This paper investigates the transformative role of citizen participation in public value creation, focusing on the Calascio cooperative model as a case study. The cooperative in Calascio, a small village in Abruzzo, Italy, represents an integrated approach to citizen engagement and co-production in public services, contrasting sharply with traditional public administration mechanisms. Through its participatory governance structure, the cooperative has democratized service delivery, enhanced accountability, and promoted sustainability and community empowerment. This analysis explores several dimensions of the cooperative's effectiveness in public value creation: (1) the mechanisms by which citizen participation influences policy and service outcomes, especially in fostering social equity and inclusion; (2) strategies the cooperative employs to navigate and overcome systemic barriers in public governance, thereby enabling a responsive and adaptive public service framework; and (3) the impact of this participatory model on achieving long-term social, economic, and environmental goals, demonstrating a direct correlation between high levels of citizen involvement and successful public value outcomes. Calascio’s cooperative, primarily managing the Rocca Calascio area, showcases an exemplary blend of social services integration and economic activity that drives community development. By focusing on diverse community needs, particularly those of the elderly, and securing a 10% reduction in municipal fees, the cooperative has achieved sustainable economic and social enhancements. The maintenance of vibrant, socially beneficial spaces like the playground at Rocca Calascio, even during off-peak seasons, exemplifies effective community-based service management. Our study contributes to the ongoing discourse on structurally embedding citizen participation in public governance, offering practical strategies for profound and enduring changes in public policy and service delivery. The insights provided aim to furnish a replicable framework for other communities, ensuring that participatory practices are embedded as a cornerstone of democratic public administration and not merely as symbolic exercises. This paper highlights how such collaborative models can be institutionalized to ensure sustainable community and economic development, enhancing the role of public administrations beyond mere governance

Democratic innovations are complex, multi-factored and multi-phased processes, and each design decision taken can influence the experience of participants of the democratic legitimacy of the innovation. After the first few decades of democratic experiments, it was argued that the attention of practitioners as well as scholars is mostly ‘front-loaded’: focused on recruitment and the design of the innovation at the expense of the development, outcome and evaluation.

We performed a scoping review on recent literature on democratic innovations to find out whether the different phases of democratic innovations receive equal attention in scholarly literature. We found that current literature is less front-loaded, as it also pays attention to how a democratic innovation functions once it has started, but that post-event aspects of democratic innovations are still under researched.

The municipal system of Hungary has been transformed significantly in the last decade; strong centralisation tendencies could be observed. Several important municipal competences have been centralised, the public service provision of the municipalities decreased and the determination of local government expenditure has increased. Although there is a centralised public service provision on Hungary, several municipalities – especially the urban municipalities and partially, based on the grassroot administration even several smaller local governments – tried to reform their decision-making. The involvement of the local communities has been strengthened by these local reforms. The regulatory environment for the involvement of citizens will be firstly reviewed by our presentation, we will focus on the different regulatroy models of the public participation of local communities. Secondly, we would like to classify the different types of involvement tools and their application – based on the admiinistrative, political environment and policy factors of the activities. Last but not least, our presentation will focus on the public participation and local budgeting, thus the possibilities and limitations of participatory budgeting will be analysed in the strongly centralised Hungarian local government system.