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Residents are often excluded from contractual negotiations, which limits their influence over development projects. In this article, I explored four cases in Hamburg and New York in which residents succeeded in negotiating agreements on developments in their neighborhoods. The aim of this study was to understand how residents can harness agreements to bend development processes toward their goals. In each case, various types of agreements were used. The agreements differed in terms of neighborhood benefits, planning, monitoring, flexibility and enforceability aspects. The benefits of each project to the respective neighborhood were first assessed by an organization that represents residents or involves individual residents. Next, each project was monitored through oversight committees or by providing reports to representatives of the neighborhood. The agreements in three of the four cases were relatively rigid. Lastly, the contracts were designed by the parties involved to include penalties or mitigation processes if parties failed to perform their obligations. This research project contributes to the body of literature on contractual governance and participatory democracy by showing how agreements are designed when residents are involved in negotiation processes. This study shows that contracts can be used as accountability mechanisms and enhance residents’ influence over development projects in their neighborhoods.

This article provides an explanation for how increased public participation can paradoxically translate into limited democratic decision-making in urban settings. Recent sociological research shows how governments can control participatory forums to restrict the distribution of resources to poor neighborhoods or to advance private land development interests. Yet such explanations cannot account for the decoupling of participation from democratic decision-making in the case of planning for climate change, which expands the substantive topics and public funding decisions that involve urban residents. Through an in-depth case study of one of the largest coastal protection projects in the world and drawing on global scholarship on participation, this article narrates the social production of resistance to climate change infrastructure by showing how the state sidestepped public input and exercised authority through appeals to the rationality of technical expertise. After a lengthy participation process wherein participants reported satisfaction with how their input was included in designs, city officials switched decision-making styles and used expertise from engineers to render the publicly-supported plan unfeasible, while continuing to involve residents in the process. As a result, conflict arose between activists and public housing representatives, bitterly dividing the neighborhood over who could legitimately claim to represent the interests of the “frontline community.” By documenting the experience of participants in the process before and after the switch in decision-making styles, this article advances a sociological description of public influence in policy: The ability for participants in a planning process to recognize their own input reflected in finished plans.

In theory, participatory democracies are thought to empower citizens in local decision-making processes. However, in practice, community voice is rarely representative, and even in cases of equal representation, citizens are often disempowered through bureaucratic processes. Drawing on the case of a firearm discharge debate from a rural county’s municipal meetings in Virginia, I extend research about how power operates in participatory settings. Partisan political ideology fueled the debate amongst constituents in expected ways, wherein citizens engaged collectivist and individualist frames to sway the county municipal board ( Celinska 2007 ). However, it was a third frame that ultimately explains the ordinance’s repeal: the bureaucratic frame, an ideological orientation to participatory processes that defers decision-making to disembodied abstract rules and procedures. This frame derives its power from its depoliticization potential, allowing bureaucrats to evade contentious political debates. Whoever is best able to wield this frame not only depoliticizes the debate to gain rationalized legitimacy but can do so in such a way to favor a partisan agenda. This study advances gun research and participatory democracy research by analyzing how the bureaucratic frame, which veils partisanship, offers an alternative political possibility for elected officials, community leaders, and citizens to adjudicate partisan debates.

Transparency in public universities, from the perspective of the Access to Information Law (LAI), allows to reaffirm their purpose as entities focused on the production of knowledge, in addition to strengthening participatory democracy and social control, insofar as information is disseminated dynamic and proactive way to the real interested parties: the people. The objective of this study was to examine how the process of implementing active public transparency established by the Access to Information Law occurred and what measures were necessary to comply with the legislation at the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO). The case study, consisting of documentary research and the application of a questionnaire-type instrument, revealed that the introduction of LAI at UNIRIO required a series of organizational adaptations at the institution. The successful implementation of transparency was conducted by specific working groups that provided an effective access portal to information and compliance with legislation is made possible by the establishment of a permanent transparency commission, with the participation of managers and employees who collectively build culture University transparency program.

In the process of the parliamentarisation of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon took a further step forward by introducing into the founding treaties - Article 17.7 TEU- the need to take into account the elections to the European Parliament for the appointment of the President of the Commission. Nevertheless, the European Parliament has been trying to impose its interpretation of Article 17.7 TEU, which has been coined into the Spitzenkandidaten doctrine, according to which the head of the party winning the elections should be elected as Commission President. The Parliament succeeded in imposing its vision with the occasion of the appointment of Juncker in 2014. Nevertheless, by not proposing Manfred Weber, the leader of the most voted party in the 2019 elections, as President, the European Council has prevented the consolidation of the 2014 precedent. Article 17.7 of the TEU also expresses the desire to bring the European elections closer to the citizens, so that their opinion is taken into account when the President of the Commission is elected. And it seems that both the results of participation in 2019 and the perception of the voters show that the Spitzenkandidaten system has been useful for that purpose. In any event, I consider that the fact that citizens voted in the 2019 elections in the belief that their votes would be decisive in appointing the President of the Commission and, in the end, it was not elected an Spitzenkandidaten as head of the Commission, is a very serious lack of consideration for citizens. Received: 03 February 2021Accepted: 25 March 2021

This article introduces this special issue on Participatory Democracy and Inequality, identifying both the primary claims made by the modern iteration of participatory democracy, as well as the mai...

