Introduction to Civility and Participatory Democracy

Abstract

Why is there so much focus now on civil society and citizenship in relation to participation and inclusion in late-modern society? Firstly, the civil society organizations have been – and still are – crucial in guaranteeing the economic, social and political rights of the individual. Only by constantly making demands for social justice and fighting for the rights to which citizens are entitled, is it possible for people to ensure and safeguard their own and others’ security. Secondly, citizenship and the rights and duties associated with it are fundamental to social cohesion and democratic participation. Nation-states differentiate between citizens with all, limited or no rights in relation to citizenship. It is in this context that the many and diverse organizations in the civil sphere can play a central role. They have the potential to help ensure that the democratic decision-making process involves all social groups, including vulnerable ones, in both the development and the implementation of decisions on welfare policies. Neither market nor state institutions, as these two spheres are currently constituted, can do this; but it should be possible to develop democratic and inclusive organizations at the interfaces between civil society and other spheres of society. The core of the interrelationship between state and civil society is, then, the degree of democratic control and collective engagement within individual organizations, whether public or private. In this respect, it is plausible to talk about state institutions operating on civil society’s terms provided that citizens are in charge of the decision-making, and the structures are democratic, built from the bottom up, and involve the target groups for the institutions’ work. To introduce this type of democratic participation, it is crucial that new institutional forms of involvement and decision-making processes are developed by civil society organizations as well as public and private institutions. Initiatives designed to facilitate this development, firstly, must have the potential to counteract the social and cultural differentiation that invariably arises between social groups in civil society. Secondly, these initiatives must ensure a more equitable distribution of economic and social resources than is the case in the current representative system. Thirdly, they must make it possible to stem the marginalization triggered by processes of segregation in the labour