Bridging the legitimacy gap in the EU: Can civil society help to bring the Union closer to its citizens?

Article abstract:

As the European Union (EU) has evolved to take on state-like attributes, its legitimacy has come to depend not only on the achievement of effective results (outputs), but also on the provision of adequate opportunities for citizens to help shape these results (inputs). However, the attainment of this dual democratic requirement has proved elusive, given that the supranational system lacks many of the structural features which facilitate participation in national democracy. This paper explores the hypothesis that civil society could provide one mechanism to bridge the resulting gap between the 'governors' and the 'governed'. The findings of a case study on the role of NGOs in the development of the EU's White Paper on Governance suggest, however, that this hypothesis is optimistic, or at least premature. Given an acute lack of resources, the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) interviewed tended to prioritise effectiveness over citizen participation, thereby strengthening the EU's output - as opposed to input-legitimacy.

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