The existing literature suggests that people living in areas exhibiting high levels of deprivation approach democracy in a distinctive way. Participation in electoral politics in these areas is lik...

Resumo Neste artigo se analisa o efeito da democracia na produção da cidade, tendo como caso a particular experiência de Porto Alegre pós-Constituição de 1988. Analisa-se a relação Estado-sociedade civil através das instituições participativas estabelecidas. A análise foca na experiência do Orçamento Participativo (OP), e tem-se, como método, a análise de discurso de documentos oficiais, legislação, atas; e a etnografia política, a partir da observação em rodada de assembleias do OP e do Conselho do OP. Estabelece-se um quadro da experiência democrática, a saber: 1) democracia-participativa (1989-2004); 2) liberal-governança (2005-2016); e 3) ultraliberal-mercado (2016-). Distintas formas de democracia que incidem nas dinâmicas de produção da cidade. Abstract This article analyzes the effect of democracy on the city's production, taking into account the particular experience of Porto Alegre after the 1988 Brazilian Constitution. The state-civil society relationship is analyzed through established participatory institutions. The analysis focuses on the experience of participatory budgeting (PB) and the method is the discourse analysis of official documents, legislation and minutes, and political ethnography, through the observation of PB assemblies and Council. A framework of the democratic experience is established, namely: 1) participatory democracy (1989-2004); 2) liberal governance (2005-2016); 3) and ultraliberal market (2016-), representing the different forms of democracy that affect the production dynamics of the city.

Colombia, como Estado Social de Derecho que es, se rige por una filosofía y unos principios propios de la democracia participativa con fundamento en la Constitución de 1991; esto trajo consigo toda una serie de roles y herramientas para garantizar la participación de los ciudadanos en la gestión pública. Con la participación ciudadana el gobierno busca que los ciudadanos ejerzan vigilancia, acompañamiento y control a las diferentes acciones de funcionarios e instituciones públicas donde intervenga la autoridad gubernamental. Es por esto que a diario se dialoga más sobre lo público, derivando esto en iniciativas y estrategias jurídicas y políticas para garantizar la participación del ciudadano. Esta idea de hacer partícipe de la gestión pública al ciudadano encuentra un apoyo fundamental en los medios de comunicación. El rol de los medios es tan fundamental como herramienta para propiciar la participación ciudadana que no es un exabrupto afirmar que si la información de las decisiones públicas no le llega apropiadamente a la ciudadanía, debido a falencias o deficiencias en cómo una administración pública utiliza los medios y canales de comunicación, podría cuestionarse hasta qué punto se puede hablar de una democracia realmente participativa. Por todo esto, resulta de vital importancia en una sociedad democrática gozar de un escenario mediático plural, donde existan todas las voces y fuentes posibles para que la verdad y el poder no supongan una fusión. Colombia, como Estado Social de Derecho que es, se rige por una filosofía y unos principios propios de la democracia participativa con fundamento en la Constitución de 1991; esto trajo consigo toda una serie de roles y herramientas para garantizar la participación de los ciudadanos en la gestión pública. Con la participación ciudadana el gobierno busca que los ciudadanos ejerzan vigilancia, acompañamiento y control a las diferentes acciones de funcionarios e instituciones públicas donde intervenga la autoridad gubernamental. Es por esto que a diario se dialoga más sobre lo público, derivando esto en iniciativas y estrategias jurídicas y políticas para garantizar la participación del ciudadano. Esta idea de hacer partícipe de la gestión pública al ciudadano encuentra un apoyo fundamental en los medios de comunicación. El rol de los medios es tan fundamental como herramienta para propiciar la participación ciudadana que no es un exabrupto afirmar que si la información de las decisiones públicas no le llega apropiadamente a la ciudadanía, debido a falencias o deficiencias en cómo una administración pública utiliza los medios y canales de comunicación, podría cuestionarse hasta qué punto se puede hablar de una democracia realmente participativa. Por todo esto, resulta de vital importancia en una sociedad democrática gozar de un escenario mediático plural, donde existan todas las voces y fuentes posibles para que la verdad y el poder no supongan una fusión.

This paper examines the impact of local participatory democracy initiatives on individual voter turnout in ordinary elections, using the example of participatory budgeting (PB). Such initiatives often aspire to create more activated citizens, but there is still limited empirical research validating these claims. We link participants in New York City’s participatory budgeting process to their state voter file records to test whether PB increases participants’ likelihood of voting in regular elections. We use coarsened exact matching to identify similar voters from council districts where PB was not implemented. Comparing PB voters to similar individuals who were not exposed to PB, we find that engaging with participatory budgeting increased individuals’ probability of voting by an average of 8.4 percentage points. In addition, we find that these effects are greater for those who often have lower probabilities of voting—young people, lower educated and lower income voters, black voters, and people who are the minority race of their neighborhood.

