Why does democracy need participation? : participatory budgeting in Medellin, Colombia and Krakow, Poland

The question of why democracy needs participation derives from the debate about the condition of democracy in the modern world and possible alternatives to the system of representative democracy, or a tool that can enforce the civil participation within that political system. Even in stable democratic systems, the dynamic of citizens’ political activities has been changing of late, with more focus on other channels for citizens to inuence political processes. Such changes to citizens’ engagement may also have an impact on redening knowledge and undermining the status quo of the hierarchy of knowledge. In the system of representative democracy, those who are elected use their knowledge in decision-making processes. This article aims to analyse the status of knowledge in the participative spaces of political activities.