This book analyses the impact of participatory governance on cultural development, explaining why cultural participatory practices can lead to positive sustainable effects or to unexpected and controversial ones. It focuses on four projects realized in the two European Capitals of Culture of 2013 - Marseille-Provence (France) and Ko¿ice (Slovakia) ¿ within the Programme ¿Quartiers Créatifs¿ and the SPOTs Programme. By combining different strands of the Democratic Theory and applying the process tracing methodology, the book argues that participation produces cultural developmental processes only when a certain intensity of trust is reached among the various stakeholders. In the presence of fully-fledged trust, participation activates a reinforcing chain