Participatory Traditions within the Global Justice Movement

Abstract

More or less explicitly, social movements express a fundamental critique of conventional politics, affirming the legitimacy (if not the primacy) of alternatives to representative models of democracy. Their ideas resonate with ‘an ancient element of democratic theory that calls for an organisation of collective decision making referred to in varying ways as classical, populist, communitarian, strong, grass-roots, or direct democracy against a democratic practice in contemporary democracies labelled as realist, liberal, elite, republican, or representative democracy’ (Kitschelt 1993, p. 15). In this context, direct participation plays a key role both as a value and as a practice.