Local Democracy and Neighborhood Participation

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 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.This publication shows how such democratic innovations have been introduced in a large global city.

Autorentext
Ángel Iglesias is a Professor of Political Science at the King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. He has extensively researched in the field of Local Democracy and Local Governance both within research projects financed by the European Union and the Spanish Government. His results have been widely published in leading international journals.