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The ‘Good European Citizen’ Congruence and Consequences of Different Points of View

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Abstract

In a search for the ‘good European citizen’, the prevalent views of European Union (EU) policymakers, civil society bodies, and citizens are confronted. The civil society and ordinary citizens are both content with strengthening the position of civil society and not increasing the participatory demands on citizens. Ideas among EU policymakers about civil society as a means to integrate citizens and to close the gap between citizens and the EU are misplaced and incongruent with other images of the ‘good European citizen’.

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  1. See Heater (2004) for a general overview of the history of the concept, or van Deth (2007) and Dalton (2008a) for applications in empirical political science. A detailed analysis of the historical development of citizenship in the United States is presented by Schudson (1998).

  2. Council Decision of 26 January 2004 (2004/100/EC) Art. 1 (b).

  3. See for overviews of approaches to the role of civil society organisations in European democratic decision-making processes: Mair (2005), Kohler-Koch (2007), and especially Finke (2007). Haug (2008: 4) stresses the need to include ‘less institutionalised transnational spaces of communication’.

  4. See Olsen (2003) and especially Finke (2007: 6–7) for overviews of the debates about governance, participation, and legitimacy that lie behind these lines of argument. For the EU Weale (2005) presents an extensive discussion of ‘democratic citizenship’, whereas Bellamy (2006) stresses the ‘democratic limits of EU citizenship’. Vibert (2007: 138–143) presents a very interesting discussion about ‘fundamental failures’ resulting from an ‘incompatibility’ of existing power-sharing arrangements in the EU and the role of civil society associations. Case studies of actual decision-making processes usually show that contacts are mainly concerned with the exchange of expertise in advisory bodies and written consultations (cf. Dąbrowska, 2007; Sánchez-Salgado, 2007). Smismans (2006: 18) speaks of a ‘participatory myth’ and characterises decision-making processes as ‘… a narrow, opaque and technocratic process …. in a closed policy network’.

  5. For an evaluation of this last part of the argument, virtually no empirical research is available. Van den Berg (2006) presents a highly original study of the ways Dutch voluntary associations enable their members to (further) develop attitudes towards Europe.

  6. Political bodies (including political parties) are usually considered to be part of civil society. Because of the strong emphasis on non-political bodies in the current debates on democracy and citizenship in Europe and the lack of empirical information on political bodies, no distinction between political and non-political bodies is used here. For an overview of the various arguments for such a distinction see Morales (2004: 93–109).

  7. As participation research shows, highly active civil society groups can quickly erode the willingness of people to become involved in political decision-making (cf. Fiorina, 1999).

  8. See Morales (2004: chapter 4) for an elaborate discussion of the individual determinants of membership in (political) voluntary associations.

  9. See for the CID project: http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/projekte/cid and van Deth et al (2007). For the ESS see: http://ess.nsd.uib.no.

  10. For dimensional analyses of these items see Denters et al (2007: 92–95), Rossteutscher (2004: 187), and Denters and van der Kolk (2008: 140–142).

  11. Dekker and de Hart (2002) also show that politics is an astonishingly unimportant aspect of the image of the ‘good citizen’ in the Netherlands. Carmines and Huckfeldt (1996: 250) conclude that ‘… a revised model of citizenship has emerged – a model of the citizen as a cost-conscious consumer and processor of political information who, while taking her duties seriously, has successfully reduced the impulse to be consumed by politics and political affairs’.

  12. Ordinary citizens, then, probably do not have much trouble with the idea of ‘delegated citizenship’ (Bellamy, 2006: 254) in the EU.

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Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Final Conference of the CONNEX Network of Excellence, Plenary Session on ‘Civil Society, Social Capital, and Interest Intermediation’, Mannheim (Germany), 6–8 March 2008 and will appear in B. Kohler-Koch and F. Larat (eds.) (2008), Efficient and Democratic Governance in the European Union, Mannheim: CONNEX Report Series, Volume 9. The comments provided by Dario Castiglione and Carlo Ruzza and by two anonymous EPS reviewers are gratefully acknowledged here.

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    Jan W van Deth

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van Deth, J. The ‘Good European Citizen’ Congruence and Consequences of Different Points of View. Eur Polit Sci 8, 175–189 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/eps.2008.56

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