Angola quando se tornou independente a 11 de Novembro de 1975, instaurou um regime político não democrático, um sistema monopartidarista inspirado pelo marxismo-leninismo. Porém, após os acordos de Bicesse, o país transitou de um sistema monopartidarista para multipartidarista, permitindo então a instauração de um regime democrático e a realização das primeiras eleições, isto em 1992. Este processo permitiu inscrever Angola no bloco dos países democráticos. Mas apesar destes acontecimentos, o regime democrático angolano ainda apresenta nos dias de hoje muitas insuficiências e constrangimentos, no que diz respeito a sua factibilidade, razão pela qual este artigo procura fazer um estudo a respeito da participação política dos cidadãos no contexto democrático de Angola, com fundamento teórico do contrato social de Jean Jacques Rousseau e da teoria da democracia participativa. Trata-se de uma pesquisa descritiva, de modelo qualitativo. Para recolha de dados baseou-se na pesquisa bibliográfica e documental, na técnica da observação e da entrevista semiestruturada. Os resultados obtidos levam a concluir que o regime democrático angolano, bem como o seu modelo de governação, limitam a participação política da sociedade civil.

This article describes and characterizes the current state of citizen participation at the municipal level in Chile, taking as reference the law 20.500. The objective is to identify the main factors that are influencing the dynamic disparate of implementation of the law, based on a study conducted in fifty-two municipalities. It is argued that there are municipalities that meet minimum participation standards, but in the great majority it has not been gravitating. Some reasons that would be influencing this dynamic, they are the low incentives of the law to incorporate citizen participation in municipal management, the excessive dependence on the political will of mayors to initiate it, the municipal financial precariousness to sustain it. The main conclusion is that the contributions of the law to municipal participatory democracy have been low, persisting a representative local democracy of low intensity and associated with exclusively procedural aspects.

Lafont argues for a participatory version of deliberative democracy that shares key features with other contemporary approaches, while departing from them in decisive ways. It is based on the Rousseauian–Kantian idea of democratic self-legislation, interpreted as the idea that citizens must be able to see themselves as the authors of the laws and public policies to which they are subject. She insists that her specification of the ideal of democratic self-legislation is a general one, aiming to appeal to readers with different understandings of the core democratic values of equality, freedom and democratic control. This is questionable. I show that she interprets the democratic ideal of freedom as a distinctive, normatively robust conception of citizen self-determination. Those drawn to travel with her on the long participatory road should be aware of this and ready to explore the implications. By downplaying the distinctiveness and normative robustness of her idea of freedom, she does her model a disservice.

O presente estudo objetiva apresentar a importância institucional do Conselho Empresarial do Sul de Minas – Regional Varginha (CESUL – Varginha) como lócus de articulação e proposição de alternativas para o desenvolvimento regional. A nova democracia que emerge atualmente caminha para um direcionamento mais participativo e não apenas representativo e nessa seara é de fundamental importância o papel dos conselhos municipais e regionais. O artigo foi construído com base em pesquisa bibliográfica e pesquisa-ação, tendo em vista a participação direta dos autores na constituição e implementação do CESUL. Os resultados demonstram o importante papel desse conselho na consolidação de um ambiente de debate regional, a constituição das câmaras temáticas, a construção das proposições por meio da “Carta do Sul de Minas”, bem como, a realização de parcerias nacionais e internacionais. Salienta-se como crítica e proposição de melhoria que o conselho aumente seu enraizamento regional permitindo uma maior fundamentação na sociedade sul-mineira. Palavras-chave: Conselho empresarial. Desenvolvimento regional. Sul de Minas. Democracia participativa.

Responding to the crisis of democracy, legislatures worldwide are developing new participatory mechanisms to promote parliamentary engagement and provide additional opportunities for citizens to influence policymaking. Yet despite the prevalence of such initiatives, little is known about whether political elites are receptive to public input. This article addresses this important gap, presenting original research that examines the e-petition system in the United Kingdom’s national legislature. It demonstrates significant apathy – on occasion, antipathy – on the part of Westminster’s elected MPs. In particular, it reveals concerns that parliamentary e-petitions risk undermining the relationship between MPs and their constituents; inundating the parliamentary agenda with immediate, but not necessarily important, issues; and exacerbating misunderstandings of the parliamentary process. More broadly, political elites remain sceptical about the capacity of parliamentary e-petitions to address the democratic divide, with a widespread sense that e-petitions often amplify the voices of those who already shout the loudest.

In this article, I examine the textual underpinnings of participatory Confucian democracy and Confucian meritocracy and propose realist Confucian democracy as an alternative following a balanced reading of classic Confucianism. I argue that Confucian plebeian values do not square with the political meritocrats’ (Daniel A. Bell and Tongdong Bai) advocacy for meritocratic rule while Confucian elitist values undermine participatory democrats’ (Sor-hoon Tan and Stephen Angle) ardor for justifications of active democratic participation. A shared difficulty with both groups is that they tend to overuse one aspect of Confucianism while leaving the status of other elements in limbo. The discussion of participatory democracy and meritocracy is followed by the introduction of an eclectic reading that strikes a dynamic balance between elitist and plebeian values in Confucianism, and which points to the wide gamut of realist democracy that combines democratic election with strong leadership.

