A Case of Participatory Environmental Democracy: the Indian Model of Panchayat Raj

This paper aims to analyse the role of the Panchayati Raj, a political-organizational system of local self-government spread among villages in rural areas of India, in the field of environmental policy management, as a possible political model capable of involving, according to a multi-level approach, individual communities in environmental governance, this in order to develop environmental awareness in the local realities through effective participation in decision-making processes. In addition, the possible extensibility of such a system will be explored with reference to participatory democracy tools already present in other Western contexts.