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This paper investigates the conditions under which cooperative team reasoning arises and stabilizes in complex social structures. Team reasoning is a theory that explains cooperative behavior in social settings of strategic choice, even in situations where classical game theory fails. By simulating the emergence of cooperation via team reasoning, this paper analyzes the performance of team reasoners compared to classically rational agents and individual reasoners. Simulation results are provided regarding the efficacy of team reasoning in mixed-game settings. It is shown that cooperative team reasoning is viable and stabilizing under favorable conditions such as the share of coordination games played, but sensitive to the amount and abilities of their interacting counterparts. Finally, the paper provides first ideas on how the current framework might be extended toward collective actors that gain further stability through processes of self-formalization and inner-organizational redistribution., Historical Social Research Vol. 48, No. 3 (2023)

Regional parliaments have only limited formal possibilities to engage in the European Union’s (EU’s) multi-level system of governance. Our paper focuses on networking activities of regional members of parliaments (MPs) as informal attempts to make agency claims and as a main driver for perceived collective agency. We employ a relational perspective, taking into account the various stakeholders and environments which regional parliaments have to deal with in the EU. Engaging in such networks can enhance collective agency since such activity is linked to recognition and can open doors to new resources and networks. We use data from a survey of regional deputies in Austria, Germany, Spain, and the Czech Republic to investigate these associations. The results point to the importance of such activities for the perceived influence of regional parliaments on political decision-making in the region and for perceptions about the future role of regions in the EU. Contacts with European actors prove to be crucial in this respect since they can lead to new, agency-enhancing contacts and resources., Historical Social Research Vol. 48, No. 3 (2023)

Agenda setting determines whether and how topics are discussed and voted in parliament. Many parliaments delegate this task to a specific body charged with coordinating parliamentary business. However, we know little about the composition and powers of these “coordination committees” (CC). This paper maps the existence, composition, and institutional powers of coordination committees across 31 European parliaments. It shows that CCs exist in most parliaments and have a relatively similar composition, usually including the president of parliament, their deputies, and party group representatives, but vary strongly in their agenda-setting powers. Exploring whether this variation is related to the functional need for coordination, we find limited evidence that larger sizes of parliaments and higher ideological polarization between parties are associated with stronger coordination committees. In terms of this HSR Special Issue, we show that CCs as horizontal collective actors exist even in a hierarchical organization such as a parliament and have relevant, albeit variable, resources., Historical Social Research Vol. 48, No. 3 (2023)

Throughout its 40-year history, the Vlaams Belang (VB, Flemish Interest) has established itself as an important player within the Belgian party system, albeit with significant electoral fluctuations. In 2019, it became the second largest party in Flanders. The party developed and maintained a mass-party organisation by investing significantly in local party branches and in a rigid vertically articulated structure. It relies heavily on social media, particularly Facebook, to communicate to supporters beyond the more limited group of party members. Using both modern and traditional tools, VB representatives aim to create communities of supporters bonded to the party, facilitating dissemination of the party’s messages. Despite this investment in a grassroots organisation, the VB’s decision-making remains highly centralised. Social media and local branches allow informal consideration of members’ views, but the party has not created significant mechanisms for internal democracy. While it is often claimed that political parties have moved away from the “mass-party” model, this article demonstrates that the VB still maintains characteristics of the mass party, albeit with a modern twist. New social media tools facilitate attempts to foster communities and disseminate party messages among a wider group of supporters, both formal members and more informal sympathisers.

The evolution of the inter-institutional balance of powers has been a constant feature of the European integration process. Therefore, this thematic issue reopens these theoretical and empirical discussions by looking at an underexploited angle of research, namely the impact of rule change on policy outputs. We offer a discussion on how to theorise rule change, actors’ behaviour, and their impact on policy outputs. We also examine the links between theory and methods, noting the strengths and weaknesses of different methods for the study of institutional and policy change. We draw on the contributions of this thematic issue to delineate further paths to push forward the current frontiers in EU decision-making research.

This article aims to examine the effect of intra-institutional conflicts in the European Commission on the extent of changes made to legislative proposals in trilogue negotiations. We develop and test three hypotheses related to how conflicts within the Commission, namely that intra-institutional disagreements during policy formulation (h1), and potential conflicts with previous (h2) or subsequent (h3) colleges of commissioners, increase the number of amendments to the Commission’s proposal adopted in trilogues. To test our hypotheses, we use a new dataset measuring the number of changes between Commission proposals and adopted legislation for 216 legislative acts negotiated between 2012 and 2019 by means of text-mining techniques. It is important to note that we control for differences between the Commission’s proposals and the co-legislators’ positions in order to distinguish between an effect on preferences anticipation and on the negotiations proper. Our results indicate that intra-institutional conflicts affect the Commission’s anticipation of the co-legislators’ positions. The effect on its behaviour in trilogues, that is, after the legislative proposal has been tabled, is less clear. Regarding the latter, only the number of Directorates-General involved is significantly linked with the number of amendments tabled. These findings suggest that while intra-institutional disagreements affect the Commission’s role in trilogues, the range of preferences is more important than the intensity of conflicts.

Communication is a process and part of human identity without which man could not exist today. Intercultural communication is a form of global communication, which refers to intercultural interactions between different cultures that appear in a social group with different religious, social, ethnic, cultural, and social backgrounds. North Macedonia and Kosovo are considered multicultural states which have ethnic identities within them, which are part of the mosaic and the promotion of intercultural communication is a test of the democratic development of these states. Therefore, this study aims to research and analyze the role of intercultural communication between local communities in both countries, communication of local government with the community, and community participation in public meetings as part of local decision-making. The methodology applied in this paper is the study of literature and the development of quantitative research with local communities. The results show that even though the participation of local communities is low in both countries, due to various factors, intercultural communication has broken down barriers between communities and has influenced the initiatives for the organization and development of the community itself.

A populist surge in Europe is affecting Euro-Mediterranean cooperation 25 years after the Barcelona Process was launched, reinforcing existing trends of de-Europeanization and renationalization of foreign policies. This article analyses the landscape of political contestation of Mediterranean cooperation in Europe in a new age of populism, focusing on France, Italy and Spain as well as the Visegrad 4 states that have turned from bystanders to veto players in Mediterranean affairs. We find that the 'thick' ideologies from which populists are borrowing condition the thrust of their influence. The impact of right-wing populism trumps that of its left-wing counterpart in quantity and quality, while market-liberal populism is in decline and regional populism is mainly an issue only in Spain. Populism has personalized decision-making and shaped political agendas directly and indirectly, most notably on migration. It has whitewashed authoritarian leaders in the southern Mediterranean and fragmented the European Union's position on key issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict. National interests and the weight of institutions have, however, formed a counterbalance to the focus on migration emanating from domestic politics. Populism alone cannot be blamed for renationalization trends that have existed before, but it does build on and reinforce them.