This article uses participatory budgeting as an entry point to explore the relationship between race, citizenship, and participatory democracy. Drawing on theories of racial neoliberalism, I arguet...

Many democratic theorists assume the value and importance of widespread citizen participation. Many even endorse participatory democracy. I offer an original critique of participatory democracy and...

After over 2 decades of military dictatorship Brazil became a democracy in 1988. The Participatory Budget was formally introduced in Porto Alegre under the leadership of the Workers’ Party in coalition with pro-democracy social movements. Interest in participatory budgeting is continuing to grow. Participatory Budgeting has now been instituted in over 1500 cities worldwide. In this study it has been aimed to introduce the basic criteria of participatory budgeting and to examine the factors affecting success in participatory budgeting. The sample of New York City, which is highly compatible with the factors we are dealing with, is analysed and the participatory budgeting process and its results are analysed.

The participation of young adults in performance-oriented music ensembles can be seen to enhance democratic capacities and virtues. Much, however, turns on the particular conception of democracy at work. Although contemporary currents in music education tend towards models of liberal and participatory democracy to govern music ensembles, this essay contends that demanding epistemic democracy allows performance-oriented music ensembles the achievement of democratic virtues without sacrificing excellence as a central regulatory ideal. The inclusion of both men and women is shown to be particularly significant in this light. Central to its democratic epistemic ambition, the role of the conductor is considered in the last section of this article.

Participatory democracies find it increasingly difficult to navigate the diverse voices within the public realm because of the rapid pluralisation of modern societies. Contemporary political discourses in South Africa on issues such as land redistribution are a vivid reminder of this. This essay asks, how do we ensure that public discourse between civil groups and governmental agencies remains constructive and conducive to the framing of good policies? How do we avoid the poisonous and brutal verbal wars that often captivate the public realm? I argue that social actors who engage in policy formation need a moral grammar, a shared attitude, an ethos of social discourse that sets the basic parameters for public deliberations. In an effort to develop such a grammar and to contribute to some agreement on the matter, we have to draw from positive resources in our religious, political and philosophical traditions. Utilising resources within the Reformed tradition, I claim that public discourse is a form of symbiotics, a ‘gifts exchange’, where social imaginaries trade resources, goods and capacities considered as useful and necessary to the common benefit of all. Moral public deliberations require participants to display the attitudes of respect for human dignity and principled toleration. Lastly, the essay identifies truth-seeking and public justice as the basic commitments that ought to guide political deliberations. The article concludes by applying the proposed moral grammar to the South African setting.

RESUMEN El gran reto de la democracia moderna es la institucionalización de la par ticipación. Desde la década de 1990, así lo han entendido distintos países latinoamericanos, que han llevado a cabo procesos constituyentes en los que la participación ocupa un papel esencial. Entre todos ellos, la Constitución colombiana de 1991 resulta pionera. Su constitucionalización de la partici pación marcó un camino que han seguido otros países de la región. Pero la participación es un derecho que depende de su desarrollo. En los treinta años transcurridos desde su aprobación este concepto se ha ido consolidando en Colombia a través de las leyes estatutarias de desarrollo y la jurisprudencia de la Corte Constitucional. Así se ha ido configurando un sistema participa tivo, complementario a la democracia representativa, donde el derecho de participación ocupa un papel fundamentalmente instrumental de refuerzo a la consecución de otros derechos fundamentales, de control y, en general, de fortalecimiento de la legitimidad de la democracia. ABSTRACT The great challenge of modern democracy is the institutionalization of partici pation. Since the 1990s, this has been understood by different Latin American countries that have carried out constituent processes in which participation plays an essential role. Among all of them, the Colombian Constitution of 1991 is pioneering. Its constitutionalization of participation marked a path that other countries in the region have followed. But participation is a right that depends on its development. In the thirty years since its approval, this concept has been consolidated in Colombia through development laws and the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court. Thus, a participatory system has been formed, complementary to representative democracy, where the right of participation plays a fundamentally instrumental role in strengthening the achievement of other fundamental rights, control and in strengthening the legitimacy of democracy.

This paper examines the mediating effect of democracy in explaining the relationship between decentralization and government size for the period 1970–2013. We proxy decentralization by fiscal decentralization, use total spending as our primary measure of government size and adopt the V-Dem high-level democracy indices as measures of democracy. Our main finding is that the relationship between fiscal decentralization and government spending differs under different types of democracy. From the interaction term, the negative effect of fiscal decentralization diminishes as the democracy level gets higher, particularly for participatory democracy irrespective of whether government size is measured by spending-to-GDP or employment.\ud \ud

In a democracy what people think matters. Political philosophers are mostly democrats. They often justify deliberative and participatory democracy. And yet when it comes to philosophizing they ofte...

