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The concept of ‘civil society’ has been rediscovered in contemporary discourses concerning the relationship between democracy and governance. This paper analyses this rediscovery in the more specific context of the European Commission’s 2001 White Paper on European Governance. However, processes of transnationalisation, governmentalisation and autonomisation may compromise much of the potential of ‘European civil society’ as an intermediating sphere of social action. By reinforcing these processes, the White Paper undermines the normative claims made for a civil society premised upon the voluntary nature of its associative forms and its distinctive open, communicative and deliberative rationality.
