“Two Democracies Work Better Together. French and Italian decision-making process for the Turin-Lyon railway project”

The Pan-European Corridor V railway line connects Lisbon and Kiev and touches many European countries. The paper present focuses on the Turin-Lyon section where French and Italian authorities jointly work on this huge infrastructure project while applying different approaches. While there are provisions for a public debates on such issues in France, there is no similar institutional framework in Italy. Hence, the analysis allows to compare the dynamics of the public debate in two democratic systems with different public decision-making systems and political cultures. While the French case evidences that public institutions can activate participation by providing “invited spaces” for collective discussion, the Italian case shows that these space also can be claimed by the public. In essence, lessons learned from this comparison raise interesting questions about the use of participatory spaces to correct and improve representative democracy.