Non-profit associations are usually democratically organized, and this feature plays a legitimizing role for the public support to associations. This article examines which characteristics at country level, organizational level and individual level can explain variations with regard to member engagement in the association democracy in sports clubs in Europe. The statistical analyses use data on 12,755 members from 642 sports clubs in ten European countries. The findings show that the majority of the members in sports clubs participate in the association democracy, but the level and form of engagement varies considerably. At the country level, no link between the democratic strength and quality of the countries on the one hand and member engagement on the other could be identified. Instead, characteristics at the organizational and individual level were found to be relevant. More concretely, (1) the size of the sports club, (2) the socioeconomic background of the members (gender, age and education), and (3) the way in which the members are involved in and affiliated to the club (engaged in voluntary work, participating in social activities, etc.) were found to be significantly correlated with the engagement of members in the association democracy.

The Great Recession that hit the world in 2008 functioned as a critical juncture, nurturing socioeconomic but also political transformations. Some of the political developments during the crisis have challenged civil, political and social rights, triggering a Great Regression. In the geographical areas that have been hardest hit by the financial crisis, particularly in the European periphery, waves of protest have, however, challenged the austerity policies adopted by national governments under heavy pressure from lending institutions including the European Central Bank, the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund. This has put democracy under stress, but also triggered at some capacity for innovation. While some have considered the multiple crises as proof that governments need more technical expertise, others have blamed an “econocracy” that has taken over political decisions while pretending they are not political. Siding with this second vision, I will suggest in these notes that what we need is more, rather than less participation in democracy. I develop my argument by summarising some recent reflections in the social sciences on the challenges that the financial crisis poses to democracy, and the ways to address those challenges.

Empirical literature regarding which actors support the most participatory democracy is surprisingly scarce. Discussing the core ideological features of populist and post-materialist-centred parties, we expect that these parties emphasise participatory democracy more than their competitors. Additionally, populist parties should embody a monist demand for greater participatory democracy, while post-materialist-centred (PMC) parties should advocate a pluralist understanding of it. Drawing on party electoral manifestos, we verify these assumptions in several national elections across Europe. Our findings show mixed support for the theoretical expectations. Both post-materialist and populist parties support participatory democracy more than other parties, and their principles diverge. More precisely, our data confirm that PMC parties advocate a pluralist understanding of participatory democracy. Yet populist parties show a fuzzier picture. While populist radical right parties exhibit a monist profile, radical left populist parties are much more in line with post-materialist arguments.

There is growing concern among democracy scholars that participatory innovations pose a depoliticizing threat to democracy. This article tackles this concern by providing a more nuanced understanding of how politicization and depoliticization take shape in participatory initiatives. Based on ethnographic research on participatory projects with marginalized people who are invited to act as experiential experts, the article examines how actors limit and open up possibilities to participate. By focusing on struggles concerning the definition of expertise, the article identifies a threefold character of politicization as a practice within participatory innovations. It involves (1) illuminating the boundaries that define the actors’ possibilities; (2) making a connection between these boundaries and specific value bases; and (3) imagining an alternative normative basis for participation.

This paper emphasizes the importance of participative governance in the study of social enterprise. Furthermore, it argues that social enterprise must be analyzed through a multi-dimensional perspective. The EMES approach is based on three dimensions emphasizing the social, economic, and political dimension, while many Anglo-American definitions tend to use a one-dimensional spectrum framework. The latter often see social enterprise as a simple phenomenon that can be arranged along a continuum, ranging from economic to social, where more of one means less of the other. However, this fails to acknowledge the multi-disciplinary nature of social enterprise. Scholars inspired by the EMES approach should devote greater attention to exploring the interactive and interrelated nature of the three dimensions of social enterprise, especially the governance dimension.

Amidst a global turn towards authoritarianism and populism, there are few contemporary examples of state-led democratization. This article discusses how Uruguay's Frente Amplio (FA) party has drawn on a unique national democratic cultural heritage to encourage a coupling of participatory and representative institutions in “a politics of closeness.” The FA has reinvigorated Batllismo, a discourse associated with social justice, civic republicanism, and the rise of Uruguayan social democracy in the early twentieth century. At the same time, the FA's emphasis on egalitarian participation is inspired by the thought of Uruguay's independence hero José Artigas. I argue that the cross-weave of party and movement, and of democratic citizenship and national heritage, encourages the emergence of new figures of the citizen and new permutations for connecting citizens with representative institutions. The FA's “politics of closeness” is an example of how state-driven democratization remains possible in an age described by some as “post-democratic.”

Carole Pateman reflects on her fifty years of scholarship in conversation with Graham Smith. The discussion focuses particular attention on Pateman's work on participatory democracy and considers her contributions to debates on political obligation, feminism, basic income, and deliberative democracy.

Research on civic associations blurs an important distinction between the unfunded, informal, ongoing associations that theorists like de Tocqueville described versus current participatory democracy projects that are funded by the state and large nongovernmental organizations, are open to all, and are usually short-term. Based on a long-term ethnography of youth programs in the United States, this paper shows that entities like these, which participants and researchers alike often called “volunteer” or “civic” groups, operate very differently from traditional civic groups. The ethnography systematically details prevalent tensions that actors face when they try to cultivate the civic spirit in these increasingly typical organizations.

