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What kind of democracy? Participation, Inclusiveness and Contestation Katerina Vráblíková New York - London 2016: Routledge, 230 pages.
The manifestations of interactions between citizens and their representatives are a decisive element in shaping and characterising political systems. How do citizens get involved in political processes and how does this civic engagement influence democracies? What ways of participation do exist besides the act of voting? And what factors may have an influence on a more or less engaged citizenry? In 'What kind of Democracy' Katerina Vráblíková adopts a comparative perspective to address those questions and asks how political inclusiveness/ exclusiveness and public contestation/consensus influence participation. She investigates how "individuals' national political contexts affect their engagement in nonelectoral political activism" (xiii). Comparing 30 contemporary democracies the book asks "how and why people in some countries tend (...) to participate more in nonelectoral politics than people in other countries" amid the "generally shared aspiration to have a more active citizenry" (3). Vráblíková develops a democratic model of 'inclusive contestation' that is said to...