What democracy for Europe? Proceedings from the RECON midterm conference

The RECON project has reached halfway in its project period, and on this occasion the RECON midterm conference was held in October 2009 in Prague. The event gathered some 100 researchers as well as policy makers, civil society actors and representatives from the general public to discuss the project’s focus on the future of democracy in Europe. The conference was opened by EU Commissioner Vladimír Špidla, and a number of external researchers attended the conference and contributed with critical project feedback.

The event successfully accommodated for constructive discussions on the theoretical models underlying the project and taking stock of RECON’s research halfway through the project. Moreover, it provided an opportunity for all RECON researchers to present ongoing projects and preliminary research results within as well as across work packages. The report contains the proceedings from RECON’s Midterm Conference on 9-10 October 2009 in Prague. The first conference day was dedicated to three keynote speeches and prepared comments on each of the three RECON models. This was followed up by three roundtable panel debates, which allowed for more in-depth discussions on the models and on preliminary findings from the project. In this report we have collected the papers and comments from the first day of the conference.