This article investigates how municipal governments negotiate far-right contestations through the format of citizens’ dialogues and contemplates to what extent they disrupt established assumptions about participatory urban governance. In doing so, I want to contribute to emerging scholarship on reactionary responses to migration-led societal transformations in cities via scrutinising their effects on institutional change in participatory practices. Building on participatory urban governance literature and studies on the far right in the social sciences, I argue that inviting far-right articulations into the democratic arena of participation serves to normalise authoritarian and racist positions, as the far right’s demand for more direct involvement of ‘the people’ is expressed in reactionary terms. I will show how this applies to two prominent notions of participation in the literature, namely, agonistic and communicative approaches. This argument is developed through an explorative case study of two neighbourhood-based citizens’ dialogues in Cottbus, East Germany, which the municipal government initiated in response to local far-right rallies. While a careful reading of these forums reveals productive potentials when the issue of international migration is untangled from context-specific, socio-spatial problems in the neighbourhoods, my analysis also shows how the municipality’s negotiation of far-right contestations within the citizens’ dialogues serves to legitimise far-right ideology. I find that to negotiate today’s societal polarisation, municipal authorities need to rethink local participatory institutions by disentangling these complex dynamics and reject far-right contestations, while designing dialogues for democratic and emancipatory learning.

How do authoritarian governments learn? What kind of events and experiences can lead them to adopt more or less restrictive policies towards social actors? And, how are such lessons from others' experiences integrated into new policies? These questions have been addressed and answered quite differently from various disciplinary perspectives, focusing either on international dynamics such as “authoritarian diffusion” or on domestic policy learning. This article seeks to integrate different perspectives on authoritarian learning by proposing a typological framework of positive and negative learning from three distinct sources: authoritarian peers, democratic countries, and subnational policy experiments. I argue that such a comprehensive framework better accounts for both the relative importance and for the interaction of different kinds of learning in national-level policy processes. To illustrate the framework's added analytical value, I use an exemplary case study of recent legislative changes to China's civil society policy, which have been alternatively interpreted as part of an authoritarian “wave” or as another step in incremental domestic learning processes.

Besides representative mechanisms, democratic decision-making entails the participation of individuals, communities, and organizations. However, in complex and modern societies, the implications of these multiple interactions are difficult to map and evaluate. Social network analysis allows us to scrutinize the decisionmaking process and its outcomes in terms of effectiveness, fairness, and legitimacy. We present two different cases dealing with decision-making in the context of sustainability. By looking at the patterns of interactions, we can identify the most relevant actors and explain why they are important, as well as describe the composition, structure, and evolution of a network to explain certain outcomes. The results offer empirical insights, which challenge common perceptions and provide practical solutions for decision-makers to maintain or improve good governance., easy social sciences No. 66 (2021): Content Meets Structure - Social Network Perspectives Starting Point and Frequency: Year: 1989, Issues per Year: 2, easy social sciences

Akklamation, Okkupation und Verantwortungsflucht - Ratsreferenden genießen als Top-down-Verfahren in der lokalen Politikforschung einen zweifelhaften Ruf. Der Autor unternimmt nun erstmalig eine empirisch-systematische Erforschung des direktdemokratischen Entscheidungsinstruments: Anhand vergleichender Fallstudien in vier Städten untersucht er die vielfältigen Initiierungsgründe und Akteurskonstellationen von Ratsreferenden. Er hinterfragt dabei ihre im Vergleich zu Bürgerreferenden negative Rezeption und entwickelt eine Analyseheuristik, die auch auf Top-down-Referenden anderer politischer Ebenen übertragbar ist. Acclamation, occupation, escape from responsibility? The view of local political research on council referendums.

The United Nations Conference on Certain Conventional Weapons (UNCCW) is the only multilateral humanitarian arms control forum. Yet the consensus principle by which it makes decisions has repeatedly thwarted progress and is endangering the current process on the use of autonomy in weapons systems: if negotiations for a legally binding instrument are not launched in 2021, this goal is likely to be pursued outside the UNCCW. Failure to ban inhumane technology for a third time in a row would considerably damage the legitimacy of the UNCCW. Emphasizing that the UNCCW must remain the main venue not only for discussing but also for resolving humanitarian arms control issues, this policy brief argues for an alternative: a procedural reform that would replace consensus voting with two-thirds majority voting.

From the perspective of policymakers, planning for the many uncertainties that the future brings is a complicated task. Because of the growing complexity of global affairs, more and more information is destined to land on the desks of decision makers. State-of-the-art futures analysis structures information about conceivable events and developments, thus supporting more effective and legitimate anticipatory governance. Forecasting and foresight, the dominant analytical approaches, serve different political functions. Forecasting geopolitical events is primarily relevant for the execu­tive branch, which must act on short-term assessments. Foresight scenarios, on the other hand, significantly contribute to deliberations on the desirability of plausible mid- to long-term developments in consultative bodies such as parliaments. Both approaches should be utilized in EU policymaking. (author's abstract)

Demokratische Entscheidungsfindung geht neben Repräsentationsmechanismen auch mit der Mitwirkung von Einzelpersonen, Gemeinschaften und Organisationen einher. In komplexen und modernen Gesellschaften lassen sich jedoch die Auswirkungen dieser multiplen Interaktionen nur schwer erfassen und auswerten. Mithilfe von sozialer Netzwerkanalyse können wir den Entscheidungsfindungsprozess und seine Ergebnisse im Hinblick auf Effektivität, Gerechtigkeit und Legitimität untersuchen. Wir stellen zwei unterschiedliche Fallbeispiele von Entscheidungsfindung in Zusammenhang mit Nachhaltigkeit vor. Wenn wir uns die Muster der Interaktionen anschauen, können wir die wichtigsten Akteur*innen identifizieren und erklären, warum sie wichtig sind, sowie die Zusammensetzung, Struktur und Entwicklung eines Netzwerks beschreiben, um bestimmte Entscheidungsausgänge zu erklären. Die Ergebnisse liefern empirische Erkenntnisse, die gängige Sichtweisen in Frage stellen und praktische Lösungen für Entscheidungsträger*innen zur Aufrechterhaltung oder Verbesserung einer verantwortungsbewussten Regierungsführung bieten., easy social sciences No. 66 (2021): Content Meets Structure - Social Network Perspectives Starting Point and Frequency: Year: 1989, Issues per Year: 2, easy social sciences

