European Citizens' Initiative The main core of the thesis is the problematics of the European Citizens' Initiative, a tool relatively new that was put in place by the Lisbon Treaty and allows one million citizens from at least seven EU Member States to ask the European Commission to propose legislation in areas that fall within its competence. This thesis provides a detailed description of this instrument of participatory democracy, its historical foundations, its development and also the recent proposal for a regulation on the European citizens' initiative that aims to fill the gaps discovered during the period of its existence. It describes the formal and procedural requirements required for the successful submission of the initiative to the European Commission, particularly for registration, and thus the official launch of the initiative. It focuses on the forms of statements of support and the complication that it brought. The thesis also introduces some of the initiatives that have been organised since 2012, both successful and unsuccessful, including those that the Commission has refused to register. There is also an evaluation of the initiatives, the experiences and challenges that the organizers have met and especially the impact of the successful ones. The thesis points out particular...

The objective of the submitted diploma thesis is to analyze the subject of a direct democracy system in the Czech Republic focusing on the local level of governance. The possibility of being able to participate imminently in the municipal government and thus amending the current representative model became the subject of not only political discussions over the last few years. The thesis is composed of a foreword and five chapters, which are hereafter divided to subchapters for better transparency. Findings and author suggestions concerning the possible future forms of the local democracy are summarized in the conclusion. The introductory chapter presents the direct democracy in a theoretical way and shows how it differs from the representative democracy model. It also contains the definition of the five most respected forms of a direct democracy, which are: referendum, plebiscite, citizen initiative, petition and recall. Following two chapters are focused on the situation in Czech Republic, first in general, then with an emphasis on the municipal scene. Efforts to establish an individual form of a direct democracy can be observed already from the year 1918 with various results, new possibilities appeared later as Czech Republic had entered supranational communities. A local referendum still remains...

The topic of this dissertation is the democratic deficit of the European Union and the normative and empirical assessment of the likelihood that the existing forms of institutionalized transnational civic engagement would act as the point of anchoring democratic practices at the EU level. If the democratic deficit reflects the apparent lack of legitimacy and accountability of EU institutions and a lack of influence of its citizens, the question the project attempts to answer is why the existing democratic innovations within the EU constitutional framework fail to attract political allegiance and mobilization necessary for a functioning EU democracy? The thesis attempts to bridge the gap between normative political theory and more empirical and policy oriented approaches to the issue of EU democratic deficit. In a theoretical sense, this research covers a broad spectrum of topics within political theory and the theory of political culture. Parting ways with most of the current literature on the subject, which usually ends with institutional prescriptions derived from descriptions that rely on the nation-state as the benchmark for the prospects of democratisation of the EU, the project seeks to analyse the democratic innovations that the Lisbon treaty introduced within a more comprehensive framework of transnational deliberative democracy - demoicracy. The underlying idea behind the project is to apply, for the first time and with necessary modifications, the basic notions of the founders of the discipline of Political Culture, Almond and Verba, to the EU. That means to draw on their seminal work, ‘The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations’, and hypothesize that further democratization of EU decision-making requires a 'civic political culture'. By definition, it presupposes the dominance of 'participative' over 'subject' and 'parochial' dimensions of orientation towards the political system. After extensive theoretical and methodological considerations, following a brief investigation into political culture in the EU, the empirical focus shifts to the European Citizens’ Initiative and the framings around the struggle for its reform in order to draw findings on which types of political cultures the European Commission has fostered. The principle aim of the research is to investigate if and how the democratic legitimacy of the EU can be enhanced by a shift from a parochial and subject to a more participation-enhancing dynamics. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

