Democracy at Stake: Multipositional Actors and Politicization in the EU Civil Society Field

The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) has the potential to significantly change the dynamics of interaction between EU institutions and civil society, which we conceive as a field. This article analyzes how the EU civil society field has been re-shaped by the ECI, the creation of networks and relationships between EU and national organizations and the effects of politicization. Using interview data and online documents from five ECI cases, we argue that an ECI can potentially transform the meta-field of civil society and democracy by altering what is at stake. We show that the five cases compete in a single field of civil society in the EU where incumbent organizations react to challenges. However, the field cannot be characterized in terms of a competition between insiders and outsiders. Rather, the ECI favours actors able to combine activism in different spheres - which we call multi-positional actors.