Do Social Movements Improve Democracy? Internal Democracy, Organisation and Individual Participation in Political Activism

Abstract

Social Movements and protest groups voice critique of existing power relations and claim to embody alternative forms of democratic legitimation and decision-making. To ask how innerorganizational democracy contributes to the democratization of societies has therefore been a long-standing subject of social movement and participation research. This panel seeks to explore how the relationship between organizational democracy and the democratic expectations of members contributes to the functioning and acceptance of democracy in a society and how this relationship is contemporarily evolving.