Aliénor Ballangé
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Aliénor Ballangé received her Ph.D. in political theory from Sciences Po Paris (2018) with a thesis on the democratic theory of European integration. Her research was awarded two dissertation prizes (Prix de la Chancellerie des Universités de Paris and Prix de l'Association française des études européennes). Between 2023 and 2024, she was a Deakin Fellow at the University of Oxford. She has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Normative Orders Center at the University of Frankfurt since 2020.
Her research consists in articulating European studies, democratic theory and critical theory in order to renew studies on the crisis of representative democracy in the EU. Her work has been published in international journals such as Res Publica, Politique européenne, Raisons Politiques, French Politics.
In September 2025, Aliénor Ballangé joins the Paris IAS for a ten-month research fellowship. She holds the "Major Changes" Chair, created in collaboration with Sorbonne Université, on the theme of Europe and democracy.
Research topics
Democratic theory; European studies; participatory and deliberative democracy; trust.
Democratizing Participation in the EU. A Citizen-centered Approach to European Citizens’ Assemblies
The proliferation of participatory and deliberative mechanisms such as citizens' assemblies (CAs) has recently generated considerable enthusiasm among scholars and public officials. However, little research has addressed a central question: What do citizens expect and gain from participating in CAs? Ignoring this question risks creating counterfactual bubbles that lack sustainable popular support. How to theorize the shift from the traditional elite-centered approach to CAs to one based on citizens' needs, expectations, and preferences? How can EU citizens be given an empowered role in discussing and co-designing European CAs, given the specific challenges that arise at the European level? How to connect the expectations of randomly selected citizens gathered in participatory "bubbles" with the expectations of 438 million Europeans? Through a pioneering citizen-centered approach to CAs, this project aims to address these questions by analyzing citizens' assemblies organized at the EU level since the early 2020s.
Key publications
Aliénor Ballangé. La démocratie communautaire. Généalogie critique de l'Union européenne, Paris, Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2022.
Aliénor Ballangé. “Why Europe Does Not Need a Constitution? On the Limits of Constituent Power as a Tool for Democratization”. Res Publica, 28/4: 655-672, 2022.
Aliénor Ballangé. “Good governance or post-democracy? The eunomic rationality of European integration”. Politique Européenne, 72/2: 68-92, 2021.
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