Conceptions and practices of democracy: Participation and deliberation in civil society and public institutions#

Date: January 21, 2016, 18:00

Venue: BARBARA: infopoint, café, culture, Świdnicka 8c, 50-054 Wrocław, Poland


Academia Europaea Wrocław Knowledge Hub, Institute of Political Science at University of Wrocław, Association Akcja Miasto and Citizen Participation Office of Wrocław Municipality Office invite students, academic teachers and citizents of Wrocław on a lecture of Donatella della Porta on Conceptions and practices of democracy: Participation and deliberation in civil society and public institutions.


Short outline of the lecture:

While democracy has often been defined as representative, there are nevertheless other conceptions and practices of democracy. In particular, the need to increase citizens' participation as well as the discoursive quality of democracy has been addressed in normative theory but also in political debates. Especially face to the emerging weakening of trust in representative institutions, civil society organizations have contributed to develop public arenas and institutional experiments, such as the deliberative budgets, have spread. Based on empirical research all over Europe, in this lecture the potentials and challenges of participatory and deliberative democracy will be discussed.


Donatella della Porta is professor of Sociology at the European University Institute, where she directs the Centre on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos). She has directed the Demos project, devoted to the analysis of conceptions and practices of democracy in social movements in six European countries. Among the main topics of her research: social movements, political violence, terrorism, corruption, the police and protest policing.

Most recent publications:

• Social movements in times of austerity, Polity Press, 2015;

• Methodological practices in social movement research (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2014;
• Spreading Protest, ECPR Press, (ed., with A. Mattoni), 2014;
• Participatory Democracy in Southern Europe, Rowman and Littlefield, 2014, (with Joan Font and Yves Sintomer);
• Mobilizing for Democracy, Oxford University Press, 2014;
• Can Democracy be Saved?, Polity Press, 2013;
• Clandestine Political Violence, Cambridge University Press, 2013;
• Blackwell Encyclopedia on Social and Political Movements (with D. Snow, B. Klandermans and D. McAdam eds.), Blackwell, 2013;
• Mobilizing on the Extreme Right, (with M. Caiani and C. Wagemann), Oxford University Press, 2012;
• Meeting Democracy (ed., with D. Rucht), Cambridge University Press, 2012;

---

Photos

---

Organisers