Participatory Democracy in Europe

The aim of our study is to identify and describe how the participatory democracy instruments have been regulated by the law of certain states in Europe. These instruments have been designed in order to give the citizens the possibility to participate to the life of the City on a regular basis, not just every now and then, especially during the election. We will analyze in our study a set of instruments of participatory democracy, such as: the national referendum, the local referendum, the petitionary matters, the local councils, the consultative committees, and the e-democracy. All these instruments are successfully used in a number of states with consolidated democracies. Another chapter in the study is dedicated to the way in which local participative democracy works in Romania.