Reconnecting Representative and Participatory / Deliberative Democracy in Italy: The Cases of Tuscany and Trentino

Interactive Governance (IG) indicates citizens' involvement in policy making on a continuing and substantive fashion. It contains both a policy and democracy recommendation: democratic governance is improved through citizens' participation. IG is widespread in northern Europe, but it is increasingly experimented with also in southern Europe. IG becomes particularly relevant when the regular democratic circuits - through party politial representation - break down or are not so relevant, as it may happen at the local level. The chapter analyzes two examples of IG in Tuscany and Trentino and discusses their different chracteristics and effectiveness by relating them to the differential state of health of the party political representative circuits in these two regions.