European Institutions, Governance and Democracy
Research on the political and legal design and the policy performance of European institutions has long been at the core of the Centre’s agenda.
Past and present studies have dealt with issues relevant to the debate on EU institutional and constitutional reform; evolution and experimentation in European governance; and issues of democracy and citizens’ participation in EU institutions.
A recurrent question has been, of course, the tension between the logic of law and the logic of politics in the EU. Likewise reform has been an issue of long-standing interest to the RSCAS. Our research has continually adjusted to take in developments in the reform process. On-going studies deal with alternative solutions to EU institutional design reform after the failure of the national ratification processes of the draft Constitution, as well as the substantive content of reform.
The Centre has also investigated intentional negotiated change (through Treaty reorganisation and revision), as well as endogenous institutional change arising from the development of informal rules and the selection of lower-order rules. With the creation of the European Union Democracy Observatory (EUDO), coordinated by Alexander H. Trechsel, the RSCAS consolidated scientific knowledge and policy relevant know-how on EU democracy. Furthermore, EUDO actively engaged in research, experimentation, and dissemination activities on issues relating to EU democracy.
EUDO was an independent and interdisciplinary academic organisation whose goal was to produce a permanent and periodic assessment of democratic practices within the EU. It was a forum where ideas and good practices could be exchanged, and a resource for policy-makers, academics and EU citizens
The project examined electoral rights and the participation of third-country nationals in EU member states and of EU citizens in third countries, including external voting procedures in national and EP elections. The FRACIT project discussed issues related to the diplomatic protection of EU citizens in countries where their states of origin do not have representations
Political Parties and Representation (OPPR)
OPPR research focused on all the various dimensions of political representation in Europe: from the internal organization of Euro-parties to the ideological coherence of their components (the national parties), from the selection of candidates for European Parliament elections to party financing and party patronage. Several academic collaborators, both internal and external to the EUI, were involved in our activities
ACIT generated indicators for citizenship laws, their implementation, acquisition rates and their impact on immigrant integration in 36 European states. ACIT organized stakeholder dialogues and produced citizenship handbooks in 10 EU member states
Media Profiler
Media Profiler was an initiative aiming at developing a theoretical framework for assessing the positioning of individual European Media in terms of a series of legal, political, social, geographical, cultural and economic dimensions
Smaller States in EU Decision-Making: Portugal in Comparative Perspective
This project, funded by the Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos (FFMS), Lisbon, investigated the role of small countries in the EU policy-making process with a special focus on Portugal. In particular, it examined the conditions whereby small states made their voice heard and the “smart powers” they must relied on to advance their goals in an EU setting
Spotlight
Spotlight focused its analyses on public opinion reactions to the most recent issues at stake in the European political agenda, showing how they affect European democracy. Economic crisis, migration, climate change – just to cite some well-known issues – represent new challenges for the European Institutions both in terms of policy-making and public-opinion demands.
Interstitial Institutional Change
This project investigated institutional change in the European Union which took place between the highly salient formal treaty revisions. The aim of the project was to scrutinize under which conditions such change occurs in areas of codecision, comitology, right of initiative and other areas and analyzed the underlying causal processes
The project aimed at informing, consulting, and empowering citizens in immigration policy-making in the EU by providing high-quality information on policy developments and by bringing together citizens and key policy actors to exchange ideas and policy proposals
Page last updated on 04 September 2018