Citizen Literacy of Participatory Democracy

If "participative democracy" is a well known concept among scholars, do citizens understand and use it ? In everyday life what are the main options lay people consider when discussion public engagement in public action and decisons ? We will build upon a quantitaive study that took place in France to investigate what, and how lay citizens express their visions of democracy and of what can be their role in public policies. We will analyse the gap between scholars' and citizens' representations of a "good citizen". Our results also shows a link between previous voluntary work and willingness to contribute to engage in public matters.