Analyses of strategic agenda-setting in the European Union treat the European Commission as a unitary actor with perfect information. Yet, the constraints for correctly anticipating acceptable policies vary heavily across its individual Directorates-General. Do these internal rifts affect the Commission’s agenda-setting ability? This article tests corresponding expectations on the edit distances between 2237 Commission proposals and the adopted laws across 23 years. The quality of legislative anticipation indeed varies with the responsible Directorate-General. Legislative proposals are more likely to remain unchanged if they face less parliamentary involvement, are less complex, were drafted by an experienced Directorate-General, and were coordinated more seamlessly within the Commission. However, the uncovered variation also calls for more systematic research on the distribution of legislative capacities inside the Commission.

Die Energiewende ist ein viel diskutiertes Thema im Bundestag - doch bleibt dabei auch der eigentliche Anspruch eines Transformationsprojekts bestehen? Die Autorin greift diese Frage in ihrer Diskursanalyse der Bundestagsdebatten von 1998 bis 2017 auf. Dazu entwickelt sie ein innovatives Forschungsdesign, das computerbasierte quantitative mit qualitativen Methoden kombiniert und auch für weitere politische Transformationsforschung anwendbar ist. Mit dem Vorsorgenden Wirtschaften erweitert sie ihre Analysen um die politische Ökonomie und verortet sie in der feministischen, sozial-ökologischen Transformationsforschung. Ergebnis: Die Energiewende wurde im Bundestag nach 2011 politisch entleert.

Do citizens' decisions, which are discussed and co-ordinated a priori on online participation platforms, have any policy effects? The article addresses this question in an exploratory study. Taking theoretical concepts of participation and policy effects into account, LiquidFeedback platforms are investigated in four municipalities in Lower Saxony (Germany). A total of 80 cases - i.e., successful citizens’ initiatives that were afterwards considered by local city or district councils - are included in a content analysis. Results show that crucial policies are less often translated into binding policy decisions than other policies. Even though citizens’ decisions can have binding policy effects, large-scale projects, in particular, show rather diffuse policy effects. However, diffuse policy effects are hardly transparent for citizens and could, accordingly, inhibit the willingness to participate altogether. Haben von Bürger*innen auf Online-Bürgerbeteiligungsplattformen getroffene Entscheidungen Auswirkungen auf politische Entscheidungen? Der vorliegende Artikel befasst sich mit dieser Frage in einer explorativen Studie. Unter Berücksichtigung theoretischer Konzepte von Partizipation und politischen Effekten werden LiquidFeedback-Plattformen in vier niedersächsischen Kommunen untersucht. In die Inhaltsanalyse werden 80 Fälle miteinbezogen, die auf der Beteiligungsplattform positiv abgestimmt und später von den örtlichen Stadt- oder Bezirksräten geprüft wurden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass es vor allem in Politikfeldern, die viel Planungszeit erfordern, seltener zu bindenden Policy-Entscheidungen kommt. Unklare politische Entscheidungen sind für die Bürger*innen jedoch schlecht nachvollziehbar. Sind sie überdies noch intransparent, wirken sie sich hemmend auf die Bereitschaft zur (weiteren) Teilnahme aus.

Three years after the judgment of the General Court in the De Capitani case, we assess whether the findings of the Court have settled for good the debate between transparency and effectiveness in EU law-making or rather opened new reflections on legislative transparency in the EU.

Turkey's new Presidential System has failed to realise the goals that it was said to achieve with its introduction despite the disapproval of half the population. Contrary to the ruling party’s claims in favour of the new governance system, two and a half years after its introduction, parliament is weaker, separation of powers is undermined, the judiciary is politicised, institutions are crippled, economic woes are mounting and authoritarian prac­tices prevail. Despite the almost unlimited and unchecked power that the new system grants to the President over institutions, his space for political manoeuvre is, surprisingly, narrower than it was in the parliamentary system. Providing the otherwise divided opposition a joint anchor of resistance, the Presidential System unintentionally breathed life into the inertia of Turkey’s political party setting. The formation of splinter parties from the ruling party, primarily address­ing the same conservative electorate, alongside the changing electoral logic with the need to form alliances to win an election, poses a serious challenge to the ruling party and its leader - the President. Despite the oppositional alliance’s electoral victory in 2019 local elec­tions, it is at the moment unclear whether the forming parties share a common vision for steps towards democratic repair. Together with the institutional havoc caused by the Presidential System, the blurry outlook of the opposition requires caution about an easy and rapid positive transformation. While the European Union should be realistic in regard to expectations towards democratic reform, it should also strike a balance between cooperation in areas of mutual benefit and confronting Ankara when necessary to protect the interests of the Euro­pean Union and its member states. (author's abstract)

The global threat of the coronavirus pandemic has forced policy makers to react quickly with totally new policy‐making approaches under conditions of uncertainty. This article focuses on such crisis‐driven policy learning, examining how the experiences of China and South Korea as early responder states influenced the subsequent coronavirus crisis management in Germany. The first reaction of the German core executive was the quick concentration of decision‐making power at the top of the political hierarchy. Asserting the prerogatives of the executive included the radical simplification of the relationship between politics, law and science. State actors took emergency measures by recourse to a single piece of legislation—the ‘infection protection law’ (Infektionsschutzgesetz)—overriding other elements of the legal order. They also limited the government’s use of scientific expertise to a small number of advisors, thereby cutting short debates about the appropriateness or otherwise of the government’s crisis measures. Finally, German actors failed to understand that some of the earlier Chinese and Korean responses required a precondition—namely public willingness to sacrifice privacy for public health—that is absent in the German case.

