Assessing the Quality of Democracy at the Local Level: Collaborative Governance of Urban Commons and Democratic Quality

Is it possible to deepen quality of democracy at the local level by opening the doors for collaboration between citizens, public administation and private institutions? Many democracies are facing increasing malaises (Geissel 2008). The hypotheses that democratic innovations are a “cure” for mailases is a crucial issue. After a description of the framework on measurement of democratic quality at the local level, there will be developed an hypoteses for the evaluation of the impact of collaborative governance processes. The crucial question is if it’s possible to identity indicators to evaluate the impact of democratic innovation processes at the local level. As Gelli and Morlino stated, legitimacy and responsiveness of local government is a crucial asset; as this would affect the democratic quality, how it is possible to empirically determine the effects that ensue, this becomes a question that still remains open. There are empirical evidence and studies but implications on the quality of local democracy aren’t treated (Gelli and Morlino 2010). The local level is an important testing ground for democratic quality (Gelli and Morlino, 2008). The small level encourage innovation by allowing the testing of new institutions and the first processing of a “new urban democracy”(Cotta, Della Porta, Morlino 2001). Democratic innovations that raise at the local level would help to improve the quality of democracy, overcome political apathy, reduce the lack of legitimacy, increase political satisfaction, (Geissel 2008), but how can them be evaluated? (Geissel and Newton, 2012). The work will consider collaborative governance of urban commons at the local level as democratic innovation, with reference to experiences in Italy that provide citizens to be an active part in local governance through collaboration platforms; could these collaboration devices for involvement of local actors act as local governance facilitators?