Abstract
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The concept of democracy has a long historical tradition taking its beginning from the Antica time. Already such philosophers like Plato, Socrates, Aristoteles or later on, Immanuel Kant and others have discussed the issue vividly. The development in understanding of democracy has shown that this understanding changes continuously, among others related to characteristics of time and space.
Currently, the debate is again actual as a consequence of recent developments in governance. Poland and Hungary are heavily criticized for their return to becoming more autocratic regimes. The international criticism increases on election processes and the outcomes thereof in, for instance, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkey, and on the outside interference in elections in Western states, such as Russia and the UK, as well. Many government experiments with more direct, “open up” forms of democracy in order to enable co-production, cocreation, public-private-partnerships (PPP), and public participation. On the one hand, one witnesses processes of decentralization, bringing policymaking processes closer to the citizens. On the other hand, one sees tendencies of centralization, and sometimes they go hand in hand with central governments setting strict boundary conditions for policies and leaving the implementation to local governments.
This paper intends to investigate what is going on and how to understand developments in democracy as well as the criticism thereon. The authors immediately acknowledge that the topic is very broad and needs to be delimited. We conduct a literature review, in which the argumentation behind claims about the current state of democracy are central and how these arguments fit in a more general and historical perspective on the meaning of democracy as seen in the classic writings of Greek philosophers, but also in modern-day theories as the ones by Amartya Sen, Jurgen Habermas, Chantal Mouffe et cetera.
If space permits, the second part of the paper will discuss the current materialization of democratic practices at the local level, asking what is known from empirical studies about the extent to which local residents do have influence on local decision-making processes and local development and how that materializes?
The paper will be structured as follows:
After an introduction in which the main research question and sub-questions are given, the first (theory) section will give a concise overview of the development in the theorizing on democracy. The third section will give an overview of the main arguments found in recent literature to criticize developments in democratic practices, since 1990. Subsequently, if space allows, we give an overview of empirical studies published since 1990 about the actual developments in local democracy and the evaluation thereof. The paper concludes with a comparison between classic and modern ideas about the essence of democracy, the recent criticism on the decline of democracy, and the actual practice at the local level in promoting participatory policy processes.
By proceeding in this way, we hope - but cannot guarantee - to find out whether the current state of democracy really points to a crisis situation, which arguments provide the strongest backing in that respect, and whether there are innovative practices at the local level being able to reinvent a new form of democracy.
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