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This book offers a new approach for the future of democracy by advocating giving citizens the power to deliberate and to decide how to govern themselves.

Innovatively building on and integrating components of representative, deliberative and participatory theories of democracy with empirical findings, the book provides practices and procedures that support communities of all sizes to develop their own visions of democracy. It re-vitalizes and re-infuses the 'democratic spirit' going back to the roots of democracy as an endeavour by, with and for the people, and should inspire us in our search for the democracy we want to live in.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students in democracy, democratic innovations, deliberation, civic education, and governance and further for policy-makers, civil society groups and activists. It encourages us to reshape democracy based on citizens' perspectives, aspirations, and preferences.

"This book offers a new approach for the future of democracy by advocating giving citizens the power to deliberate and to decide how to govern themselves. Innovatively building on and integrating components of representative, deliberative and participatory theories of democracy with empirical findings, the book provides practices and procedures that support communities of all sizes to develop their own visions of democracy. It re-vitalizes and re-infuses the 'democratic spirit' going back to the roots of democracy as an endeavour by, with and for the people, and should inspire us in our search for the democracy we want to live in. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students in democracy, democratic innovations, deliberation, civic education, and governance and further for policy-makers, civil society groups and activists. It encourages us to reshape democracy based on citizens' perspectives, aspirations, and preferences"--

Introduction: A Visionary Thriving Democracy -- Citizens decide on how they govern themselves -- Citizens monitor continuous adaption -- Citizens' will-formation is tightly connected to decision-making -- Self-governing: citizens' preferences and competencies -- No established practice suffices to realizing self-governing -- No existing experiment suffices to realizing self-governing -- Practices for will-formation and decision-making -- Procedures connecting will-formation and decision-making -- Novel public agencies and legal norms -- Conclusion: Thriving Democracies : our future

Representative democracy is often seen as a stable institutional system insusceptible to change. However, the preferences of the broad public are changing and representative, group based democracy has lost importance. This development made it necessary to change established ways of decision making and to introduce participatory democratic innovations. Many national and sub-national governments followed this route and implemented various kinds of participatory innovations, i.e. the inclusion of citizens into processes of political will-formation and decisionmaking. The authors analyse and evaluate the various effects of these innovations in Europe, providing a bigger picture of the benefits and disadvantages different democratic innovations can result in.

There is consensus in quality-of-democracy research on the role of electoral participation, but what about participatory opportunities beyond elections? Non-electoral participatory opportunities have been neglected in most measurements. Recent indices, however, include these opportunities as indicators of democratic quality. Should non-electoral participatory opportunities be considered an essential component of democratic quality? To answer this question and to address the controversy, I examined three established approaches. On the basis of this examination, it became clear that a novel approach was necessary. By applying the recently emerging debate on 'democratising' the definition of democracy, I argue that the controversy among experts needs to be connected to citizens' concepts. An approach that takes citizens' concepts into account implies several conceptual as well as methodological challenges. The paper suggests some solutions.

Despite the world-wide triumph of democracy, the quest for an optimal politike has not yet reached the "end of history." It turns out that representative democracies do not necessarily satisfy citizenries. These malaises are regarded as causes for concern and political actors increasingly pin their hopes on participatory innovations as re-legitimizing responses. But do they work? Germany is an especially interesting case for empirical research. Analysis of the variety of participatory innovations utilized at the local level in Germany—often varying considerably among the different Bundesländer—provides preliminary insights. The German case shows overall that participatory innovations have the potential to cure some of the current malaises of representative democracy. Participatory innovations, however, are certainly no fast-track cure. The useful implementation of participatory innovations requires comprehensive consideration, caution, and, (up to now limited) knowledge about possibilities and pitfalls.

The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe proclaimed the year 2005 the 'European Year of Democratic Citizenship through Education', but the question is: What does the democracy-promoting citizen look like? This article focuses on the question of whether satisfied and supportive citizens or critical citizens have attitudes that promote democracy. The discussion of this question is based on empirical results from a survey of German citizens (N = 2,000), applying bivariate and multivariate methods. Political criticism is measured by indicators of dissatisfaction, attentiveness and system preference; five types of citizens are constructed: satisfied-attentive, satisfied-inattentive, dissatisfied-attentive, dissatisfied-inattentive citizens with a preference for a democratic system, and one type preferring nondemocratic systems. The article examines which of these types are more consistent with the 'ideal citizen'-- defined as a citizen who participates, is well-informed, identifies with democracy and politics, has good internal efficacy and is willing to defend democracy. The data show that attentive citizens are more likely to promote democracy than inattentive ones. Attentive citizens are politically more knowledgeable, identify more strongly with the democratic system, feel more politically competent and are more willing to defend democracy. Political satisfaction or dissatisfaction has less of an influence on these dispositions. Adapted from the source document.