Participatory Art and Democracy

Since the 1990s, participatory art has been hailed as a laboratory for democracy – a space for new forms of civic agency and collective authorship. Yet participation remains deeply contested. Do such practices truly redistribute power, or do they risk instrumentalising the communities they engage? Bringing together scholars from the arts, political science, sociology, and cultural studies, this volume reassesses participation’s political promise and asks what role the arts can – and cannot – play in shaping democratic futures.