Abstract
Socialist thought in the Western democracies currently presents a virtually unbroken prospect of agreement concerning the pre-eminence of democracy in its various redefinitions and visions of the ‘good society’. It is also widely assumed that the best forms of democracy involve the active participation of citizens. How much participatory democracy is feasible is of course a matter of debate.1 In this chapter I suggest that to over-identify the socialist idea with ‘democratisation’ is to miss something of both the value and limits of active participation and hence to overstate its significance for socialist reform programmes.
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© 1993 Jeffrey Minson
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Minson, J. (1993). The Participatory Imperative. In: Questions of Conduct: Sexual Harassment, Citizenship, Government. Language, Discourse, Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22882-9_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22882-9_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-46598-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-22882-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)