När stadsbyggnadsprojekt planeras och städer omformas, var kommer medborgares kunskap om sin omgivning in? Hur behåller eller skapar medborgarna en anknytning till stadens platser, när deras användning och identitet förändras? Om staden ska vara en allmän rättighet krävs det att den växer fram kollektivt. Därför måste medborgares kunskap tas till vara på i stadens utveckling och i konkreta stadsbyggnadsprojekt. Det är svårt att se hur medborgare kommer få en koppling till dessa platser när de under en lång tid av stadsomvandlingen är avskärmade från den. Hur kan dessa platser, istället för att exkludera medborgare, bli en del av deras vardag redan under planerings- och förändringsprocesser? Hur kan medborgarnas delaktighet i planerings- och byggprocessen vara med om att bygga upp värden för platsers framtida användare?I Jubileumsparken i Göteborg används en metod planerarna kallar platsbyggnad. Arbetet bygger på att koppla samman medborgare med platsen under planeringen av den nya stadsdelen i Frihamnen genom att skapa urbana prototyper. Prototyperna öppnar upp för medborgarna att använda och utveckla platsen medan den planeras och tar fysisk form.Genom att prototyperna är i ett konstant flöde av användning och omvandling kan nya förståelser av hur planering kan gå till och vad platsen kan bli skapas. Prototyperna hjälper till att gå från något flytande (planer, idéer, visioner) till något fast.I studien ställer vi oss frågorna: var kommer idén om prototypprojekt ifrån? Hur har idén vuxit fram? Hur har prototyperna utvecklats och förändrats? Hur förstår och använder olika aktörer prototyperna och hur fungerar de i arbetet med Jubileumsparken?Prototyperna i sig själva hamnar i ett gränsland mellan aktörers relationer till prototyperna. Kontrasten av aktörernas relation till prototyperna gör det svårt att definiera vad prototyperna egentligen är, men genom att för en stund gör relationerna till något fast kan vi studera dem. När prototyperna är stabila och relationerna inte längre kommer omvandlas, och inga nya relationer kommer skapas, så har de kanske slutligen övergått till något fast. Men kommer de någonsin bli permanenta? Kanske är de bara i ett fast tillstånd för en stund? De är fasta objekt så länge inga relationer skapas eller omvandlas. / When urban construction projects are planned and cities are transformed, where will citizens’ knowledge of their surroundings come in? How do the citizens create or keep an attachment to the city’s places when their use and identity change? If the city is to be a universal right, it is required that it grows collectively. Therefore, citizens’ knowledge must be taken into account in the city’s development and in concrete urban construction projects. It’s hard to see how citizens will get a connection to these sites when they are shielded from the urban transformation for a long time. How can these places, instead of excluding citizens, become part of their everyday lives during the planning and construction process? How can citizens’ involvement in the planning and construction process help to build up the values ​for site’s future users?Jubileumsparken in Gothenburg uses a method the planners call space building. The work is based on linking citizens with the site during the planning of the new district in Frihamnen by creating urban prototypes. Prototypes open up for citizens to use and develop the site while it’s being planned and taking physical form. Because the prototypes are in a constant flow of use and conversion, new understandings of how planning can be and how the site can be created. Prototypes help move from something floating (plans, ideas, visions) to something solid.In the study we are asking the following questions: where does the idea of ​​prototype projects come from? How has the idea emerged? How have prototypes evolved and changed? How do different actors understand and use prototypes and how do they work in Jubileumsparken?The prototypes themselves end up in a borderland between actors’ relations with the prototypes. The contrast of the actors’ relation to the prototypes makes it difficult to define what the prototypes really are, but by making the relationships solid for some time we can study them. When the prototypes are stable and the relationships will no longer be transformed, and no new relationships will be created, they may eventually have shifted to something fixed. But will they ever become permanent? Maybe they are just in a solid state for a while? They are fixed objects as long as no relationships are created or converted.

This thesis is embedded in the theoretical approach of multilevel governance and presumption of the rational behaviour of actors. Using the method of process tracing it aims to uncover the legislative process in the European Union. It is a single case study and as a case was chosen the negotiation of the regulation of the citizens' initiative. Various actors were involved in the negotiations, this thesis focuses on the main one - European Commission, European Parliament, the Council, interest organisations and national parliaments. The thesis presumed, that all actors will try to push through their interests based on their rational choice. This presumption was verified, although the success rate of the players varied a lot. As the most successful should be considered the European Parliament, who defended the interests of the individuals and the Council, which apparently represented the interests of the governments of the member states (especially in the issues of lowering the bureaucratic burden). The interest organisations showed their positions clearly, however the Commission did not take their positions much into account while preparing the draft regulation. The position of the national parliaments was different then presumed. Although the thesis expected them to be directly involved in the...

The rule-making power of the European Commission, dissertation Mgr. Mgr. Jiří Lenfeld, M.A.; supervisor: doc. JUDr. Richard Král, Ph.D., LL.M. Charles University, Faculty of Law, Department of European Law Prague, March 2013 The aim of the dissertation is to analyse the role of the European Commission in the legislative process of the European Union with the focus on procedures for adoption of legally binding Union acts. The European Commission is one of the main institutions of the European Union. It represents and upholds the interests of the EU as a whole and manages the day-to-day business of implementing EU policies. However, to limit the role of the European Commission to that of an executive body would be misleading. Its role in the EU institutional system is much broader than that. The European Commission is the most important legislator among the EU institutions and is also empowered with an almost exclusive power to submit drafts of EU legal acts. The rule-making power of the European Commission could be seen from two different points of view. In a narrow sense of the word it could be seen as a power conferred on the European Commission by the Treaties to propose drafts and to adopt EU legal acts implementing legally binding Union acts. However, the exercise of the rule-making power may...