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To examine how different types of ownership, including investor-owned, employee-owned, and mixed models, affect the dynamics of participatory practices in the workplace, and the broader social effects of these differences.

Brings together literature from democratic theory and empirical research in workplace participation and employee ownership. The first step is to articulate the range of democratic practices from nondemocratic to strongly democratic. The essay then discusses the different forms that participation can take and the threshold for what can be considered democratic participation. It then considers different models of ownership and the impact of ownership type on participatory practices.

It is found that investor-owned firms cannot be considered strongly democratic and that worker cooperatives are more likely to be strongly democratic and cannot fall below the threshold of weak democracy. However, strong democracy is not necessarily a feature of worker cooperatives.

Little work has been done to consider the way the type of ownership affects the kind or degree of democratic practices that may be present in an enterprise.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

This chapter examines how democratic innovations can strengthen participation in the social housing sector. In Denmark, social housing offers affordable housing to a large number of Danes. The sector is grounded in traditions for resident involvement and engagement, and the democratic model in the sector is unique to Denmark. The residents have the majority say in all decision-making boards, which enables them to influence both the physical surroundings and social initiatives. Despite the positive merits, the sector faces challenges concerning increased segregation, municipalities allocating an increased share of socially and economically marginalised people to the sector, and less participation in the residential democracy. This chapter studies two cases of initiatives that experiment with democratic innovations to enhance participation in local housing associations. The two cases are innovative initiatives in the social housing sector and illustrate the potential benefits of increased participation. The chapter concludes that project-based initiatives might be on the rise and seem to hold considerable potential for enhancing participation. The challenge, then, is still to secure the coordination and strategic direction of the initiatives while combining them with the formal resident democracy.

This study reviewed a body of empirical research on Carole Pateman's democratic spillover thesis, which argues that democratic participation in the workplace spill over into political participation. The review revealed significant variance in defining and measuring of workplace democracy and participation among quantitative empirical studies on the spillover thesis. The review also discovered that majority of the reviewed studies omitted higher level participation as a predictor, and political efficacy, which is a mediating mechanism between workplace participation and political behaviors, in testing the hypotheses. Suggestions for future research and limitations are discussed.

Does civic participation, especially in the arts, increase democracy? This chapter extends this neo-Tocquevillian question in three ways. First, to capture broader political and economic transformations, we consider different types of participation; results change by separate participation arenas. Some are declining, but a dramatic finding is the rise of arts and culture. Second, to assess impacts of participation, we include multiple dimensions of democratic politics, including distinct norms of citizenship and their associated political repertoires. Third, by analyzing global International Social Survey Program and World Values Survey data, we identify dramatic subcultural differences: the Tocquevillian model is positive, negative, or zero in seven different subcultures and contexts that we explicate, from class politics and clientelism to Protestant and Orthodox Christian civilizational traditions.

“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All death is birth in a new form, all birth the death of the previous form. The seasons come and go. The myth of our own John Barleycorn, buried in the ground, yet resurrected in the Spring, has close parallels with the fertility rites of Greece and the Near East such as those of Hyacinthas, Hylas, Adonis and Dionysus, of Osiris the Egyptian deity, and Mondamin the Red Indian maize‐god. Indeed, the ritual and myth of Attis, born of a virgin, killed and resurrected on the third day, undoubtedly had a strong influence on Christianity.

The purpose of the present paper is to attempt to examine the determinants of citizens’ electronic participation with respect to the communication aspects. To accomplish this objective, using the extant literature, the paper delineated factors that determine and the theories that can explain citizens’ e-participation. An analysis of citizens’ democratic communication through multiple e-participation forums is carried out, and the determinants of electronic participation are described in the paper.

In light of the literature, e-participation services were classified on the basis of characteristics of democratic communications. The factors that determine citizens’ online democratic participation were also identified and validated. Indian citizens who often e-participate were surveyed through online and offline questionnaires. A regression analysis of the 407 responses was carried out to predict the influence of individual, governance and technology components on various e-participation initiatives.

Citizens’ participation efficacy, value system and participation freedom were found to determine different e-participation initiatives. Further, e-participation is also found to be varyingly determined by the governance and technology components.

The theoretical contribution of this study includes the classification of determining factors and the illustrative labeling (I, G and T) for an e-participation framework. The delineation of e-participation from democratic communication aspects also contributes to the e-participation literature. However, this research had considered only one set of e-participation services and had incorporated only select forms of e-participation that are in coherence with the services selected.

Past studies often consider separate e-participation forums and infrequently report a simultaneous analysis of multiple e-participation forums. The factors that determine citizens’ e-participation from a democratic communication aspect are also inadequately discussed. The significant contribution of this study includes policy recommendations to improve e-participation in different information and communication technologies initiatives.