In this article, we aim to disentangle the extent to which citizens’ conceptions of democratic decision-making are shaped by populist attitudes or rather by radical left and right host ideologies. Following recent work by Landwehr and Steiner (2017), we distinguish four modes of decision-making embedded in different conceptions of democracy: trusteeship democracy, anti-pluralism, deliberative proceduralism, and majoritarianism. Drawing on data from Austria and Germany, we show that populism and radical host ideologies tap into different dimensions of democracy. While populism is primarily directed against representative forms of democratic decision-making, preferences for deliberative procedures and majority decisions appear entirely shaped by radical left and right host ideologies. Populism thus views decision-making based on the general will of the people as the only legitimate democratic procedure, whereas radical left and right host ideologies aim at involving the relevant group(s) of citizens. Further analyses of the interactions between populist attitudes and radical host ideologies confirm that the effects of populism remain robust and thus independent of the specific manifestations of radical host ideologies. These findings help to disentangle the causes of democratic discontent and to develop possible responses through democratic reforms that specifically and separately aim to mitigate populism and radical host ideologies.

Policy-specific actor-constellations consisting of party- and group-representatives commonly drive the effective establishment of new policy programmes or changes in existing policies. In the EU multi-level system, the creation of such constellations is complicated because it practically requires consensus on two dimensions: the European public policy at stake and the issue of European integration. This means that, for interest groups with interests in particular policy domains, and with limited interest in the actual issue of European integration, non-Eurosceptic parties must be their main ally in their policy battles. We hypothesise that interest groups with relevant European domain-specific interests will ally with non-Eurosceptic parties, whereas interest groups whose interests are hardly affected by the European policy process will have party-political allies across the full range of positions on European integration. We assess this argument on the basis of an elite-survey of interest group leaders and study group-party dyads in several European countries (i.e., Belgium, Lithuania, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, and Slovenia) in a large number of policy domains. Our dependent variable is the group-party dyad and the main independent variables are the European policy interests of the group and the level of Euroscepticism of the party. We broadly find support for our hypotheses. The findings of our study speak to the debate concerning the implications of the politicisation of European integration and, more specifically, the way in which party-political polarisation of Europe may divide domestic interest group systems and potentially drive group and party systems apart.

Blame games between governing and opposition parties are a characteristic feature of domestic politics. In the EU, policymaking authority is shared among multiple actors across different levels of governance. How does EU integration affect the dynamics of domestic blame games? Drawing on the literatures on EU politicisation and blame attribution in multi-level governance systems, we derive expectations about the direction and frequency of blame attributions in a Europeanized setting. We argue, first, that differences in the direction and frequency of blame attributions by governing and opposition parties are shaped by their diverging baseline preferences as blame avoiders and blame generators; secondly, we posit that differences in blame attributions across Europeanized policies are shaped by variation in political authority structures, which incentivize certain attributions while constraining others. We hypothesize, inter alia, that blame games are “Europeanized” primarily by governing parties and when policy-implementing authority rests with EU-level actors. We test our theoretical expectations by analysing parliamentary debates on EU asylum system policy and EU border control policy in Austria and Germany.

Der Artikel basiert auf einem Deliberativen Forum zur deutschen Arbeitsmarkt- und Sozialpolitik. Er untersucht Gruppendynamiken und Meinungsänderungen sowie den Einfluss von aktiven Personen auf diese Dynamiken mittels quantitativer Vor- und Nachbefragung der Teilnehmer_innen, um einen Beitrag zur Debatte über einen möglichen Mehrwert von Deliberation in demokratischen Entscheidungsprozessen zu leisten. Die These von durch Deliberationsprozessen angestoßenen Meinungsänderungen kann grundsätzlich bestätigt werden, allerdings deuten die Ergebnisse darauf hin, dass die Mehrheit in ihren Positionen weitgehend unverändert aus der Debatte gegangen ist. Auch inhaltlich lässt sich feststellen, dass die in der Demokratietheorie und empirischen Deliberationsforschung getroffenen normativen Erwartungen hinsichtlich Gemeinwohlorientierung, Großzügigkeit und Nachhaltigkeit von getroffenen Entscheidungen nur zu einem geringen Ausmaß erfüllt wurden. Gleichzeitig finden sich kaum Hinweise auf einen systematischen Einfluss aktiver Personen auf die Positionen der übrigen Gruppenmitglieder.

Interest groups are important intermediary organisations that function as a transmission belt between societal interests and political decision-makers. However, while some interest groups survive over decades, others only last a few years. This article argues that the survival of interest groups depends on their ability to mobilise resources which is crucially affected by interest group type and the public salience of an interest group’s policy domain. The theoretical expectations are tested based on a novel dataset mapping the survival of 1699 interest groups registered at the German Bundestag between 1974 and 2012. Using event history analysis, it is shown that interest group type and public salience indeed affect whether interest groups survive. Sectional groups last significantly longer than cause groups, and interest group survival increases with the public salience of their policy area. The results have major implications for our understanding of interest groups and political representation in contemporary democracies.

The paper evaluates the types of e-democracy initiatives on local level in the Republic of Macedonia. E-democracy initiatives were classified by the elements of the democratic process, which they work to enhance: transparency, accountability and active participation. For the purpose of our research we analysed websites of the units of local self-government in the Republic of Macedonia in the period of 2017, with special emphasis on e-democracy initiatives in order to provide a framework for classification. The research discovered many outstanding local e-democracy initiatives. However, there is a little evidence that these initiatives have done much to ameliorate the problems on local level that Republic of Macedonia is facing, such as: weak democratic institutions and low level of citizen participation in democratic processes using ICT as intermediary. The paper also provides some recommendations for improving e-democracy initiatives on local level and their performance in general.

This contribution considers how the values of transparency and efficiency are realised in the context of “EU negotiations” both in the internal and the external sphere. Legislating comes with a presumption of openness in the EU, while international negotiations have traditionally been assumed to require secrecy. However, irrespective of the basic paradigms, the institutions often appear to follow a rather simple rationale that secrecy makes better decisions, both in internal and external affairs. Similar efficiency concerns seem to relate to protecting the procedure of decision-making from external influence. Therefore, the fundamental trade-off between democratic accountability and efficiency in the external and internal fields might not be all that different: efficiency is linked with secrecy, and comes at a cost for participation and openness. I explain how the two paradigms—openness and transparency in legislative work and secrecy in international negotiations have recently developed, and how the values of openness and efficiency have been addressed by the Court of Justice of the European Union in its recent jurisprudence. This discussion witnesses to a possibility that the old secrecy paradigm might be about to break in international relations while a new transparency paradigm in EU legislative work is struggling to emerge., published version, peerReviewed

It is more than twenty years since the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child gave governments and states an international mandate to ensure the safety and wellbeing of children and young people and to promote their participation in decisions that affect their lives. Considerable advances have been made since that time that have, in some but not all instances, seen transformations in the status, roles and responsibilities of children and young people and in the ways in which they are perceived and treated. These advances have included greater inclusion of children’s voices in research, policy and practice underpinned by children’s rights to participation and ‘best interests of the child’ decision-making. Bringing together a unique collection of international articles from authors with considerable expertise in researching and working with children and young people, this thematic issue explores some of the ways in which facilitating constructive dialogues with children and young people, and engaging them more directly in consultation about their lives, has led to genuine improvements in the way they are treated and understood. It also considers some of the barriers that exist to prevent children and young people from full participation in public life, some of which occur as a result of structural or systemic factors, while others are the result of the decisions adults make on their behalf.

