Innovations in Participatory Democracy

The increase in the democratic participation of citizens has been a constant throughout the evolution of the European Union which has run in parallel with its progressive increase in competences as the states have ceded sovereignty in areas increasingly distant from those that justified the creation of the European Communities in the middle of the last century. The gradual expansion of the community cosmos has made more evident the distance between the citizens, around whom the European Union orbits, and the institutions with the capacity to decide, which has accentuated the perception of the deficit of democratic legitimacy that has been attributed since its inception to this supranational organization. To remedy this, the European Union has resorted to democratic participation, first through the mechanisms of representative democracy and the direct election of members of Parliament by the citizens and then by articulating integrated collaboration mechanisms in the field of so-called participatory democracy.