Participatory Urban Governance: Evidences from a Comparative Research.

Are democratic innovations functional to a normative vision of demcoracy? Which is the role that democratic innovations effectively play within liberal democracies? It is just a function of conflict anesthetization through a depolitization of politics, like suggested by Moini (2017)? Or, on the contrary, these innovations can still play a substantial role, not only in terms of legitimation and democratization of democracy, but also to face the challenges of a hyperconnected and complex society? Trying to find an answer to these questions means, in other terms, to think about roles and ways, citizens can act to mold political institutions and their environment toward democratic regimes still able to pursue normative meanings. Through a comparison of Italian and European case studies, the proposed contribution aims to provide an analysis of the functioning and impacts that participatory forms of governance determine in their urban contexts of activation. In particular, the attempt is to help provide answers on the activation capacity at both the micro (individual) and macro level, i.e. on the quality of local democratic systems (Morlino and Raniolo, 2023).