Who Is Leading the Eci?

The European Citizens Initiative is a noticeable innovation in the EU's participatory democracy discourse. In the decade spanning from the fall of the Santer Commission to the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty (1999-2009) the EU produced a set of practices and discourses aiming at turning contacts between its institutions and interest groups in a form of participatory democracy contributing to the legitimacy of the EU. The ECI is a significant evolution in the discourse on participation since it is a move away from organizations towards grassroots mobilisation. So far it has appeared that the ECI is introducing more diverse agendas in EU policy-making (Bouza Garcia and Greenwood 2014).

That said successful ECIs require a relevant degree of organisation and expertise in campaigning, networking and identifying suitable issues and legal bases. These assists are even more significant given the lack of institutional support to organisers in the form of subsidies or advice. In this context some of the organisations that lobbied for the institutionalisation of the ECI are emerging as leaders in fostering this form of activism by participating in different campaigns and establishing advisory services for organisations and citizens.

The aim of this paper will be to assess the emergence of forms of leadership in the field of the ECI. It will do so by carrying out a network analysis aiming to identify which organisations contribute to foster contacts between the groups involved in the ECIs presented so far.