I argue that the transparency reforms that have been implemented in the Council of the EU in the last decades are unlikely to change the perception of the Council as a non-transparent institution. My argument is based on three distinctions: the distinction between transparency (availability of information) and publicity (spread and reception of information); between transparency in process and transparency in rationale; and between plenary and committee decision-making arenas in legislatures. While national parliaments tend to have all these features, the Council of the EU only has two (transparency in process and committee decision-making). As a consequence, publishing ever more documents and detailed minutes of committee meetings is unlikely to strengthen the descriptive legitimacy of the Council. Furthermore, I argue that the democratic transparency problem is the reverse of what is most often argued: It is not the lack of transparency that causes a democratic deficit, but the (perceived) lack of a democratic infrastructure that makes more serious transparency reforms unthinkable to government representatives.

© 2017 by the author; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). According to advocates of direct democracy, it is important to involve citizens more directly in political decision-making processes in order to create a democratic linkage between citizens and the political system. Indeed, some studies have demonstrated that citizens who live in direct democracies have higher levels of trust in political institutions and a higher sense of political efficacy. However, not all empirical evidence confirms this relationship. In a recent article on Switzerland, it was shown that, while the availability of direct democratic rights enhances trust in political institutions, using those rights actually initiates distrust. In this paper I expand the analysis of Bauer and Fatke (2014) and test whether the different effects of availability of direct democratic rights and the frequency of their use also hold for broader measures of trust in political institutions and political efficacy. I find that, even though an increased use of direct democratic measures is associated with lower levels of confidence in authorities on the cantonal level, this relationship is no longer apparent when applying a more comprehensive measurement of trust in political institutions. ispartof: Politics and Governance vol:5 issue:2 pages:16-26 status: published

Abels und Mushaben (2012) argumentieren, dass in der Europäischen Union ein doppeltes Demokratiedefizit bezogen auf Geschlecht existiert: Frauen seien in den EU-Institutionen unterrepräsentiert und der EU-Politik fehle es insgesamt an einer Geschlechterperspektive. Dieser Beitrag trägt mit einem spezifischen Fokus auf Klimapolitik zu dieser Forschungsperspektive bei. Die EU ist eine wichtige Konstrukteurin des internationalen Klimaregimes und sie hat sich gleichzeitig verpflichtet, Gender Mainstreaming umzusetzen. Darüber hinaus sind in Europa geschlechtsspezifische Unterschiede bezogen auf das Verhalten zum und Ansichten über den Klimawandel dokumentiert. Dieser Artikel untersucht, wie relevant das doppelte Demokratiedefizit in der EU Klimapolitik ist. Wir stellen die Anteile der Expertinnen und Experten bei den zuständigen Referaten für Klimapolitik in der Europäischen Kommission dar und zeigen mit Dokumentenanalysen und Interviews mit politischen Entscheidungsträger*innen, dass geschlechtsspezifische Aspekte in den EU Klimadokumenten nicht enthalten sind. Mittels feministischem Institutionalismus kommen wir zu dem Ergebnis, dass die bestehenden geschlechtsspezifischen Machtverhältnisse innerhalb der Kommission die erforschten Klimaeinheiten beeinflussen und diese männlich konnotierte institutionelle Praktiken reproduzieren. (Autorenreferat), Abels and Mushaben (2012) argue that there is a double democratic deficit in the European Union regarding gender: women are underrepresented within the EU institutions and gender awareness is lacking in EU policymaking. This article contributes to this scholarship with a specific focus on the climate domain. The EU is an important constructor of the international climate regime and the Union is committed to gender mainstream all its policies and processes. Furthermore, there are documented gender differences in Europe regarding behaviour and views on climate change. This article investigates the relevance of the double democratic deficit for the EU´s climate policymaking. We map the representation of female and male experts at the European Commission´s climate units and search for gender recognition in the EU´s climate documents. There we discover silence regarding gender, confirmed through interviews with policy-makers. Using feminist institutionalism we conclude that existing gender power relations within the Commission affect the explored climate units, which reproduce masculine institutional practices. (author's abstract)

Since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, energy policy in Japan and Germany appears to have taken radically different directions. In contrast to Germany's consensus for an Energiewende ("energy transition"), Japan has renewed its political support for nuclear power. Yet, energy transitions in both countries are highly contested - with a much less predictable future than government plans would like us to believe. Japan has always connected energy self-sufficiency with national security due to its lack of natural resources and its isolated - as well as fragmented - national electricity grid. In contrast, Germany has a single grid, can trade electricity with its neighbours, and has large coal reserves. In Japan, nuclear power became a quasi "home-grown" energy source without strong opposition, while in Germany it has been increasingly contested by the "coal lobby," wind power, and the public. When the Fukushima disaster happened, both countries generated about 30 per cent of their electricity from nuclear power plants. Both countries had ambitious renewable targets already beforehand. Today, renewables account for 38 per cent of electricity production in Germany and 15.6 per cent in Japan. In both countries, the Fukushima disaster caused the collapse of the "safety myth" of nuclear power plants. In Germany, the long history of contestation over a nuclear phase-out and the broad public anti-nuclear consensus made a return to nuclear impossible. In Japan, anti-nuclear protests accelerated only after the Fukushima disaster. Thus with Prime Minister Abe's pledge to put the economy back on track, Japan is taking the political risk of reactor restarts. Energy transition is as much a reality in Japan as it is in Germany. Renewable energies have been evolving even more rapidly in Japan than in Germany in recent years, a trend further fuelled by current dynamics in the energy sector. Old regimes of energy policies are obsolete, and it is time to replace outdated analytical models with more dynamic ones to interpret national energy transitions and to pave the way for informed policymaking.

