Deliberative democracy and law-making in the digital era

This paper deals with codification and institutionalization of deliberativedemocracy among member states and EU institutions in the scope of democraticcohesion in the digital era. The general approach is based on the premise thatinnovations in deliberative democracy triggered by digitalization and newtechnologies need to be institutionalized in the legal systems of member statesaccording to a set of legal standards that stem from the EU acquis in order to maintaindemocratic cohesion in the law-making process. The main objective of this paper is toanalyse the necessity of institutionalizing deliberative democracy processes in theframework of EU democracies. The hypothesis is that codification andinstitutionalization of deliberative democracy is necessary to preserve democraticcohesion among EU member states and also to guarantee citizens ́ entitlements. As formethodology, data collection and data analysis constitute the bulk of the research. Datacollection relies on literature, and EU legislation. Data analysis is based on legalreasoning, mainly. The conclusion is that citizens’ participation needs to be securedand guaranteed by means of a set of core principles base on the EU acquis in order topreserve democratic cohesion among member states. Otherwise, no rights areconferred to citizens and deliberative processes operate at the discretion of publicauthorities.