CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Goranova, Liliya |
|---|---|
| Title | Soft Governance and Democratic Deficit: Lessons from the Open Method of Coordination in Bulgaria |
| Summary | The Open Method of Coordination (OMC) has attracted considerable scholarly attention ever since its introduction. Since the method aims at improving the democratic quality of the process of policy-making in the European Union, there are normative expectations attached to its performance in that respect. This paper aims at establishing whether the OMC covers these expectations nowadays by analyzing its implementation in one of the new member states, Bulgaria. In order to achieve this, the present paper uses a methodological framework that derives criteria for assessment from theories on liberal and deliberative democracy. The framework was first used in the initial years of implementation of the method for analyzing its performance in two old member states, France and Germany. By using the same methodology the present paper traces the evolution of the OMC and whether there is a significant difference in its democratic quality more than a decade after its introduction. The findings are discouraging, as the case of Bulgaria proves little difference with those of Germany and France, where the democratic benchmarks derived from the methodological framework were not met. Thus, by way of conclusion, this paper briefly outlines opportunities for improvement on the OMC framework. |
| Supervisor | Balazs, Peter |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/goranova_liliya.pdf |
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