Democracy and Interest Group Studies in the EU: Towards a Sociological Research Agenda

The question of political participation beyond elections is a recurrent subject in contemporary political life. Citizens, and even more so, economic and public interest groups demand to be heard by political actors, and to participate closely in decision making processes. This demand for participatory democracy has become of interest for the international and the European realm since the beginning of the 1990. <br />The emergence of a participatory norm has, however, a very important influence on the strategies, the power and the organisational structures of the non-state actors associated at the policy making processes in the name of the participatory democracy. The aim of this contribution is to develop a conceptual and methodological framework based on sociological approaches and thus to propose some avenues for further research. These should allow for a detailed analysis of the influence of the participatory turn on the organisational structures of non-governmental actors and the actors working inside these structures