Recasting the role of citizens in foreign and security policy? Democratic innovations and changing patterns of interaction between European executives and citizens

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Foreign and security policy issues have increasingly been influencing domestic politics and the daily life of citizens in European countries. Citizens have become more engaged in political issues with a global dimension. The most obvious phenomenon are protests related to repercussions of globalisation. However, politicians and members of national executives in Europe have also started to actively involve citizens in policy- and decision-making processes in the field of foreign and security policy (FSP). For the last couple of years, some governments in European countries, as well as international organisations such as the European Union and the United Nations, have been initiating dialogue and participation processes, aiming at a larger inclusion of civic organisations, scientific experts and, remarkably, ordinary citizens in FSP.The proposed project seeks to investigate this change of the role citizens have in the field of FSP and, more specifically, how and why national governments introduce so-called “democratic innovations” (DIs) to this policy field, usually considered as being dominated by the executive. The project assumes that understandings of how relations between the executive and citizens should be organised, as held by ministerial elites in FSP, have changed in some countries during the last decade. They vary depending on national context and shape how elites organise and potentially reshape actual interactions with citizens in FSP. These changes of the citizens’ role also have ramifications for the politics in FSP, notably the intra- and inter-ministerial processes of policy- and decision-making as well as relations between the executive and legislative in this policy field in Europe. The project seeks to empirically map and theoretically conceptualise democratic innovations in FSP by comparing the cases of France, Germany, Poland, and the UK. All four countries are leading powers in European foreign and security politics, and thus particularly relevant for how executive-citizens relations are organised in the field of FSP. At the same time, they differ significantly in how they organise executive-citizens interactions in the form of various DIs. The analysis of DIs covers the time span of 2010-2023 and will employ methods of participant observation, expert interviews, document analysis, and analysis of digital participation formats.