Consulting with the Citizens : An Introductory Study on Citizen Participation in the European Commission ́s Online Consultations

Abstract: For a long time the citizen participation in the European Commission Online Consultations have been low and quite insignificant. This came to an abrupt change during 2018, with the consultation on Summertime arrangements bringing out over four million citizens to participate and it is now clear that the citizen impact on consultations are not something to overlook. So, who participates in the online consultations? It is assumed that biases generated through the voluntarily participation of the Online Consultations (OC) will provide discrepancies between the participants in OC:s compared to the EU population in general. The aim of the study is to examine how individual participation in OC:s differs based on the complexity of the topic and the Member State affiliation of the citizen. The study is tested based on four hypotheses predicting how possible biases might take place. The hypotheses are tested by an quantitative study of the EU online consultations published on the “Your voice in Europe” website. The results indicate that participation differs between different regions, with the eastern Member States participating to a lower degree. Furthermore, the study indicates that it exists a negative covariance between positive EU policy opinions and participation per Member State. This is believed to be caused by a difference in diversity of the sample that participates. The study also examines how the technical complexity of the consultations affects political participation among citizens. This part of the study did not generate any clear results.