No dia 27 de Fevereiro, Emma Lancha-Hernández (Institute of Advanced Social Studies, Spanish National Research Council (IESA-CSIC)) será a oradora de um seminário do Grupo de Investigação RIGoP com o tema Who is Sitting at the Table? Institutional Participation and Democratic Preference Gaps Between Politicians and Citizens. A partir das 11h, na Sala 1 do ICS-ULisboa e online.

Abstract: 

A central question in democratic theory concerns public decision-making: who should decide? The recent spread of institutionalized forms of citizen participation—often described as democratic innovations—has reshaped this debate by introducing new actors and arenas into representative systems. Yet we still lack systematic evidence about how these developments reconfigure decision-making and whether they reflect the democratic preferences of key political actors, namely politicians and citizens.

This dissertation (PhD) argues that answering the question of who should decide requires attention to two interconnected dimensions. First, it involves examining democratic process preferences—how politicians and citizens believe public decisions ought to be made. Second, within the context of democratic innovations, it requires analysing who actually takes part in these institutionalized participatory arenas where public decision-making is being redefined.

Bringing these dimensions together, the dissertation presents the visions of democratic innovations articulated by politicians and citizens across crucial participatory aspects. It pursues two main objectives: (1) to examine patterns of inclusion and exclusion in institutionalized participatory processes and the role of institutional design in shaping them; and (2) to analyse the extent to which elite and citizen democratic preferences converge or diverge regarding participatory governance.