This paper we will map the thought of Boaventura de Sousa Santos about participatory democracy. Before that, however, it will be important to analyse the structure of his social theory as a way to better interpret his proposed expansion of the democratic canon. For the Portuguese thinker, political participation has a key role in the rediscoverying of societal practices. It is through these practices that those individuals left behind could be included in the democratic process and therefore having the chance to work in the very definition of the community to which they are inserted. Democracy, in this view, is then a project of social inclusion and cultural innovation that arises as an attempt to institute a new democratic sovereignty.
Democratic theory; Participatory democracy; Boaventura de Sousa Santos