{"id":213,"date":"2014-07-31T13:49:43","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T13:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journal.rhetoric.bg\/?p=213"},"modified":"2014-07-31T14:14:40","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T14:14:40","slug":"dessyslava-cherneva-mollova-the-european-citizens-initiative-and-the-problem-of-the-democratic-deficit-in-the-eu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/journal.rhetoric.bg\/?p=213","title":{"rendered":"Dessyslava Cherneva-Mollova \u2013 The European Citizens\u2019 Initiative and the problem of the \u201cdemocratic deficit\u201d in the EU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Abstract<\/strong>. The paper considers the ECI\u2019s potential to construct supra-national discursive space and to encourage European citizens\u2019 participation with a view of alleviating the problem of the \u201cdemocratic deficit\u201d in the EU.\u00a0 It argues for the thesis that the introduction of the ECI in the Lisbon Treaty as a manifestation of both participatory and deliberative democracies provides the opportunity of compensating for the weaknesses of representative democracy by way of assisting in overcoming public apathy on European affairs, improving the communication between European institutions and the Union\u2019s citizens, promoting the formation of European public space and exercising political pressure over institutions to accept different political agenda. The text also discusses some of the challenges in realizing the ECI\u2019s potential: the fact that the Initiative does not give direct legislative power to European citizens since the EC is not obliged to comply with the given request; the diffuse character of the European public opinion determined by most European citizens\u2019 fragile collective identity, underdeveloped capacity for transnational discourse and poor political culture; the complicated procedure and the high costs of using the ECI by common citizens; as well as the risk of monopolizing the Initiative by NGOs, pressure groups and associations etc.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Key words<\/strong>: European citizens\u2019 initiative, democratic deficit, participatory democracy, deliberative democracy, European public space, communication between EU citizens and European institutions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a title=\"\u0415\u0432\u0440\u043e\u043f\u0435\u0439\u0441\u043a\u0430\u0442\u0430 \u0433\u0440\u0430\u0436\u0434\u0430\u043d\u0441\u043a\u0430 \u0438\u043d\u0438\u0446\u0438\u0430\u0442\u0438\u0432\u0430 \u0438 \u043f\u0440\u043e\u0431\u043b\u0435\u043c\u044a\u0442 \u0437\u0430 \u201e\u0434\u0435\u043c\u043e\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0442\u0438\u0447\u043d\u0438\u044f \u0434\u0435\u0444\u0438\u0446\u0438\u0442\u201c \u0432 \u0415\u0432\u0440\u043e\u043f\u0435\u0439\u0441\u043a\u0438\u044f \u0441\u044a\u044e\u0437\" href=\"http:\/\/rhetoric.bg\/%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0-%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B6%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0-%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B0\">Read the original of the article (in Bulgarian)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Abstract. The paper considers the ECI\u2019s potential to construct supra-national discursive space and to encourage European citizens\u2019 participation with a view of alleviating the problem of the \u201cdemocratic deficit\u201d in the EU.\u00a0 It argues for the thesis that the introduction of the ECI in the Lisbon Treaty as a manifestation of both participatory and deliberative [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-september-2012-issue-5"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/journal.rhetoric.bg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/journal.rhetoric.bg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/journal.rhetoric.bg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/journal.rhetoric.bg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/journal.rhetoric.bg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/journal.rhetoric.bg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/journal.rhetoric.bg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/journal.rhetoric.bg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/journal.rhetoric.bg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}