Los imaginarios de la democracia admiten variaciones en tipos y modelos. En este trabajo se presenta el análisis de las respuestas a un cuestionario, proporcionadas por una muestra de 1 097 ciudadanos nuevoleoneses sobre distintos aspectos del comportamiento electoral. Se incluyen, entre otras cosas, interpretaciones y evaluaciones de algunos modelos de democracia. Los datos fueron recogidos en una encuesta aleatoria por muestreo domiciliario, llevada a cabo durante las tres primeras semanas de junio de 2018 y patrocinada por la Comisión Estatal Electoral de Nuevo León. Los modelos corresponden a la democracia electoral o representativa, a la democracia participativa, a la democracia asamblearia y a la democracia delegativa. Lamentablemente, las conclusiones no son muy novedosas y ratifican las deficiencias en la construcción de conceptos atingentes entre los electores, en este caso, de la población de Nuevo León, México.

A partir d’une enquete de terrain monographique dans un village francais, ce texte montre ce qu’une innovation politique doit a la position sociale de ceux qui la portent. La campagne electorale, puis la mise en place d’une gestion municipale collegiale et participative, constitue a bien des egards une opportunite de se distinguer pour une petite bourgeoisie culturelle. Bien que ses discours pronent une autre facon de faire de la politique, les logiques sociales maintiennent malgre tout a l’ecart les classes populaires.

The Icelandic constitutional movement was created to address and develop a new constitutional form based upon transparency, responsibility and participation. Taking into consideration the events, which took place in 2008 this expectation appeared more than legitimate. Furthermore, the quality of the debate, which took place within the civil society and in the cooperation between civil society and Constitutional Council, are very meaningful elements supporting a genuine possibility of change. The aim of implementing a participation-based constitution may lead to the diversification of the Icelandic project with respect to the typology of the existing constitution. This may produce as a result the development of new checks and balances. For this reason the development of public local services may be an opportunity to develop a social balance with respect of the constitution in force, as well as a living constitution starting from below. In this way the values purported by civil society may lead to higher levels of political freedom and finally to the approval of a new constitution. To keep the Icelandic process communicatively open in a transnational perspective may thus permit other persons to contribute to the development of Icelandic democracy. It may furthermore offer the Icelandic example as a useful tool that could be used by many world societies aiming to implement transparency, responsibility and participation in their public life. Indeed, even though the Constitutional Bill of 2011 will not finally be validly approved as the Icelandic constitution, the problems that it posed, and the possibilities that we see are stemming from them, have in our opinion a general importance for constitutional reflections.

Digitalisation has changed the very way we live, work and think. Today we live in a world where the ‘virtual’ has drastically and rapidly overtaken the ‘real’ and governmental controls. It has weakened territorial, racial, religious and other identities. We are living in a world where global forces are simultaneously binding and tearing us apart. Earlier people connected with others at the familial, work and community levels, but with the advent of globalisation and technological innovations, we find cyberspace replacing the places of conviviality with ‘virtual’ communities. The article seeks to explore the emerging trends in digitalisation of democracy in the wake of paradigm shift from representative to participatory democracy in general and explore the prospects of women’s political participation in India. India happens to be the second most populous country, biggest democracy and largest market for social networking. It also seeks to explore the reasons for low access to political space by women in India despite being one of the five telecom giants worldwide and argues how women can use the in-between space provided by digital technologies for deconstructing prevailing authoritarianism in a patriarchal society and consumerism rampant in their cultural environment. The methodology adopted is analytical, comparative and empirical.

Heiner Goebbels’s works are examples of “postdramatic” theatre works that engage with the political by seeking to challenge socially ingrained habits of perception rather than by presenting traditional, literary-based theatre of political didacticism or agitation. Goebbels claims to work toward a “non-hierarchical” theatre in the contexts of his arrangement of the various theatrical elements, in fostering collaborative working processes between the artists involved, and in the creation of audience-artist relationships. In offering a reading of Goebbels’s “no-man show” Stifters Dinge, this paper seeks to situate Goebbels’s practice within a theoretical tradition that also encompasses Hannah Arendt’s deployment of the theatre as a metaphor for the public sphere. Within this analysis, I suggest, theatre can be seen to offer the possibility of a participatory democracy through its attention to disappearance and absence.

Since re-democratisation, Brazil has experienced a slow but continuous process of urban reform, with the introduction of legal and institutional developments that favour participatory democracy in urban policy. Legal innovations such as the City Statute have been celebrated for expanding the ‘right to the city’ to marginalised populations. While most studies examine the struggles of the urban poor, I focus on middle-class citizens, showing how such legal developments have unevenly affected the ways in which different social groups are able to impact the production of urban space. The two cases explored in this study concern residents’ struggles to preserve their middle-class neighbourhoods against change triggered by projects related to the hosting of the 2014 World Cup in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The first looks at the Musas Street residents’ fight against the construction of a luxury hotel in their neighbourhood, while the second examines the Pampulha residents’ struggle against the presence of street vendors and football fans in their streets. My findings show that through the articulation of legal discourses, middle-class claims on the need for preserving the environment and the city’s cultural heritage are legitimised by the actions of the local state. The article thus looks beyond neoliberalism, showing that socio-spatial segregation and inequality should not be regarded solely as the product of state–capital alliances for engendering capital accumulation through spatial restructuring, but also as the result of the uneven capacities of those living in the city to access the state resources and legitimise certain forms of inhabitance of urban space.

