| dc.description | Globalisation has generated a need for the renewal of local democracy and
experiments in democratic innovation at the local level. While city governments may
be constrained by the forces of globalism they are also active in developing strategies
to improve democracy and, therefore, the local level has become a splendid laboratory
of democratic innovations. In this context, civic engagement in local policies
appears as a vital element of local governance aimed at both a relegitimation of the
local democratic process and the improvement of efficiency. Citizens are not any
more viewed as passive consumers of local public services but rather as participants in
decision making processes and part of the whole governance system. As a matter of
fact and in the light of the many potential benefits of increased civic participation a
vast array of local governments in Western Europe as well as in many other countries
that recently adhered to democracy have designed and implemented policies to put
into motion several civic engagement strategies to foster citizen’s involvement in
public affairs and, in the end improve the whole system of local governance.
But whereas there is within the citizenry a great potential for developing the
democracy, there is, on the contrary, an increasing lack of interest on the part of the
citizens to participate in public affairs. To reverse this situation many local
governments are putting into motion different initiatives to reinforce their citizen’s
implication in local affairs. All of these initiatives are based on notions like “citizen
empowerment”, “strengthening democracy”, reinforcement of citizen implication,
direct democracy, consumer participation and so on. On the other hand, citizen
participation has become an important issue within the context of social change
developments not to mention the globalization, the European integration and some
other political and socioeconomic processes. The more the societal and institutional
differentiation the more responsiveness of the political and administrative systems is
required. All these initiatives involve new forms of participation at the different stages
of the administrative decisions. Furthermore, an important part of the literature on
democracy deals with the question on how to improve citizen participation
throughout the different participative models or about creating new ways of
participation. These studies focus on public policy approaches from the point of view
of the instruments, strategies, resources and contents.
The need for the local governments to innovate is mainly due to two, not
necessarily compatible, trends which are the yardsticks of our present time. On the
one hand, the desire of improving and expanding the representative democracy. On
the other, the existence of a growing process of globalization which changes the
traditional arrangements of power division among the different levels of territorial
governments. In this context, the local level is becoming a splendid laboratory for
democratic innovations and this level seems to be the most adecuate to put into
practice the array of new initiatives and, therefore, is also where most part of the
discussion has been developed. | es |
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