The challenges of democracy: participative democracy as complement of representative democracy

Abstract

Participative Democracy is one of the areas of the legal and political theory and practice that in the last years is being developed in a stronger way. Nowadays we check that the appeal to the citizenship is not decreasing but, particularly in some territorial scopes, appears with intensity as option or solution to give legitimacy to the decisions coming from representative institutions that are suffering a period of intense social critic. To know the historical and doctrinal origin of the Participative Democracy, to distinguish it from other close concepts, to understand the tools of which it is formed and to calculate in which areas it has bigger future development possibilities is, now more than never, of special relevance.Published online: 25 November 2014

Keywords

• derecho
• democracia participativa
• democracia representativa
• participación ciudadana
• instrumento participativo