@article{2025:grbe:cocreatin,
title = {Co-creating Europe-related activities. The role of German local governments in bottom-up mobilisation},
year = {2025},
note = {In the process of Europeanisation, the local level takes an
intermediary position between citizens and the European level. A
special feature of local authorities’ European involvement is that
many local Europe-related activities are developed and implemented not
only for citizens, but to a considerable extent by them or in
cooperation between civil society organisations and municipal actors.
The paper presents fresh data from a research project focusing on the
German case to examine the local level’s role in the European
multi-level-governance system. We ask in this paper: How do civil
society actors and municipalities interact in organising
Europe-related bottom-up activities and what are the driving motives
and ideas for these activities? In a first step, we investigate the
variety of bottom-up mobilisation found at the local level and the
role of local actors – city administrations, civil society
associations and others – in creating opportunities for citizen
engagement. In a second step, we trace forms of co-creation, i.e.
local civil society involvement in municipal European policy-making,
across the four dimensions of Europeanization. Third, we typologize
the different local networks based on the type of underlying relation.
In summary, Europe-related bottom-up mobilisation takes place through
different citizen-oriented activities, often organised and implemented
in local networks. The motives for this engagement are mainly based on
a normative understanding of Europe as an idea, encompassing notions
of European identity and society.},
journal = {Culture, Practice & Europeanization},
pages = {3--26},
author = {Gröbe, Benjamin and Grohs, Stephan and Reiter, Renate and Riese, Dorothee and Lenhart, Simon},
volume = {10},
number = {1}
}