The Challenge of Citizen Participation to Democracy

Abstract: The paper starts from the observation that the forms of citizen participation have changed considerably from what could be observed in the 1950s and 1960s. Election turn-outs are falling, grass-roots activities of citizens are on the rise and political commentaries in different forms are proliferating on the Internet. How can we conceptualise modern democratic systems and forms of participation? How helpful is democracy theory for this endeavour? The paper revisits classic and post-modern models of democracy and makes an effort to conceptualise and classify modern practices of citizen participation on the basis of categories derived from democracy theory. Democracy theory should also be of help in providing an answer to the question of how democratic instruments of interactive governance actually are. Criteria for the evaluation of these instruments and their impact on policy-making will be derived from theorizing on democracy and some proposals will be made for an operationalisation of these criteria.;