Democratic Participation in Marginalized Regions: Innovations and Resilience

Particularly in peripheral and rural regions, democratic participation increasingly takes place under conditions characterized by structural disadvantage, political marginalization, and declining trust in institutions. This paper focuses on the everyday, bottom-up democratic practices that emerge from civil society in structurally constrained local contexts and examines how civil society actors enable, stabilize, and expand democratic participation in structurally weak border regions. Using the example of the Saxon-Czech border region, a peripheral cross-border area characterized by demographic decline, limited institutional capacity, and low political visibility, the paper investigates how local associations, initiatives, and informal networks can create participatory spaces that promote civic engagement and democratic resilience. Based on qualitative interviews conducted through a cross-border research project, this study analyses various forms of engagement. The findings show that democratic innovations in peripheral environments often operate outside of formal institutional frameworks and rely on informal practices, relational trust, and place-based knowledge. These initiatives are instruments of democratic renewal, lowering barriers to participation, enabling empowerment, and sustaining democratic practices in everyday life. At the same time, they face significant limitations related to resource scarcity, selective participation, and limited political recognition. This underscores the ambivalent role of civil society-led innovations under conditions of structural inequality.