Rethinking Legislative Quality in the European Union: A Collective Intelligence Approach to Supranational Lawmaking

Legislative quality is central to good governance, yet legal scholarship has devoted comparatively limited attention to the criteria by which legislation can be assessed. This thesis develops a framework for evaluating legislative quality and investigates the potential of Crowdlaw to improve law-making within the European Union. The framework brings together three clusters of values: effectiveness, efficiency and efficacy; transparency; and participation. On this basis, the thesis critically analyses Crowdlaw as a form of democratic innovation that draws on collective intelligence and technology-enabled citizen participation to enhance the quality and legitimacy of policy-making and legislative processes. It examines two conceptual ambiguities in the existing literature, the meaning of the “crowd” and the role of technology, and proposes a more precise understanding of these constitutive elements. The analysis then turns to the European Union, assessing its participatory framework and approach to legislative quality. It considers how Crowdlaw might complement existing mechanisms, improve legislative processes and contribute to addressing persistent legitimacy challenges. The thesis concludes that Crowdlaw’s capacity to enhance legislative quality depends on the design and implementation of participatory processes. Although neither citizen participation nor technology necessarily produces better legislation, their carefully structured integration offers opportunities to strengthen the quality and legitimacy of EU law-making.