This article reflects on one experiment that grounds the politics of World Social Forum in national and regional struggles. Nepal has now built a dynamic but fragile democratic process after a deca...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce the reader to the Nordic tradition of Critical Utopian Action Research (CUAR) and to demonstrate how CUAR might reinvigorate participatory democracy as an intrinsic characteristic of social enterprise. This leads us to sketch out the beginnings of how researchers might work with communities to help realise their democratic impulses through social enterprise. Design/methodology/approach This paper aims to synthesise the participatory action research literature, particularly CUAR, with literature on social enterprise and democracy to demonstrate how the two approaches might fruitfully be combined. Findings The authors show how CUAR might be utilised by researchers, to articulate new social enterprise organisational responses to local problems or to reinvigorate democracy within existing social enterprises. Originality/value This exploratory paper marks (we believe) the first attempt to bring together social enterprise and CUAR.

Efforts towards so-called participatory democracy, deepening of democracy, or participation to include those excluded locally or even nationally have been a key element in the discourse of progress...

With the rise of social media in Sub-Saharan Africa, citizen-led organizations in countries such as Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana have embraced crowdsourcing for domestic election monitoring, at a time when holding competitive elections has proven insufficient to ensure democratic elections. Yet, while existing literature focuses on the contrast between crowdsourcing and traditional monitoring, the effects of crowdsourced election monitoring on the transparency and quality of elections remain unaddressed. This paper makes a comparative analysis of elections in Nigeria from 2003-2015, framed within Sub-Saharan Africa, supported by a dataset of election monitoring deployments. Findings show that, in Nigerian elections where crowdsourcing was used, higher levels of election transparency were registered based on the introduction of the concept of participatory democracy and its practical application. This would, then, contribute to more peaceful and democratic elections. This research also sheds some light on the benefits of domestic election monitoring for citizen engagement.

O vertente artigo se assenta numa análise crítica do constitucionalismo contemporâneo à luz dos diversos modelos presentes em outros países, tendo como escopo principal avaliar sua influência e interferência na consolidação do processo democrático. Para tanto, parte-se da metodologia analítica documental, onde diversos extratos e títulos bibliográficos são investigados, com a formação, ao final, de uma síntese conclusiva. Justifica-se o presente arrazoado na carência de abordagens sobre o objeto dessa pesquisa, o constitucionalismo, à luz de um confronto com outros modelos existentes e que venham a colaborar com a formação de uma sólida base para a consolidação do Estado Democrático de Direito. É certo que numa democracia de participação popular, esta representa o ponto de convergência de toda e qualquer atividade estatal e, por tal, se faz a necessidade de delimitar-se seus contornos. Com a problemática posta e após o desenvolvimento da pesquisa, adianta-se, numa conclusão principal, que o modelo pautado na democracia participativa perfaz melhores condições para que uma quantidade significativa de instrumentos sociais sejam disponibilizados para a efetividade dos direitos e das garantias fundamentais numa ordem constitucional.

This article discusses the trajectory of project implementation in the development of the Hatirjheel lake area in Dhaka, which involved forced relocation and socio-economic deprivation for most project-affected people. It raises questions over the extent to which such processes need to be seen as state-induced violations of basic justice, asking whether more justice-focused management of such projects is becoming an unrealistic expectation in an increasingly crowded Bangladesh. The article discusses the socio-political dynamics and community-related issues affecting different stakeholders during the implementation of the project. Despite the official presence of participatory planning techniques, the forceful imposition of the development plans and the drastic ramifications of forced land acquisition are shown to have violated basic principles of good governance. It is suggested that less violent and more inclusive approaches are possible despite resource scarcities and that lessons can be learned from such experiences for the future.

The article analyzes the problems that exist at the final stage of the decentralization reform, which, in particular, are related to the need, firstly, to stimulate the process of consolidation of territorial communities through the possible application of appropriate administrative methods, and, second, to eliminate competition between executive authorities and local authorities self-government in solving local development issues; thirdly, the application in municipal practice of such a management scheme that would ensure conditions for the participation of all members of the community in solving issues that are covered by the legislation to the sphere of local self-government. The purpose of the article is to highlight some of the issues that need to be addressed at the final stage of decentralization reform and to formulate a recommendation on improving the mechanisms of municipal governance in OTG using participative democracy tools. The authors separately stop at highlighting the factors constraining the use of different forms of participatory democracy as important tools that ensure the participation of members of the united territorial communities in the mechanism of municipal governance. Attention is drawn to the need for organizational and legal support for the implementation of the requirements of the Additional Protocol to the European Charter of Local Self-Government on the right to participate in matters of local government in the process of functioning of the united territorial communities. Taking into account the experience of European countries, proposals are made to improve the system of local self-government, and the role of statutory law for the development of such a system is indicated. It is concluded that the decisive role in creating legal mechanisms for the provision of local partisipative democracy is, as it seems, statutory law - the statutes of territorial communities that are of particular importance for the OTG. Such assertion is due to the peculiarities of the territorial organization of the OTG, which usually includes a significant number of settlements, and sometimes also all of them within the limits of the corresponding area.

