Participation and institutional innovation: what to learn from Toscana experience?

• Grant number: 15/18485-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: April 01, 2016
• End date: June 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Political Behavior
• Principal Investigator: Carla Gandini Giani Martelli
• Grantee: Carla Gandini Giani Martelli
• Host Investigator: Donatella Della Porta
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS), Italy

Abstract

Based on the fact that we are currently witnessing a very consistent change in the participatory political patterns in occidental democracies that shows, on the one hand, an increasing disappointment process towards the traditional institutions of representative democracy and, on the other hand, the emergency and proliferation of new political participatory alternatives, the aim of this research is to contribute to the studies on these new modalities of political participation or political engagement that have been emerging on occidental contemporary democracies in the last three decades. More specifically, this research has the following objectives: a) to increase the investigations about participatory democracy innovations using the example of Toscana region in Italy; b) to increase the debate between culturalism and neoinstitutionalism perspectives using the example of the 69/2007 Law (and the 46/2013 and 28/2015 Laws) that laid down social participation in Toscana region; c) to increase the debate about democracy quality elaborating a participatory typology that allows a comparison between Italian and Brazilian popular participatory experiences in the last decades. This is a qualitative research and will be developed in two parts: bibliography research about the topics of interest, and empirical research including documental research, interviews, questionnaires application and participant observation in Toscana region. (AU)