The 21st century has generated potentially fatal challenges for representative democracies: fundamentalism, mass migration, the Great Recession, a pandemic, the crisis of the international order, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, climate warming, and digitization. Taking this scenario of radical uncertainty as a starting point, the author sheds light on the ability of women and men to influence their future. This capability entails “being part”, “feeling part”, and “taking part”: in other words, participating in politics. The book provides an original analysis of these dimensions, the paradoxes they contain, their transformations and their specific indicators: power, thought, (non-)voting, lobbying, partisanship, protests, communication, and innovation. The result is a vision of participation that is plural and unconventional, but which preserves the idea that – as in the past – participation means acting with others and for their benefit.

Francesco Raniolo teaches Political Science at the University of Calabria and is a member of the steering committee of the Italian Political Science Society.