The legacy of Hugo Chavez is contentious. Some lament the deterioration of Venezuelan democracy from one of Latin America's most stable political systems to a populist authoritarian regime. Others celebrate Chavez's participatory project of institutionalizing structures for community-driven development, redistributing oil wealth through welfare policies, and creating a political party closely linked to mass movements. This article provides an alternative assessment of Venezuela's democratic quality by drawing on deliberative democratic theory. I argue that Chavez's participatory project is incomplete because it fails to create structures for deliberative politics. Without these mechanisms, Venezuela remains vulnerable to crises brought about by “uncivil action,” such as military coups and violent protests, making deliberation an important component in averting crises in democratizing polities.

At both the multilateral and regional levels, there have been efforts to address the democratic deficit in trade negotiations. One such example is the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific group of countries where civil society participation was enshrined in the Cotonou Agreement. Yet, the CARIFORUM–EU EPA attracted much criticism from civil society. The paper argues that civil society failed to affect the outcome of the EPA because they participated in the process within a deliberative democratic framework which did not allow for emancipation or a challenge to global economic power and structural considerations in the negotiations; neither did it achieve citizen empowerment and ownership. We advocate the practice of participatory democracy in trade policy decision making—an ideal space for citizen participation—the former holding greater promise for influencing the trade policy agenda.

In an era when democracy is claimed to be in crisis, citizens are portrayed as increasingly distrustful of politicians and political institutions, and change, if any, is expected to be coming from extra-institutional spaces, Albert Dzur invites us to seek and find the seeds of democratic change within the existing institutions of representative democracy. Dzur’s work captures the difference democratic professionals can make in these spaces and tells us about the fresh approach they bring to their everyday routines in schools, community centers, government agencies, and even prisons. What links democratic professionals in different institutions is their aspiration to create power-sharing arrangements and collaborative thinking skills in places that are usually characterized as hierarchical and non-participatory. Dzur explains how democratic professionals transform the way institutions function and find solutions to collective problems. Yet such transformative practices often elude the attention of democratic theorists as they fall outside of the established notions of democracy and democratic change. The following interview focuses on the relationship between democratic theory and practice, the difference between social movement actors and democratic professionals, and the challenges of bringing democratic change and sustaining it in existing institutions, organizations and work places.

While normative theories of participatory democracy and practical experiences of participatory research share a common democratic commitment, the two fields have emerged and to date exist in isolation from each other. This article bridges this divide and asks what participatory democracy and participatory research can learn from one another. It argues that participatory democracy can learn how to realize its own democratic ideals within its research practice and participatory research can deepen its normative commitment by connecting its practices to a larger participatory vision. The article illustrates this by engaging with three examples in which participatory democracy researchers conduct participatory research projects. It finally reflects critically on how the shared participatory commitments of both fields can be realized within the neoliberal university embedded in competitive market economies.

This Article discusses the emerging strategic litigation practice in the European Union through the lens of participatory democracy. After situating such a practice both historically and conceptually within the specificities of the EU legal order, it explores whether and the extent to which strategic litigation, understood as an additional form of participation in the Union’s democratic life, may contribute to EU participatory democracy and under which conditions. It unveils that while strategic litigation carries the potential to enhance democratic participation in the EU, it also risks—due to limited judicial literacy and unequal access to justice—empowering those already powerful. For strategic litigation to unleash its democratic potential at scale, EU courts must—as required by the “Provisions on Democratic Principles” of the Treaty of Lisbon—ensure a participatory enabling environment capable of proactively catalyzing and facilitating the ability of ordinary citizens—as well as diffuse, under-resourced and traditionally overlooked groups—to be better able to contribute to the Union’s democratic life. Ultimately, no legal order worth of its name should rely on the heroism of its citizens and residents to keep its legal system in check.

Canada is regarded as an early adopter of democratic innovations, including the high-profile BC Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. To what extent has Canada maintained this trajectory? We examine this in the context of breadth and depth by examining trends in adoption over time across Canada and case-level adoption according to the dimensions of influence and temporality. While case studies of Canadian democratic innovations exist, these do not provide analytical capacity to understand trends in the breadth of adoption; we thus contribute a novel dataset of democratic innovations in Canada from 2000 to 2020. To analyze the depth of adoption, we present a two-by-three framework, which we apply to interpret our dataset of Canadian democratic innovations. We find that while there is an increase in the total number of democratic innovations, a low quantity is observed that exhibits high influence and permanence.

This article discusses reproductionist perspectives that assume there is little local participatory institutions can do to address the underrepresentation and the domination of some social groups. While there is also empirical basis to be skeptical, the evidence suggests that, occasionally, the reproduction of class inequalities can be counteracted. This encourages us to consider the conditions that favor greater participation of working-class, economically and culturally disadvantaged people. Comparing evidence from various studies in a range of countries, the article argues that certain contextual factors and inclusion tools produce higher rates of mobilization and more egalitarian deliberations. Specifically, the article focuses on the effects of three conditions: a) special mobilization efforts; b) design choices and inclusion tools; and c) the broadening of the political subject through cultural mobilization. As well as reflecting on the shortcomings of these factors, a new research agenda for social equality in participation is also proposed.