Recent years have seen the emergence of a set of political practices grouped under the heading of participatory democracy as opposed to representative democracy. The crisis of the states, the discredit of political parties and the corruption of traditional politics have helped establish the legitimacy of the new practices and re-create the hopes of refounding politics. Two antagonist strategies are considered in this article: one derived from neoliberal policy, the other based on the new social movments, yet equally similar in their attempts to increase society's influence on the state in economic and political matters.