Presentation

The EUComMeet project explores under which conditions deliberation and representation can be an effective response to the challenges besetting liberal representative democracies. To tackle this challenge, the EUComMeet project will experiment ways of systematically embedding deliberative practices and institutions in the multilevel system of governance and representation of the European Union and explore how deliberation and participation can help reduce polarization, strengthen European identity, encourage inclusiveness, foster citizens’ reflectivity and narrow the representative gap between policymakers and citizens. Within the University of Paris 8, a team is in charge of Work Package 6 which will evaluate both theoretically and practically the way in which deliberative democracy can contribute to bringing out a common identity liable to create a plural and inclusive European people in a double context of a “democratic deficit” in the European Union and a ramp up of ethnonationalism amid the community space. The main issue is to establish to what extent the opening of a transnational public sphere based on dialogue and cooperation between citizens, political leaders and actors of the European civil society and embodied in deliberative mini-publics could help democratise community governance and strengthen the civic identity of a European people within a variety of political diversity in terms of history and culture. WP6 will mainly involve qualitative, and to a lesser extent quantitative, methods organized around three central tasks.