Two major themes are addressed in this book. The first one is on Active Civic Participation. This is considered an increasingly important aim both for public governance and for the renewal of civil society. The contributions on this topic deepen our understanding of the reasons why civic participation is relevant as an answer to present day societal challenges. They also improve our insight in the factors that stimulate or inhibit such participation. The second theme is about European Citizenship and Multiple Identities. It helps to understand the evolution of citizenship and identities in the context of European integration and enlargement, of globalisation and glocalisation, of migration, etc. The book holds a selection of papers presented at the Connections Conference, organised at the university of Leuven in Belgium in September 2003. (2005).