This exploratory study examines union-civil alliances in New Zealand (NZ). It focuses on the involvement of NZ’s peak union body, the Council of Trade Unions, in three civil group coalitions around the Living Wage Campaign, Decent Work Agenda and Environmental Agenda. It assesses how the CTU and its affiliates’ coalition involvement are informed by and seek to progress liberal (representative), participatory and/or more radical democratic principles, and what this means for organizational practice; the relations between the coalition parties; workplaces; and beyond.Through case discussions, the study finds that civil alliances involving the CTU and its affiliates do not reflect a core trait of union activity in NZ. Among the union-civil alliances that do exist, there is a prevailing sense of their utility to progress shared interests alongside, and on the union side, a more instrumental aim to encourage union revival. However, the alliances under examination reflect an engagement with various liberal and participatory democratic arrangements at different organizational levels. More radical democratic tendencies emerge in relation to ad hoc elements of activity and the aspirational goals of such coalitions as opposed to their usual processes and institutional configurations.In essence, what emerges is a labour centre and movement which, on the one hand, is in a survivalist mode primarily concerned with economistic matters, and on the other, in a position of relative political and bargaining weakness, reaching out to other civil groups where it can so as to challenge the neo-liberal hegemony. Based on our findings, we conclude that Laclau and Mouffe’s (2001) view of radical democracy holds promise for subsequent coalitions involving the CTU, particularly in the context of NZ workers’ diverse interests and the plurality of other civil groups and social movements’ interests. This view concerns on-going agency, change, organizing and strategy by coalitions to build inclusive (counter-) hegemony, arguing for a politic from below that challenges existing dominant neo-liberal assumptions in work and other spheres of life., Cette étude prospective évalue les accords entre syndicats et groupes civils en Nouvelle-Zélande (NZ). Elle se concentre sur la participation du Conseil des syndicats néo-zélandais (Council of Trade Unions-CTU) aux trois coalitions relatives au salaire minimum vital, au travail décent et au programme environnemental. Elle examine trois courants d’idées (soit la démocratie libérale, la démocratie participative et la pensée radicale) dans le cadre de ces coalitions auxquelles le CTU et ses syndicats affiliés participent, ainsi que leur signification au niveau des pratiques syndicales, des relations entre les participants de la coalition, des milieux de travail et, enfin, de la société en général.Grâce à ces études de cas, nous constatons que les coalitions civiles auxquelles participent le CTU et ses affiliés ne constituent pas des traits déterminants des activités syndicales en Nouvelle-Zélande. Parmi les alliances existantes, un sentiment domine quant à leur contribution au progrès des intérêts communs, mais, du côté syndical, un but davantage orienté vers le renouveau du syndicalisme prédomine. Toutefois, les alliances étudiées traduisent un engagement envers divers principes démocratiques à différents niveaux de l’organisation. Pour leur part, les tendances radicales émergent grâce aux activités ad hoc et aux objectifs recherchés par ces alliances, et non pas par leurs procédés ou configurations institutionnels. Fondamentalement, il appert que le mouvement syndical s’efforce, d’une part, de survivre en se concentrant sur les salaires et les conditions de travail, et, d’autre part, étant donné sa position de faiblesse, il tente de tendre la main aux groupes civils dans le but de contrecarrer l’hégémonie néo-libérale. À partir de nos observations, nous concluons que le concept de démocratie radicale de Laclau et Mouffe (2001) pourrait être prometteur dans le cadre de futures coalitions auxquelles participerait le CTU, particulièrement sur le plan des divers intérêts communs partagés par le syndicalisme et les autres groupes civils. Cette vision concerne, notamment, les engagements moraux, le changement social, l’organisation et la stratégie des coalitions visant à bâtir une contre-hégémonie basée sur une participation qui va du bas vers le haut et qui pourrait, ainsi, venir contrecarrer les thèses néo-libérales dominantes dans les milieux de travail et dans les autres sphères de la vie., Este estudio exploratorio evalúa las alianzas entre sindicatos y grupos civiles en Nueva Zelandia (NZ). El estudio se concentra en la implicación del Consejo de sindicatos neo-zelandeses (Council of Trade Unions - CTU) en tres coaliciones en torno a los temas del salario mínimo vital, el trabajo decente y la agenda del medio ambiente. Se examina hasta qué punto la participación del CTU y de sus afiliados en la coalición se inspira de los principios de tres corrientes de ideas, esto es, la democracia liberal, la democracia participativa y el pensamiento radical. Se aborda igualmente, la significación de dichas influencias a nivel de la práctica organizacional, de las relaciones entre participantes de la coalición, de los medios de trabajo y de la sociedad en general.Gracias a estos estudios de casos, se constata que las coaliciones civiles a las cuales participaron la CTU y sus afiliados no constituyen una característica central de la actividad sindical en Nueva Zelandia. En el seno de las alianzas existentes, domina un sentimiento respecto a su contribución al progreso de los intereses comunes, pero, del lado sindical, predomina un objetivo más instrumental de promover la renovación sindical. Sin embargo, las alianzas estudiadas traducen un compromiso con los diversos principios de la democracia liberal y participativa a diferentes niveles de la organización. Por su lado, las tendencias más radicales emergen gracias a actividades ad hoc y a las aspiraciones formuladas por las alianzas en oposición a los procedimientos habituales y las configuraciones institucionales.Aparece de manera fundamental, que el movimiento sindical se esfuerza, de un lado, por sobrevivir concentrándose en los trabajadores asalariados y las condiciones de trabajo, y, de otro lado, dada la posición de debilidad el intenta tender la mano a los grupos civiles con el objetivo de desafiar la hegemonía neo-liberal. A partir de estas observaciones, se concluye que el concepto de democracia radical de Laclau y Mouffe (2001) podría ser prometedor en el marco de futuras coaliciones a las cuales participaría el CTU, particularmente en el plano de diversos intereses comunes compartidos por el sindicalismo y los otros grupos civiles. Esta visión concierne, especialmente, los compromisos morales, el cambio social, la organización y la estrategia de coaliciones con miras a construir una contra-hegemonía inclusiva que fomente una política que va de abajo hacia arriba y que podría ser capaz de desafiar las concepciones neoliberales dominantes en los medios de trabajo y en las otras esferas de la vida.

