Participatory Democracy and Political Participation: Can Participatory Engineering Bring Citizens Back In?

by Zittel; Thomas

• ISBN13: 9780415371865
• ISBN10: 0415371864
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-11-29
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Democracies have developed a sense of crisis regarding levels of civic engagement and their own legitimacy, prompting government initiatives to reform the institutions and procedures of liberal democracy to provide more opportunities for political participation and bring citizens back in. Participatory Democracy and Political Participationprovides the first systematic evaluation of most visible and explicit efforts to engineer political participation via institutional reforms. Policies of democratic reform aim to increase the level of political participation by implementing institutions of participatory democracy. Such policies are debated in established democracies as means to counter downward trends in political participation. However, there is little empirical evidence whether this approach is able to actually increase or sustain political engagement without compromising other values of modern government. This new volume investigates this topical issue by integrating threedifferent research approaches: Theoretical analyses that aim to bridge the gap between the normative and the empirical level of participatory democracy. Comparative large case analyses that focus on the empirical link between participatory institutions and political behavior. Case studies on the structure, the politics and the behavioral effects of concrete reform initiatives within various established European democracies. The leading contributors analyze participatory institutions on the basis of empirical models of democracy such as direct democracy, civil society and responsive government and analyze the impact of these models on political behavior in general. Providing a detailed assessment of democratic reform, this book will be of strong interest to students and researchers of political theory, democracy and comparative politics.

Table of Contents

List of contributors	xi
Series editor's preface	xiv
Acknowledgments	xvi
Introduction: democratic reform and political participation	1
THOMAS ZITTEL AND DIETER FUCHS
PART I Democratic reform and political participation: two theoretical perspectives	7
1 Participatory democracy and political participation	9
THOMAS ZITTEL
2 Participatory, liberal and electronic democracy	29
DIETER FUCHS
PART II Democratic reform and political responsiveness	55
3 Political participation in party primaries: increase in quantity, decrease in quality?	57
GIDEON RAHAT AND REUVEN Y. HAZAN
4 The Scottish Parliament: a new era for participatory democracy?	73
PETER McLAVERTY AND SUE MORRIS
PART III Democratic reform and direct democracy	89
5 The effects of direct democracy and city size on political participation: the Swiss case	91
SIMONE BAGLIONI
6 Direct democracy and political participation from a cross-national perspective	107
SILVANO MOECKLI
PART IV Democratic reform and civil society	125
7 Explaining low participation rates: collective action and the "concerned unmobilized"	127
GRANT JORDAN AND WILLIAM A. MALONEY
8 Trust and governance: how culture and economics constrain the state	152
ERIC M. USLANER
9 Workplace democracy: turning workers into citizens?	167
NEIL CARTER
PART V Democratic reform and local government	185
10 Mobilizing for participatory democracy? The case of democracy policy in Sweden	187
STIG MONTIN
11 Democratic renewal in local government? Top-down strategies for bottom-up involvement	202
JACOB AARS
Conclusion: can participatory engineering bring citizens back in?	223
THOMAS ZITTEL
Index	229