Participatory Democracy

Historical Background

The historical background of the current popularity of the mostly government-initiated practices of participatory democracy can be traced back to the 1990s. Decreasing electoral turnouts, in particular at the local level, triggered many public authorities to counteract the apparently decreasing citizens' trust in government and traditional politics. Local politicians perceived a legitimacy crisis of local government. New forms of political participation had to be offered to the more self-confident citizens. It was also acknowledged that modern citizens possessed valuable local knowledge and experience expertise, which should be mobilized to improve the quality of public policies.

Moreover, representative democracy suffers from several limits and failures. First, in modern network societies, a decentering of collective decision making has taken place. Politics has been relocated to networks of (semi) public agencies, spanning different levels of government, (semi) private organizations, civil societies, and companies. This development has been designated by the concept of governance, which refers to the management of interaction and cooperation in networks. Governance brings about less formal modes of decision making that become uncoupled from the official institutions of representative democracy. The centrality of the representative democratic institutions has become eroded, and this also means that other channels have to be created for effective citizens' input in collective decision making. Second, there is a growing distance between the lifeworld of citizens and the system of representative democracy, resulting in feelings of alienation of voters toward politicians and voter apathy. There seems to be a severe lack of responsiveness of political decision making toward the citizens' wishes and concerns. An inherent feature of representative democracy, at least in multiparty systems, is the need of making compromises between the political parties, which are going to form the administration. Moreover, during incumbency new issues will come up, which cannot be foreseen in these election programs and were not discussed during the election period. If the citizens perceive these new issues as important, other forms of decision making providing for direct citizens' participation should be considered.

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