Previous research on public support for participatory decision-making fails to distinguish between vote-centric (referendums and initiatives) and talk-centric (deliberative-style meetings) instruments, despite a deliberative turn in democratic theory suggesting that political discussion among ordinary citizens improves decision-making. In an online factorial survey experiment conducted among a sample of 960 Americans recruited on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, we compared support for the use of referendums and public meetings, arguing that attitudes towards these instruments depend on whether they are used to inform legislators or take binding decisions. Public meetings were rated considerably lower than referendums and initiatives, especially when the outcomes were binding. Contrary to expectations, we did not find a preference for binding (over advisory) referendums and individuals from referendum and initiative states, where these instruments are legally binding, expressed less support for binding participatory reforms than individuals from non-direct democratic states. Despite the many critiques of direct democracy, public debate in the US has not considered whether advisory outcomes might appease some of these concerns. The results also demonstrated that individuals expressing concerns about the inability of ordinary citizens to understand politics and about the welfare of minority groups were not as negative about participatory decision-making when legislators had the final say.

Power is the essence of politics. Whoever seeks to understand and master it must understand its logic. Drawing on two decades of international experience in political consulting, Dominik Meier and Christian Blum give profound and honest insights into the inner workings of power. Introducing their Power Leadership Approach, the authors provide a conceptual analysis of power and present the tools to successfully exercise it in the political domain. "Power and its Logic" is a guidebook for politicians, business leaders, civil society pioneers, public affairs consultants and for every citizen who wants to understand the unwritten rules of politics.

"The article offers an insider's account of how the Paris Agreement on climate change was reached. Focusing on participation and ambition, it describes the efforts to include a long-term temperature goal, expectations for regular ratcheting up of climate efforts, and provisions for tracking global progress. The author argues that a shift from the earlier top-down approaches to setting targets, to a bottom-up, self-determined approach has spurred participation and made it easier to reach agreement. In addition, the Paris Agreement anchors a clearer direction of travel than before. The article also discusses the negotiations of the provisions in the Agreement to drive increased national climate mitigation efforts over time. Finally, the author considers the role of conference diplomacy, particularly the need for inclusive leadership. It is argued that the French Presidency combined a transparent negotiations process with a clear sense of direction that helped achieve a comprehensive and ambitious outcome. The role of back-channel talks as part of effective conference diplomacy is also discussed." (author's abstract)

"We examine the negotiations held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change in Paris, December 2015. Prior to these negotiations, there was considerable uncertainty about whether an agreement would be reached, particularly given that the world’s leaders failed to do so in the 2009 negotiations held in Copenhagen. Amid this uncertainty, we applied three different methods to predict the outcomes: an expert survey and two negotiation simulation models, namely the Exchange Model and the Predictioneer’s Game. After the event, these predictions were assessed against the coded texts that were agreed in Paris. The evidence suggests that combining experts’ predictions to reach a collective expert prediction makes for significantly more accurate predictions than individual experts’ predictions. The differences in the performance between the two different negotiation simulation models were not statistically significant." (author's abstract)

Dem raketenhaften Aufstieg der Piratenpartei folgte ihr ebenso schneller Niedergang. Ist das mit ihr verbundene Experiment politischer Willensbildung - Liquid Democracy - also ebenso gescheitert? Auf dem originellen Weg der Grounded Theory nähert sich Anja Adler der jüngsten deutschen Politikgeschichte, um sich mit dem ambitionierten Vorschlag zur Entwicklung eines neuen Betriebssystems für die Politik auseinanderzusetzen. Durch zahlreiche Interviews mit den Akteurinnen internet-gestützter Beratungs- und Entscheidungsverfahren zeichnet sie ein lebendiges und durchaus zukunftstaugliches Portrait sowohl der konkreten Verfahren als auch der Einstellungen und Visionen von Demokratieentwicklerinnen. Taking the most recent history of German politics as an example, this first comprehensive study about liquid democracy shows that algorithms of democratic decisions hamper as well as enrich politics.

Data contained in Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) is not only a prerequisite for the vote recommendations they provide but can also be used for estimating party positions in low‐dimensional spaces. Given that VAAs can be designed differently in terms of their number of items and their measurement level, how much can one trust the party positions obtained from this source? We tackle this question by exploiting relevant variation in a real‐world setting: three VAAs offered at the 2017 Lower Saxony election. Despite substantial design differences, the policy spaces extracted through an inductive scaling approach are highly convergent. Simulated random item removal from the pooled dataset of all three VAAs furthermore suggests that about 40 items yield satisfactory reliability of the party positions. Finally, we find that a priori assigning VAA‐items to ideological dimensions is potentially problematic as the interpretation of resulting party spaces may differ from the ones derived inductively.

Academic studies regarding the impact of various forms of gender representation focus largely on quantitative evidence that women in power can make a difference, downplaying qualitative case studies that can establish causal links between women's participation in government and better policies for women. Analyzing policy changes initiated by Germany’s first female Chancellor since 2005, the paper argues that despite her CDU-affiliation, Angela Merkel has contributed more to gender equality in Germany than all previous chancellors, even though she refuses to label herself a feminist. The author explores three factors shaping Merkel's reluctance to embrace the (western dominated) feminist label, e.g., her socialization under a diametrically opposed GDR gender regime, her preference for data-driven policy learning, her aversion towards “ideological” framing, coupled with a tendency to pursue mixed motives, respectively. The paper concludes with recent examples geared towards leveling the global gender playing-field, attesting to her willingness to embrace transformational representation., Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen, die sich auf die Wirksamkeit verschiedener Formen der Geschlechter-Repräsentation konzentrieren, sind oft dazu geneigt, die quantitativen Dimensionen zu betonen, auch wenn qualitative Fall-Studien besser dazu geeignet sind, einen kausalen Zusammenhang zwischen Frauen in der Politik und besserer Politik für Frauen zu etablieren. In diesem Aufsatz geht es um Deutschlands erste Bundeskanzlerin. Der Text argumentiert, dass Angela Merkel seit 2005 Jahre - trotz ihrer CDU-Mitgliedschaft und ihrer wiederholten Beteuerung, keine Feministin zu sein - mehr für die Geschlechtergleichheit in Deutschland getan hat als alle ihre Amtsvorgänger. Ihre Nicht-Identifikation mit dem Feminismus führt die Autorin auf drei Faktoren zurück, nämlich, ihre langjährige Sozialisierung im Gender Regime der DDR, ihre Vorliebe für datengetriebenes policy learning und ihre Abneigung gegenüber einem ideologischem Framing zugunsten von "mixed motives". Die Autorin schließt mit konkreten Beispielen, die zeigen, dass sie tatsächlich daran interessiert ist, das globale Geschlechter-Spielfeld im Geist einer transformativen Repräsentation umzugestalten.