This article analyses negotiations on democracy promotion by looking at the case of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. It argues that Venezuela contested the concept of representative democracy...

Right to Information (RTI) is a formidable tool in the hands of responsible citizens to fight corruption and ensure transparency and accountability within a participatory democracy. The RTI Act was promulgated in India in October 2005, and has fundamentally changed the power equation between the government and citizens. T.his chapter examines the contribution of the Act, in particular playing a significant role by providing information necessary to combat corruption in India. It is also noted, however, that RTI is not an unmixed-blessing as it is seen how costly it has been for zealous investigative journalists.

The characteristics of participatory institutions can be articulated in three main dimensions – input, process and output. The common assumption is that a dependency relationship exists, with process serving as a mediator between input and output. This paper puts this model to a rare empirical test drawing on a unique dataset of a mix of objective and subjective data on 70 Spanish advisory councils, a relatively ubiquitous form of public participation, often overlooked in the desire to study “democratic innovations”. Through a combination of exploratory factor and path analyses, we analyse the dimensionality of input, process and output and investigate the direct and indirect impact of inputs on process and outputs. Our analysis provides evidence that input factors have a direct impact on the output factor transparency, but its impact on effects on policy and participant satisfaction is mediated by the process factor deliberation. Finally, our findings indicate the extent to which the capacity of the public administration to steer the advisory council – the process factor wardship –mediates negatively the impact of input variables on transparency. Our analysis provides a nuanced account of how different input and process design characteristics of participatory institutions have profound direct and indirect effects on their outputs.

Se presenta una investigación sobre la evolución del Presupuesto Participativo en España, desde su aparición a principios del siglo XXI hasta la actualidad. El Presupuesto Participativo es una metodología de gestión pública y democracia participativa en la que la ciudadanía, en un espacio de diálogo y deliberación, decide sobre una parte del presupuesto municipal. El estudio parte de los modelos propuestos por Ganuza y Francés (2012) y se centra en las experiencias de las “Grandes Ciudades”. Los resultados indican el surgimiento de un nuevo modelo, al que hemos denominado “instrumentalista”, con menos espacios deliberativos y en el que las tecnologías son el mecanismo participativo predominante. We present a study about the evolution of Participatory Budgeting in Spain, from its appearance at the beginning of the 21st century to the present day. Participatory Budgeting is a methodology of public management and participatory democracy in which citizens, in a space of dialogue and deliberation, decide on a part of the municipal budget. The study starts from the models proposed by Ganuza and Francés (2012) and focuses on the experiences of the “Big Cities”. The results indicate the emergence of a new model, which we have called “instrumentalist”, with fewer deliberative spaces and where technologies are the predominant participatory mechanism.

This essay looks to Thomas Jefferson and John Dewey, as well as a contemporary political theorist, Kevin O'Leary, for some guidance in confronting the present crisis in American democratic norms and practices-including that swirling around issues of public health.

El diseño de sistemas de evaluación de la gestión pública es fundamental para el fortalecimiento de la democracia, desafiando a los gestores públicos a construir estrategias para sistematizar y comunicar los efectos logrados por el ejercicio del buen gobierno. Los resultados expuestos en este libro consolidan la participación de la Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana-Bucaramanga y la Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga, en el Programa Bucaramanga Metropolitana Cómo Vamos?, en su capítulo “Bucaramanga Concejo Cómo Vamos”, y con ello contribuye al seguimiento de la labor del Concejo y a medir el desempeño de los concejales, evaluando sus resultados y el impacto sobre la participación ciudadana y el ejercicio de la cultura política. El sistema de evaluación se consolidó con el trabajo de un equipo multidisciplinar conformado por investigadores de cuatro universidades de la ciudad de Bucaramanga.