Citizen Participation and Democracy

Abstract

Citizen participation is generally agreed to be an essential ingredient of a healthy democracy. However, having perhaps agreed on this much, questions regarding who should participate and how they should do so have been debated for millennia. This chapter charts the role of the citizen and community in democratic theory and practice as it has evolved over time. It considers the posited benefits that citizens, communities and the state derive from participation in political processes. In so doing, we focus on the debates pertaining to participation as a mechanism for protecting citizens and those pertaining to participation as a mechanism for developing citizens and society. It considers the arguments for and against widespread citizen participation in political processes. We will see that historically there has been scepticism of the view that citizens should play a primary role in politics. Today that scepticism is well and truly displaced even though, as the forthcoming analysis will reveal, widespread participation is not easy to achieve in practice. Accordingly, the latter part of this chapter explores in some detail the conceptual drivers of contemporary appeals to the citizen and to community.