| Summary: | The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the role of civil society organisations in enhancing
the democracy of the European Union. The question is studied within the framework of
discursive democracy, which draws its inspiration from the theory of communicative action
by Jürgen Habermas. The research material is consisted of communication policy
initiatives of the European Commission and statements of a European network of civil
society organisations, the Active citizenship network. I elaborated the question through the
concepts of public sphere, horizontal subsidiarity, and a political role of the civil society
organisations. Also the contradiction found between citizens' direct participation and the
intermediatory role of the civil society organisations (hereafter CSOs), turned out to be a
central dimension for the study.
The analysis shows that the aspirations of the Commission and the Active citizenship
network (hereafter ACN) diverge considerably considering the premises and goals of
CSOs' participation within the EU polity. The Commission wants to form partnerships with
them, to enhance the quality of its policy-output, and to reach out for its citizens. The
ACN, on the other hand, sees organisations as key actors in policy-making, and seeks a
strong role for them. However, both parties favor representative democracy. Consequently,
neither of them introduce direct participation channels for citizens nor pay due attention to
the communicative aspect of democracy.
To conclude, I end up suggesting that in order to bring the citizens back in politics without
putting their autonomy in danger, and to ensure the political influence of both CSOs and
citizens, autonomous public spheres and the guidelines provided by the horizontal
subsidiarity should be combined. This way the democratic practices based on unrestricted
communication of citizens would cover the whole policy-circle, from the policyformulation
to the evaluation of policies.
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