Visegrád, Weimarer Dreieck, nordische Staaten oder Eurozone: Regional wie funktional organisierte Gruppen von Mitgliedstaaten der EU haben in ihrer Politikformulierung klar an Bedeutung gewonnen. Für die Stabilität der Union jedoch ist dieser neue »Minilateralismus« ambivalent. Staatengruppen können Fragmentierung und Intransparenz begünstigen, etwa durch Ausgrenzung, Gegengewichtsbildung – gerade gegen Deutschland – und die Stärkung intergouvernementaler Verfahren. Sie tragen aber auch zum Funktionieren der EU bei, sei es durch Agendasetzung, Interessenausgleich oder als diplomatische Brücken. Deshalb sollte Berlin solche Gruppen nicht bloß als schädliche Fliehkräfte betrachten, welche die Einheit der Union gefährden. Vielmehr sollte Deutschland sich diesen Formaten gezielt zuwenden, denn damit ließe sich vor allem die Inklusion kleiner und mittelgroßer EU-Staaten verbessern. (Autorenreferat)

The article is devoted to a comparison of different U.S. administrations’ foreign policy in the beginning of the 21st century. This period was chosen because it appears to be a critical moment in American history. The analysis shows that, despite the differences in party adherence and other ideological affiliations, successive administrations tend to follow identical or similar guidelines while implementing foreign policy. The author suggests several possible reasons for this continuity. First, there is the stability of the institutional and decision-making systems and mechanisms, which, in turn, are based on a stable system of interest representation. More broadly, it is the persistent system of values and basic attitudes, political and philosophical traditions, ideology and long-term behavioral patterns - those phenomena forming the core of political culture - that are the most important non-institutional factors driving the continuity of American foreign policy. So, comparison of the foreign policy courses of the Bush and Obama administrations leads to the conclusion that the mechanism of U.S. foreign policy is impersonal to a great extent. The key biographical parameters of the politicians play an only limited role in defining their political course.

Die Einführung von Mehrheitsentscheidungen in der Gemeinsamen Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik (GASP) ist kein neues Thema. Aufgrund wachsender internationaler Herausforderungen an die EU nimmt die Diskussion jedoch wieder Fahrt auf. Befürworter plädieren dafür, das Einstimmigkeitsprinzip abzuschaffen, um die GASP effektiver zu machen. Allerdings sind die rechtlichen Möglichkeiten dafür ohne Vertragsänderung begrenzt. Mehrheitsentscheidungen in der GASP sind zudem dann problematisch, wenn sie die Legitimität der EU nach innen und ihre Glaubwürdigkeit nach außen schwächen. Hier böte sich ein doppelter Ansatz an: Mittelfristig ließe sich die EU-Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik durch Flexibilisierung stärken. Langfristig könnte die Entwicklung einer gemeinsamen strategischen Kultur durch den Aufbau europäischer Analysefähigkeiten unterstützt werden. (Autorenreferat)

Die Annexion der Krim durch Russland, die sogenannte Flüchtlingskrise im Sommer 2015 und Donald Trumps Wahl zum US-Präsidenten sind einige markante Beispiele für Überraschungen, welche die Politik in Berlin und Brüssel vor anhaltende Herausforderungen gestellt haben. Da sich solche Überraschungen zu häufen scheinen, verwundert es nicht, dass auf Seiten der Politik das Interesse an Früherkennung wächst. Sie soll dabei helfen, insbesondere böse Überraschungen so rechtzeitig zu antizipieren, dass deren Eintritt vermieden werden kann. Aber wie wird Früherkennung besser? In den Blick zu nehmen gilt es dafür den gesamten Früherkennungsprozess von (1) der Erarbeitung der Analysen über (2) deren Management an der Schnittstelle zwischen Wissens­produktion und Politik bis zu (3) der Ebene, auf der Entscheidungen fallen. Beachtliche Fortschritte gibt es vor allem bei der Forschung über Forecasts. Dabei handelt es sich um nachprüfbare Vorhersagen darüber, ob in der näheren Zukunft liegende Ereignisse eintreten werden. Kognitive Merkmale wie Neugier, Unvoreingenommenheit und Vorurteilsfreiheit tragen dazu bei, die Qualität dieser Vorhersagen zu erhöhen. Auch die strategische Voraus­schau (Foresight) kann ausgebaut werden. Zwei Implikationen besserer Früherkennung sind allerdings problematisch. So können methodische Innovationen, optimiertes Management und aufgeschlossene Entscheidungsträger das Überraschungsrisiko zwar ver­ringern, aber nicht ausschalten. Und mit besserer Früherkennung steigt der Druck auf die Politik, präventiv zu handeln. Je genauer Früherkennung wird, desto mehr verringern sich politische Handlungsspielräume. Doch präventive Interventionen, die durch Früherkennung ausgelöst werden, können unerwünschte Folgen haben - das zeigen Erfahrungen der Vergan­genheit. (Autorenreferat)

This paper examines the claim that democratic decision making is epistemically valuable. Focussing on communication and voting, circumstances are identified under which groups are able to reliably identify the ‘correct alternative.’ Employing formal models from social epistemology, group performance under varying conditions in a simple epistemic task is scrutinized. Simulation results show that larger majority requirements can favour the veto power of closed-minded individuals, but can also increase precision in well-functioning groups. Reasonable scepticism against other people's opinions can provide a useful impediment to overly quick convergence onto a false consensus when independent information acquisition is possible.

