The recent economic and social crisis in Europe has generated a crisis in representative democracy. Large portions of the population feel alienated from the political process, while others have little access to it at all. While activist citizenship and participatory democracy can offer solutions to these problems, neither can do so unless people are fully empowered to make decisions at every level of government. In this talk, sociologist Thomas P. Boje (Department of Society and Globalization, Roskilde University) asks: how can we enhance the participation of citizens in our democracy even as we see trust in our traditional social and political institutions declining? How do we create equal participation when our economic, social, and cultural resources are currently shared unequally? And how does participatory democracy affect those who have been historically disenfranchised?

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