The concept of participation. If they have access and interact, do they really participate?

Participation is a concept that is being used in a wide variety of fields,
and that has obtained an evenly wide range of meanings. This article attempts first to
ground participation in democratic theory, which allows introducing the distinction
between minimalist and maximalist forms of participation. In the second part of the
article, a broad definition of the political will be used to transcend to logics of institutionalized
politics, and to emphasize that the distribution of power in society is a dimension
of the social that permeates every possible societal field. Both discussions are used to
describe the key characteristics of participation, and to increase the concept's theoretical
foundation. The article then zooms in on one of these characteristics, namely the difference
between access, interaction and participation, as this distinction allows further
sharpening the key meanings attributed to participation as a political process where the
actors involved in decision-making processes are positioned towards each other through
power relationships that are (to an extent) egalitarian.

Publication year:2011

Keywords:Participatory theory, democratic theory, political, power, access, contingency, interaction