ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that whether one believes public participation is desirable, and if so why, will depend upon one's normative values and on the mechanisms that are being used to promote participation. The idea of democratic involvement helping to educate citizens is one that can shade into a commitment to participation in deliberative forms of democracy. For writers who support this approach, public participation is desirable in as much as it is tied into the development of deliberative mechanisms. Public participation has become the flavour of the day, in many countries. The Italian political and legal theorist Norborto Bobbio has argued that the battle facing democracy is to extend participation through voting by increasing the spheres in which people are able to vote. In the future, Bobbio argues, it should become as commonplace to collectively elect one's boss at work as it is to elect one's member of parliament.
