Title: Introduction: From Bottom-up and Top-down Towards Multi-level Governance in Europe
Abstract: Civil society is now at the core of EU thinking on bridging the 'democratic deficit'. 2The European Commission increasingly refers to civil society and social capital in order to promote good governance in terms of democracy, accountability and efficiency.As Saurugger (2007: 388) reminds us, organised civil society is attractive to policy makers because it is a 'product of the right of free association' and these bodies are primarily seen 'as bottom-up, citizen-initiated phenomena, part of the voluntary process of people's coming together to govern themselves'.Civil society is seen as comprising a vast number of associations such as interest groups, voluntary associations, social movements, social movement organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), clubs, political initiatives, foundations and so on.At the EU level, many of these associations are large; more crucially however, they are also 'supposed' to be encompassing and representative, with grassroots involvement and an accountable leadership (Saurugger, 2007: 388).The EU believes that such a 'civil society' could and should play a major role in increasing the density, diversity, breadth and