Department of Political Sciencest

The European Citizens’ Initiative was introduced by the art. 11 of the Treaty of Lisbon and it allows one million EU citizens to participate in the development of EU policies, by calling on the European Commission to make a legislative proposal.On November 1st 2013 was the deadline for the first Eci; only three of them hit the hurdle of one million statements
of support. The Eci is an important tool of participatory democracy but at the moment it shows some crucial problems. Moving from the experience of this first year of life the paper will focus on theoretical and practical issues that are boosting to reform this tool in order to increase its potentiality.

Pressure groups have always been playing a crucial role in the European decision making processes. This role on the one hand have been analyzed in term of traditional lobbying, on the other hand the involvement of civil society in the European decision making processes looks at the model of participative democracy, which the European Commission and the European Economic and Social Committee
often refer to in the official documents. Moving form these topics some questions arise: where is the border between lobbying and the participation of civil society to the decision making processes? Is the European Union moving towards a participative democracy model?

In the last decades, law and economy, politics and communication have started a redefinition of the traditional category of collective action grounded on the dichotomy public/private. We assist at the birth of “new public spaces”, that go beyond the State, even if they are “public” in a different meaning. They place along the ideal line that links together the notion of common goods and a new way to interpret the citizenship. The article focuses on the analysis of this trend and try to reconstruct the socio-cultural origins.

The relationship between European citizenship and national one is since the first formulation the main topic of the debate on its statute. At the present time, the short circuit between European citizenship and national one produces differentiated effects: the freedom that member States have to assess the criteria for the acquisition of citizenship produces a contrast between 'citizens non-resident' and 'non-citizens resident'.

Re-read Weber and Pareto. Reason and sensibility in social action theory
Social action theory constitutes an absolute novelty in the panorama of
sociology between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th
century. It marks the recovery of the role of the subject (social actor)
in the context of social processes and Vilfredo Pareto and Max Weber
are two of his greatest exponents. Starting from the foundations of the
theory of social action, the paper focuses on the relationship between
emotions and rational action.

The relationship between European citizenship and national one is since the first formulation the main topic of the debate on its statute. At the present time, the short circuit between European citizenship and national one produces differentiated effects: the freedom that member States have to assess the criteria for the acquisition of citizenship produces a contrast between ‘citizens non-resident’ and ‘non-citizens resident’.