From Democratic Government to Participatory Governance

In July 2001 the EU Commission (200la) launched its long-announced White Paper on Governance. By that time, the conference where drafts of the contributions to this volume have first been presented had passed for almost one year. While discussing in Florence, we hardly had an idea about the salience the governance topic would have assumed only a couple of months later. Until then, it had mainly occupied the research agendas of a handful of political scientists in only some of the member states of the Union. Our project, indeed, was only in part related to the Commission’s initiative. The timing of this book, hence, is a mere coincidence. Whether it represents a more or less happy one has to be judged by the reader. Now, after the White Paper being published and after the rather unexpected noise it has triggered in and outside Brussels, it seems clear that, incidentally, we have caught the right moment with this present publication.