Friday, April 15, 2016
Assembly A (DoubleTree by Hilton Philadelphia Center City)
Since fifteen years, the will to tackle the democratic deficit of the European Union (EU) produced a clear increase in the involvement of citizens within participatory projects of various sorts at the EU level (Kies and Nanz 2013). Launched in 2001 by the European Commission (EC), the online public consultations (hosted on the 'yourvoice' website) encounter a growing success: their number significantly increased on a variety of public policies. This device also broadened the general targeted groups in the consultation’s regime of the EC, from economic interest groups to civil society groups and even citizens (Kohler-Koch and Finke 2007). Still, different analysis had shown that theses consultations reproduce inequalities because participation remains largely the preserve of the main interest groups (Quittkat 2011; Persson 2007). This paper is based on two case studies : the online public consultation concerning the investment protection and investor-to-state dispute settlement in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP) and the consultations on the new “Better Regulation” package. Based on an analysis of theses online questionnaires, of the respondents to them but also on an series of interviews with these respondents, we will show, amongst other elements, that 1) civil society organisations produce some circumvention strategies to be more inclusive and to fight against the elitism of theses online devices 2) these answers are in certain circumstances a one shot participation, and under other ones only a piece in the political participation puzzle. By doing so, this paper goes beyond the online/offline divide.
