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This discussion paper seeks to identify the forms of economic organisation that might best support the institutionalisation of participation and people-centred processes in development. Written in a non-academic and accessible style, the paper renews with traditions of political and economic philosophy that propose ethical norms to guide social relations and the organisation of economic life. Using food systems as a unifying example, the author shows how localisation reverses the trend of corporate globalisation by discriminating in favour of the local. This approach to organising economic life has local self-reliance and the potential to increase self-determination at its core. A set of mutually reinforcing policies that can potentially increase control of the economy by communities and nation states are described. Localisation has the potential to foster and help institutionalise democratic participation in its broadest sense. For example it is anticipated that 'economic democracy' will occur via involvement in increasingly diverse national production. More 'electoral democracy' is likely since people have a greater incentive to vote when local and national governments have greater control over their own economies. Forms of direct and participatory democracy can also spread and become institutionalised under a localisation approach that introduces a guaranteed citizen income and re-affirms a commitment to self-determination