This research is concerned with youth activism in Singapore historically and the importance of legitimacy for understanding the further development of youth activism and Singapore’s democratization process. It takes into account issues pertaining to good governance, economic performance and democratic participation (legitimacy). The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The research adopts a historical approach, qualitative in nature with some quantitative analysis based on documentary research, press reports and content analysis.

Historically youth activism was vibrant and dynamic in the fight for independence and against inequality and injustice during the colonial era in Singapore. Under Lee Kuan Yew’s rule, the scope and boundary of democratic participation (legitimacy) were delimited and controlled by the state. State-contained or controlled participation has replaced contentious politics. In the Singapore General Election in 2011, the younger generation of Singapore electorate, who are better educated and well-travelled, however, proved themselves to be rational and pragmatic when they exercised their rights to reject polices detrimental to their socio-economic well-beings as well as to the inclusiveness of society. The People’s Action Party (PAP) had the lowest vote share (60 per cent) in history. Since then the PAP government had stepped up its efforts in improving welfare gains of the citizens as well as managing public discontents with more effective policies. The PAP victory in the Singapore election (GE 2015), however, showed that among other reasons, welfare gains and good governance helped in salvaging the electoral legitimacy vis-à-vis the political legitimacy of the PAP government. However, the PAP government’s continual harsh treatment of critics, young and old, means that to achieve democratic legitimacy, it has to break through the shackles of authoritarian leadership style and elite governance, which have led to the regime’s failure to face up to the reality of an emerging civic participatory culture in the Singapore contexts.

Legitimacy is an important concept. To date there is no systematic application of this concept to the study of Singapore electoral politics. This paper employs Bruce Gilley’s determinants of legitimacy – democratic legitimacy, welfare gains and good governance – to explicate the basis of the PAP’s regime legitimacy, the contradictions inherent in state-contained participation and political representation that delimited and undermined the nature, scope and boundary of democratic legitimacy.

This chapter reports on a qualitative study that investigated the functioning of school governing bodies as a tool for promoting democracy in two schools. Data was gathered through interviews, observations and document reviews. Findings revealed that democracy was in existence and practiced at both schools and that it was characterized by shared decision-making and acknowledged rights of individuals, representation, participation and equality. Two structures for promoting democracy were found to be in existence in both schools, and these are school governing bodies and representative councils for learners. Such structures were found to be functioning effectively and contributing to the democracy in schools. However, although the learner voice was represented at both schools, learner participation in crucial issues in both the schools was limited. The study recommends that all teachers, learners and parent representatives on the SGBs be trained in skills such as deliberation, debate, dialogue and managing differences. Furthermore, training or capacity building related to advocacy skills and leadership development should be provided for all members of the SGB including teachers. The more learners, parents and staff are involved in school policy and decision-making, the more there is a genuine community involvement in schools, and the more effective a school becomes. Also, schools need to move towards learner-initiated decision-making where learners initiate the process and invite adults to join them in decision-making. Also, there is need for teachers to be trained in democratic ways of operating in the school and classroom, which will possibly help them learn ways of working democratically in both the whole school and the classroom.

This paper aims to analyze the “crafts” of governance within social and solidarity economy (SSE) cultural organizations, considering formal and informal rules, to support their project of democratization of arts and culture and more generally of cultural democracy. The hypothesis is that it is through participatory and democratic governance that SSE can have a transformative role.

This paper builds upon a qualitative, multiple case study of three SSE organizations in the performing arts and audiovisual production in France. Although different in age, size and legal form, they all experiment a more participative governance system, not without tensions, to face deep institutional changes in their environment.

The results show that legal forms from the SSE are necessary safeguards but not sufficient to effectively implement a democratic governance beyond the “one member, one vote” principle. Democratic governance is supported by both formal and informal rules. By experimenting with innovative participative and democratic governance rules, these organizations contribute to the transformation of practices in the cultural field (democratization of art and culture) but also in society at large by fostering cultural democracy.

Building upon three case studies, this exploratory work stresses important issues that are worth to explore on a larger scale to understand by which levers SSE can play a transformative role in the cultural field.

This paper contributes to the literature on SSE and on governance by enlarging the analysis beyond the board of directors and the statutory rules. Applying the approach of collective action and reasonable values developed by Commons to SSE, it shows that participatory governance cannot be based on an ideal or a choice of preestablished values and principles but must leave room for creativity and representations of stakeholders not only to support transformation of practices within the cultural field but also externally by increasing cultural democracy.