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The main objective of this book has been to review the theoretical, political and societal implications of participatory governance. Before turning to the latter two of these, let us first try to come up with some preliminary theoretical conclusions. We have found participatory governance to be located somewhere between theories of democratic government and theories of governance. On the one hand, participatory governance makes mandatory an extension of the theory of democracy taking account of both the format and the logics of the new type of polity shaping the European political space. Klaus-Dieter Wolf’s discussion of the legitimacy of governance beyond the state brought us towards the idea that the specific milieu of governance beyond the state is more conducive to deliberative democracy than to majority voting. However, the question of how to operationalize the idea of deliberative democracy is far from being solved. On the other hand, the notion of participatory governance has confronted us with the need to change our ideas about citizenship. More precisely, the transition from a traditional context of democratic control towards a context which almost unavoidably suffers accountability deficits involves a parallel transition from the concept of citizen to something else. At this point, we have elaborated on the notion of holder as the collective embodiment of participatory governance arrangements at the European and at other levels.

In July 2001 the EU Commission (200la) launched its long-announced White Paper on Governance. By that time, the conference where drafts of the contributions to this volume have first been presented had passed for almost one year. While discussing in Florence, we hardly had an idea about the salience the governance topic would have assumed only a couple of months later. Until then, it had mainly occupied the research agendas of a handful of political scientists in only some of the member states of the Union. Our project, indeed, was only in part related to the Commission’s initiative. The timing of this book, hence, is a mere coincidence. Whether it represents a more or less happy one has to be judged by the reader. Now, after the White Paper being published and after the rather unexpected noise it has triggered in and outside Brussels, it seems clear that, incidentally, we have caught the right moment with this present publication.