From Participatory to Radical Democracy in Social Services: A Comparative Analysis of Citizen-Led Actions in the EU

This contribution uses original data from 6 European countries (Austria, Denmark, France, Poland, Portugal and Romania) to look at how citizen-led movements contesting the functioning of social services and social policies seek to introduce dimensions of radical democracy into this space. Based on sixty interviews with social movement leaders, we use qualitative evidence to show how citizens directly or indirectly affected by social policies and social services organise collectively to contribute to changes in those policies and practices. We examine cases that took place between 2019 and 2024 in the fields of disability, mental health, child protection and youth at risk of social exclusion, offering a cross-country comparison of the issues raised by citizens in the collective actions, the demands emerging from the social movements involved and their contributions to the democratisation of social services, understood as aiming to control, limit and distribute power in that space (Warren 1999).

By organising, campaigning and advocating for change, the leaders and participants of these citizen-led actions contribute to democratising society. We draw on Pierre Rosanvallon’s concept of “counter-democracy” (2016), analysing how the collective actions identified and studied in our project contribute to a societal surveillance of power through scrutiny (la vigilance) and whistleblowing (la dénonciation). In the background of the petitions, protests, campaigns and other concrete, collective actions identified through this research, we observe a demand that continues to echo from the previous century’s movements: Nothing about us without us.