One of the principal concerns of European political scientists in recent years has been the allegedly worsening functioning of democracy on the continent. At the center of this discussion are arguments stressing that the deepening of the European integration process without actually democratizing the supranational institutions is exacerbating the already painful and dangerous democratic crisis present at the national level in many European countries. Literature on the European Union’s democratic deficit gained momentum several years ago, with a number of political and scientific solutions being proposed. As the EU’s democratic deficit is caused in part by the deficient input legitimacy and unsatisfactory participation of citizens in the process of legitimizing the EU polity and its policies, the remedy seemed to be straightforward: bringing citizens closer to the EU and its political process. As a result, the principle of participatory democracy became fashionable in the reflections of both normative political theorists and practitioners in the EU and found its way to the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe and then, after its rejection, to the Lisbon Treaty.

De-Mystification of Participatory Democracy, by Beate Kohler-Koch and Christine Quittkat with additional contributions by Vanessa Buth and Christina Altides, offers a timely and provocative test of these offered solutions. The authors take a critical stance in their analysis of the ways in which civil society organizations (CSOs) contribute in reality to combating the EU’s democratic deficit. They focus on a single EU institution—the European Commission (EC)—which so far has the greatest tradition in developing dialogue with citizens. The book is dense and not easy to follow as this is a collaborative work (and the chapters are written by various authors and in different styles), but rewarding for the patient reader, as the arguments are convincing and revealing and the conclusions are challenging for every student of European integration.

The book starts with a presentation of the concept of participatory democracy at the EU level, locating it in the context of political theorists’ debates in recent years. Secondly, Kohler-Koch analyses how the instruments of participatory democracy in the EU were introduced to the EU treaties and legislation. Her prime argument is that there is a certain simplification hidden in the way the principle of participatory democracy meant solving the democratic deficit in the EU as introduced into treaties. This is because the position of civil society and its organizations was drastically limited in the introduced constitutional solutions, and as Kohler-Koch stresses, “rhetoric and practice were worlds apart” (p. 32) and the principle of participatory democracy “was not filled with concrete substance” (p. 33).

The authors decide that “since the promise of participatory democracy is in reality only a promise of participatory governance and thus deals essentially with consultations” (p. 38), this becomes exactly the focus on the empirical part of the book. At first, the authors analyze the EC consultation regimes (Chapter 3) as developed over time and improved. They then go on to provide an in-depth analysis of the daily practice of two Directorates General of the EC (Chapter 4). The importance of this empirical analysis is that they offer a thorough analysis of two policy areas over time instead of focusing on selected case studies such as controversial directives, and as a result they are able to paint a fuller picture of the way that the consultations work in reality and the scope of nongovernmental organizations’ participation.

Online consultations—part of the newly established system of the EC’s consultation regime—receive special attention. Christine Quittkat (in Chapter 5) provides a detailed analysis of this new instrument, which is supposed to make it easier, more accessible, and cheaper for citizens and their organizations to communicate with the EC. These instruments also have profound benefits for the EC, and ultimately are meant to enhance transparency. In assessing the functioning of this new instrument, Quittkat uses interesting indicators that allow analysis of the access opportunities for actors to use the instrument, as well as how transparent and how inclusive the procedure is. The results confirm that the online consultations are indeed contributing to a bigger and more open regime of consultations, as well as leveling the main financial obstacles to participation. In contrast to the other forms of consultation, the online format increases plurality of represented interest (again low costs and easy access). However, there are still obstacles for the principle of representation. Actors based in the older EU member states are more active, as are economic-interest-oriented actors (as visible and established in the previous forms of consultations).

Assessing the participatory governance requires that one look not only at how the process is organized at the European level but also at how citizens are involved. The authors decided to look at two aspects. Firstly, they analyze how truly connected to the grassroots level are those NGOs that utilize the instruments of participatory democracy in the EU. The analysis focuses on those NGOs that perceive themselves as the representation of the general interests of citizens and are gathered in the Civil Society Contact Group. The central argument in this part of book is that there is a growing professionalization of actors active on the EU level, and this happens at the expense of maintaining links with the grassroots level. The EC is looking for greater legitimization of its policymaking, and therefore acts as a midwife for European associations. However, it is rarely involved in solving the growing tensions between the European level and the national or regional ones.

Secondly, the assessment of the impact of the CSOs’ activities at the European level would not be complete without looking at how they communicate with citizens and how they play the controlling role in the policymaking process. The analysis reveals (in Chapter 7) that only to a limited extent do CSOs act as transmission belts between their members or citizens in general, both through their own communication platforms such as Websites and through media. As a result, citizens receive very little information about the consultation process in the EU from their representatives, and the media are not interested in reporting about it either.

This book powerfully demonstrates through systematic investigation that the remedy for combating the democratic deficit and remoteness of citizens from EU politics still needs further improvements. The picture drawn by the authors is more than sobering, and particularly so for political theorists. Firstly, individual citizens who use the instruments of participatory democracy, especially consultations, are scant in number and also not representative of European society. Secondly, the role of a transmission belt between the grassroots level and European institutions is then fulfilled by NGOs representing citizens. However, the way these mechanisms function is far from ideal either, and only partially contribute to the democratizing of the EU. If we agree that there is a democratic deficit in the EU, then this book proves that the existing solutions—even if there are efforts, targeted financial aid, and progress in bringing citizens closer to the EU—require further reflection by both theorists and practitioners.