Unlock Local Forces and Improve Legitimacy: A Decision Making Scheme in the European Union Towards Environmental Change

Abstract

This article develops an innovative scheme, beyond the existing decision making system, towards a participative and deliberative approach to environmental policies in the European Union. It adopts a bottom‐up approach whereby environmental priorities reach the European level directly from the local networking process and engagement. Indeed, there is a gap in the literature regarding conceptual approaches based on decision making schemes that can unlock local forces towards environmental change. By using a multi‐criteria method, two scenarios (direct democratic and pre‐defined bottom‐up) of social‐network modeling are created. Both scenarios aim to promote the effective use of social networks through aggregation functions to combine the responses of local stakeholders. This paper contributes to the academic debate of the interaction between public engagement and environmental policies. It does not advocate that the debate in political level can be replaced by math‐based decision making schemes but the use of them can enrich political discussions.