserting it risks merely to point out the contradictions of the European project. It has often been pointed out that EU institutions speak with many - maybe too many - voices. This is an example where some clarification is needed before the Union can act efficiently and coherently.

Communication

In her speech at the ECAS conference Ms Wallström has emphasised the value of communication for Europe. As stated in the final sentence of her speech "communication helps understandings, build common values, creates communities". She identifies three positive developments crucially connected to communication.  First, communication has a pedagogical impact. Wallström realises that the European project has not been convincingly explained to European citizens. Future communication activities should therefore be aimed at improving citizens' knowledge of the European Project. Secondly, communication is valued because of its identity building capacity. In the advocated context of enhanced communication activities, a process of selection and diffusion of common values is assumed to take place. Thirdly, communication is related to the need of promoting a common sense of belonging to the European Union.

Democratic aspects of communication

Communication is then considered as essential in order to improve the democratic bases of the EU project. In this perspective, communication comes top of the agenda and its enhancement is seen as fundamental.  By improving debate and dialogue between institutions and citizens, the Commission is trying to develop a new kind of democratic imagined community in which governing takes place in a dialogic environment and in the context of a new demos. Here it worth noting the novelty of the Commission's emphasis on a bi-directional flow of communication between citizens and institutions. The White Paper emphatically underlines the difference between the old top-down communication strategy based on propaganda and the new transparent and open approach. This is stressed by Ms Wallström, who states that a "good two-way communication between the citizens and public institutions is essential in a healthy democracy".

The effort to further democracy through enhanced participation of the public is certainly a promising approach for renewing the European project and for overcoming present difficulties. However, one has to express some doubt and criticism of this "new approach" to communication activities. If an emphasis on deliberation and participation is now widely shared in all policy circles - not just EU circles - , the identification of appropriate  instruments for 'closing the gap' and developing a citizens' centred approach is less than obvious. There are for instance many and often incompatible ways of including civil society -- many of the potential approaches to enhance dialogue are intrinsically contradictory and as the relevant literature shows, in some cases do not deliver good results.

The role of 'Europe Direct'

A surprising aspect of Ms. Wallström's speech is the absence of specific mentions of the 'Europe Direct' network (cf. information box below) - an initiative to which the Commission has given much importance in its attempt to establish its communication policy⁽⁶⁾.  It is important because, as the Commission's strategy of 'going local' implies, it gives a stronger role to the sub national level and thus seeks to bridge the gap between levels of government. This aspect was for instance emphasised in the Plan D document. The 'Europe Direct' network represents then an essential tool for improving institutional communication, achieving a direct face-to-face relationship with the European public and should then be central within the EU 'going local' strategy.  In particular, as often stated these networks have the potential to identify and collect the "needs and wishes" emerging from citizens. Experience from EU member states show that public offices are central in enhancing relations between citizens and institutions - they provide working models of the idea of 'public service communication', a basic principle on which the institutional activities are based. However, to effectively pursue such a strategy of public offices one need appropriate resources, which at the moment are not available. This raises some doubt on the feasibility of the 'going local' strategy.

Internet communication and 'diffused' expertise

Two further problematic issues concern the great emphasis given to Internet communication tools, such as blogs and forums on the EU web site. Citizens are expected to use them to interact and debate European issues. However, it is not clear what specific impact these tools should have on EU policymaking, and how. With all its limits, the EU framework is based on the mechanisms of a representative democracy. It pays attention to various aspects of a politics of expertise - including the 'diffused' expertise of individual citizens, but the decision-making framework remains one of representative institutions and of bureaucratic politics. How to inject an additional role for diffused expertise is very problematic and still unresolved. Just referring to it in emphatic terms is clearly not sufficient. Steps to make this strategy more concrete have been taken but we are obviously still only at the beginning.

An additional related issue is selection bias. Several of the proposed 'listening devices' such as internet consultations are de facto only accessible to sensitized users who are already concerned with EU issues and policies and are technically proficient. Thus, even 'diffused' expertise is in fact rather elitist expertise. And of course processes of aggregation of opinions are fraught with difficulties. Distortion due to the interests of those who summarise citizens' input is entirely possible and have been documented⁽⁷⁾. These are issues that need to be faced carefully.

Concluding remarks

Because of the indicated ambiguities, and the ultimately top-down view of the EU that implicitly still prevail, the White Paper appears problematic in certain areas. Its aim of contributing to the development of a European public sphere, where the "European debate can unfold and citizens can participate" is laudable but need to be refined - consultation and communication tools need to be improved and their underlying philosophy clarified. One comes then to suspect that this document is still too narrowly aimed at enhancing consensus and legitimising the European Process. And one cannot escape the sensation of a whiff of social engineering.

Notes

⁽¹⁾  See Ruzza, C. (2004). Europe and Civil Society: Movement Coalitions and European Governance. Manchester, Manchester University Press.

⁽²⁾  See Ruzza, C. (forthcoming 2007). Advocacy coalitions and the participation of organised civil society in the EU. Governance and Civil Society: Policy Perspectives. C. Ruzza and V. D. Sala. Manchester, Manchester University Press.

⁽³⁾  See Commission (2000) "The Commission and non-governmental organisations: Building a stronger partnership." COM(2000) 11 Final (18.01.2000): Section 2.2.

⁽⁴⁾  See for instance note 7 of Commission (2002). "Communication from the Commission: Towards a reinforced culture of consultation and dialogue - General principles and minimum standards for consultation of interested parties by the Commission". COM (2002) 704 final.

⁽⁵⁾  See Commission (2000). Developing New Modes of Governance. Forward Studies Unit, Notis Lebessis, John Paterson. Working paper, 2000: Section 4.3.

⁽⁶⁾  Bee C., Bello V. (forthcoming 2007) "A European model of public sphere: towards a networked governance model " in J. Harrison & B. Wessels (Eds.) Mediating Europe: New media, Mass Communications and the European public sphere. Oxford: Berghahn, 2007.

⁽⁷⁾  See Bozzini, E. (fortcoming 2007). The role of civil society organisations in written consultation processes: from the European Monitoring Centre to the European Fundamental Rights. Governance and Civil Society: Policy Perspectives. C. Ruzza and V. D. Sala. Manchester, Manchester UP.