Spaces for Change?

The challenge of building democratic polities where all can realize their rights and claim substantive citizenship is one of the greatest of our age. This work reflects on what it might take for those who have often been excluded from participation to gain opportunities to influence the decisions and institutions that affect their lives.

This book addresses one of the greatest challenges of our age: that of building democratic polities where all can realize their rights and claim substantive citizenship. In recent years, innovations in governance have created a plethora of new democratic spaces in many countries. Yet there remains a gap between the intention to institutionalize participation and the reality of exclusion of poorer and marginalized citizens. Through case studies of a diversity of institutions - hospital facility boards in South Africa, a national-level deliberative process in Canada, sectoral management councils and community groups in Brazil, India, Mexico and Bangladesh, participatory budgeting in Argentina, NGO-created forums in Angola and Bangladesh, community forums in the UK, and new intermediary spaces created by social movements in South Africa - contributors examine how the democratic potential of these new spaces might be enhanced.