Dare More Participative Democracy to Strengthen the European Project
While instruments of direct and participative democracy mobilise citizens, institutions of representative democracy are increasingly criticised. In European politics referenda are often used as brake shoes to slow down the process of European integration. In his contribution to issue 6/2016 of the “Newsletter für Engagement und Partizipation in Europa” of the “Bundesnetzwerks Bürgerschaftliches Engagement (BBE)”, Julian Plottka argues that the anti-EU bias of direct democracy should be overcome. Instead of putting the whole integration project into question, participative democracy should be used to decide about EU policies. Then the EU can become an innovative political system.
The whole article in German is available on BBE’s website.