How, if at all, does the Commission’s expertise inform intergovernmental decision-making within the EU? In this article, we aim to capture the relationship between the Commission’s expertise and its influence within intergovernmental policy-areas through a study of Commission influence in two least likely sectors: security and defence policies (military mission Atalanta and EU Maritime Security Strategy) and external migration (EU mobility partnerships with third countries). In these cases we observe that the Commission strongly informs policy developments even though it has only limited formal competences. To explore whether and, if so, how this influence is linked to its expertise, we develop and consider two hypotheses: The expert authority hypothesis and the expert arguments hypothesis. To identify possible additional channels of influence, we also consider the relevance of two alternative hypotheses: The strategic coalition hypothesis and the institutional circumvention hypothesis. We find that the Commission’s use of its expertise is indeed key to understanding its de facto influence within policy-areas where its formal competences remain limited. Our findings add to the existing literature by revealing how expertise matters. Specifically, our cases show that the Commission informs intergovernmental decision-making by successfully linking discussions to policy-areas where it holds expert authority. However, the Commission also informs EU policies by circumventing the formal lines of intergovernmental decision-making, and by cooperating with member states that share its preference for further integration.

With the increasing “agencification” of policy making in the European Union (EU), normative questions regarding the legitimacy of EU agencies have become ever more important. This article analyses the role of expertise and legitimacy with regard to the European Chemicals Agency ECHA. Based on the REACH regulation, so-called Substances of Very High Concern (SVHCs) are subject to authorisation. The authorisation procedure aims to ensure the good functioning of the internal market, while assuring that risks of SVHCs are properly controlled. Since ECHA has become operational in 2008, recurring decisions on SVHCs have been made. The question posed in this article is: to what extent can decision making in the REACH authorisation procedure be assessed as legitimate? By drawing on the notion of throughput legitimacy, this article argues that decision making processes in the authorisation procedure are characterized by insufficient legitimacy.

In vier für die Politik grundlegenden Sphären (Recht, Wahrheit, Gemeinwohl, Gewalt) werden für die Jahre seit 2008 Handlungsmuster der russischen Spitzenelite untersucht und Kontinuitäten aufgezeigt. Ausgehend von den Handlungen werden Grundeinstellungen der Elite in diesen vier Bereichen herausgearbeitet, die sich maßgeblich auf die künftigen Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland bzw. der Europäischen Union und Russland auswirken werden. Dabei wird dargelegt, dass die für viele westliche Beobachter überraschenden Handlungen Russlands seit 2014 auf Haltungen beruhen, die sich bereits in früheren Phasen bemerkbar gemacht haben. Insofern lassen sich diese Einstellungen als Teil einer langfristigen politischen Kultur der russischen Elite verstehen. Vor allem die Instrumentalisierung von Recht, Wahrheit und Gewalt in der Innen- und Außenpolitik sowie ein Kontrollbedürfnis, das auf Misstrauen gegenüber externen und internen Akteuren beruht, sind für die heutige russische Spitzenelite charakteristisch. Das Gemeinwohl bzw. das Wohlergehen der russischen Bevölkerung hat keine oder nur eine rein instrumentelle Priorität für die Elite. Bei der Entwicklung eines mittel- bis langfristigen Ansatzes für den Umgang mit Russland sollten deutsche und EU-Akteure diese Grundeinstellungen mitberücksichtigen, weil sie in absehbarer Zukunft die Handlungen zahlreicher Vertreterinnen und Vertreter der russischen Elite prägen werden. (Autorenreferat)

Transnational civil society networks have become increasingly important democratizing actors in global politics. Still, the exploration of democracy in such networks remains conceptually and methodologically challenging. Practice theory provides a framework to study democracy as routinized performances even in contexts of fluid boundaries, temporal relations and a diffuse constituency. The author attempts to understand how new forms of democratic practice emerge in the interaction between political actors and their structural environments.During recent decades, the arenas of political decision-making have increasingly shifted from national governments to intergovernmental and transnational political forums. At the same time, the number and relevance of non-state actors in international politics is steadily growing. These trends have led political scientists to study and theorize about new forms of democracy beyond the national political arenas (Archibugi 2004, Bexell et al. 2010, Nasström 2010). However, democracy beyond the nation state is difficult to conceptualize with the idea of an institutionalized democracy within the borders of nation-states. Therefore, many political scientists emphasize the role of civil society actors as a cure for the democratic deficit in inter-national politics (Steffek & Nanz 2008). Yet, normative and empirical problems arise over the extent of access, selection and role of civil society actors in international organizations (Tallberg et al. 2013). Furthermore, the normative relevance of transnational civil society actors makes it necessary to study their own democratic legitimacy.While international organizations are mostly institutionalized and hierarchical governing bodies, the ever growing diffuse conglomerate of non-state actors is characterized by fluid structures, blurry boundaries and a multi-level setting of interaction (Keck & Sikkink 1998). Thus, in studying democratic practice in transnational civil society networks, we must ask: How institutionalized does political practice have to be and how flexible can it be, to still be considered democratic? Normative theorists reconceptualized democracy in the light of this changing context (Bohman 2007). Recent concepts of participatory, deliberative and representative democracy attempt to reconfigure existing democratic institutions through procedural elements (Fung & Wright 2003, Dryzek 2006) or innovative forms of representation (Phillips 1998, Mansbridge 2003, Castiglione & Warren 2006). This emerging theoretical framework is well suited to analyze the extent, to which democratic practice exists within transnational civil society networks.By applying the concept of practice (Giddens 1984, Schatzki 2001) as a bridging tool between the empirical reality of fluid, temporary and open transnational civil society networks on the one hand and the institution-oriented democratic theory on the other hand, this study explores the extent to which democratic practice develops in a field that lacks traditional institutions to guarantee formal representation and deliberation as well citizen participation. As innovative transnational actors, civil society networks can bring up new forms of democratic practice (see Polletta 2006) that can potentially inspire the debate about transnational democracy as such. This study, with its innovate approach, hopes to invigorate the debate about transnational democracy and transnational civil society, which has stalled to some degree in recent years.The study is divided into three parts: first, a conceptual part that clarifies the question of how democracy as practice can be theoretically conceptualized in transnational civil society networks, which is followed by an empirical exploration of political practice in the transnational civil society networks. In this second part, the main question is how participation, representation and deliberation practice develops in transnational civil society networks. Two cases of transnational civil society networks, the Clean Clothes Campaign and Friends of the Earth, are analyzed to provide insights into the democratic practice within transnational civil society. In the final part, the empirical findings are evaluated in the light of the outlined concepts of democratic theory in order to explore how democratic the political practice actually is.The study identifies implicit and in-process practice of democratic norms in transnational civil society networks. Political practice in transnational civil society networks can become democratic through empowerment measures and trustful relationships. However, deliberation practice can be impeded by disembodied digital communication and complex decision-making. The study explores how new forms of democratic practice emerge in the interaction between political actors and the structural environments of actors and networks.