The purpose of the article is to present a new model of participation in development, corresponding to contemporary social, economic and cultural conditions. Classical theoretical findings and their respective conceptual categories lead to the final construction of the model. Evolutionism provides the term of social role and places participation in the field of tensions between the individual and the system. Modernization facilitates linking inclusion in development to the type of will, i.e. intention to participate. Finally, the dialectic makes it possible to capture the underlying dynamics of the process, and also to identify the collective category of participation, which seems to be represented by a contemporary social movement. It is that movement which acts as the axiological basis of social change and becomes the value-normative layer of development, through which that development can be characterized as a process of co-creation and joint participation, in which one participates biographically, reflectively and inter-subjectively.