In this world, soft law and new policy instruments appeared to flourish. Attempts to involve representatives of civil society in EU decision making were seen as promising avenues to deal with the so-called ‘democratic deficit’ (Smisman, 2006; Steffek et al., 2007), and although the White Paper on Governance itself had a limited impact, new policy instruments carried the promise of making the EU more transparent and more participatory. Particular attention was directed towards networked instruments and networks, which were emblematic of the new approach (see, for example, Jordan and Schout, 2006).