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» NEW! » Mäkinen - Scales of participation and multi-scalar citizenship

Mäkinen, K. (2021). Scales of participation and multi-scalar citizenship in EU participatory governance. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 39 (5): 1011–1029.

The author claims that criticisms of what is perceived as the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’ lead to questioning its legitimacy. This indicates the importance of citizenship and participation in the challenges the EU faces today. Although not devoted specifically to cultural policy issues, the article is important to read for cultural policy makers. It contributes to the current discussions on the shifting frameworks of participation and citizenship through empirical research into the EU’s participatory governance in a related field. 
The article presents the results of empirical research on how participation is framed in terms of scale and how these scalar framings are used to formulate citizenship in selected projects funded by the EU programmes on citizenship and culture. This microlevel analysis yielded new insights into the politics of scale in the EU’s multilevel participatory governance. These insights are useful in different policy contexts, including cultural policy.
Frame analysis of the texts produced in the researched EU projects indicates how the combination of European and local scales is articulated to shape and regulate participation, citizenship and the EU as a community. The article introduces a new concept, Euro-local scale, to make sense of this re-hierarchisation of scales in the EU’s participatory governance.