This doctoral thesis examines the role and influence of civil society organisations in European multilevel governance structures. Therefore the policy field of sustainability is chosen to analyse how and if civil society organisations can take part in European decision making processes. The case study focuses on the participation process for the organised civil society during the negotiations for the European Constitution by analysing the conventions forum as a new and electronically based participation-channel. Background of the examination are the reforms of the European Commission under the presidency of Romano Prodi, in office from 1999 to 2004; with a focus on the European Governance Reform introduced basically by the Commissions White Paper on Governance in the year 2001. The theoretical background of the study is the theory of ecological communication by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann to reflect the problems and chances for societal communication processes in functional differentiated societies. The specific role organisations can play to transform and communicate relevant information and alternative knowledge requests innovative governance structures which are able to improve the quality of societal communication and which are necessary to find generally accepted solutions for problems with supra-national character. The specific role of civil society organisations for societal- and systemic integration is underlined by Montesquieus theory of secondary powers (pouvoirs intermédiaires) and leads to a differentiated understanding of NGOs in processes of political communication.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DUETT/oai:DUETT:duett-04152006-131822 |
| Date | 19 April 2006 |
| Creators | Schaefer, Jürgen |
| Contributors | Prof. Dr. Wilfried Loth, Prof. (em.) Dr. Eckart Pankoke |
| Publisher | Gerhard-Mercator-Universitaet Duisburg |
| Source Sets | Dissertations and other Documents of the Gerhard-Mercator-University Duisburg |
| Language | German |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf, text/html |
| Source | http://www.ub.uni-duisburg.de/ETD-db/theses/available/duett-04152006-131822/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. Hiermit erteile ich der Universitaet Duisburg das nicht-ausschliessliche Recht unter den unten angegebenen Bedingungen, meine Dissertation, Staatsexamens- oder Diplomarbeit, meinen Forschungs- oder Projektbericht zu veroeffentlichen und zu archivieren. Ich behalte das Urheberrecht und das Recht das Dokument zu veroeffentlichen und in anderen Arbeiten weiterzuverwenden. |
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