Download or read book Challenging Citizens: Democratic Innovations at the Local Level written by Pavel Šaradín and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-12-11 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book aims to complement the existing research on democratic innovations mainly by making unique comparative analyses of the democratic innovations at the local level in selected European post-communist countries, i.e. the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. Democratic innovations can help overcome political apathy, decreased confidence in democracy and improve efficiency of governance. We traditionally consider cities and municipalities to be cradles of democracy and connect them with deliberations on the further development of democratic theory and political practice. We therefore argue that the local level is a suitable arena and laboratory for both changes of institutional settings within the traditional model of representative democracy, and the structural changes, which concern changing relations between local representatives and citizens.