Political Participation and Democratic Political Agency Cillian McBride (QUB) Why care about political participation? It will be argued that there are two distinct rationales offered in favour of encouraging greater political participation: one which emphasises its role in strengthening trust and the bonds of solidarity, and one which The former, it is argued, adopts an overly inclusive account of political participation, which is to be explained by its Aristotelian/communitarian ethical commitments, while the latter adopts a more discriminating approach to participation, in which only those forms of political participation that enhance political agency are valued. While the former account, here termed ‘democratic communitarianism’, is continuous with a moralistic disposition-centred interpretation of non-participation, the agency centred account interprets participation in terms of interests and opportunities, and therefore focuses its attention on institutional barriers to equal political participation. Two challenges to the agency-centred account are considered: instrumental readings of democratic legitimacy which eschew the notion of collective agency, and nationalist accounts of political agency, which rely on strong notions collective agency. These are rejected in favour of a proceduralist account of collective political agency which, it is argued, offers a more plausible account of both democratic legitimacy and of collective agency than instrumental and nationalist rivals.
