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Robins, S, von Lieres, B & A, Cornwall
IDS Working Paper, Number 363
This paper draws on case study research conducted by members of the DFID-funded Citizenship Development Research Cent...
This paper draws on case study research conducted by members of the DFID-funded Citizenship Development Research Centre to explore instantiations of citizenship in different kinds of states, and to reflect what citizen engagement comes to imply in these contexts. Rather than seeking a unified definition of citizenship that covers all dimensions of human action, entitlement and belonging, we are interested in the everyday, and often highly contingent and improvisational, negotiations and performances through which people define and pursue their desires and aspirations. We suggest that an approach that explores diverse meanings and expressions of citizenship in different kinds of states can enrich our understanding of citizenship precisely because it proceeds less from normative claims or abstract ideals than from everyday encounters in particular contexts. Such an approach draws attention to the diverse ways in which particular subject-positions and forms of identification are articulated in the pursuit of concrete social and political projects. We begin by reviewing thinking on democratic citizenship in relation to the global South, and go on from there to dimensions and experiences of citizen engagement in different contexts.
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Leach, M & A, Cornwall
Citizenship DRC Synthesis Paper
Recent debates about citizen involvement in health have given new political currency to the promise of the Alma Ata D...
Recent debates about citizen involvement in health have given new political currency to the promise of the Alma Ata Declaration of 1978, and its emphasis on the role people can play in the design and delivery of primary health care services. This article reflects on some of the emphases and silences in these debates. It draws on a series of case studies of citizen engagement from Bangladesh, Brazil, South Africa and the UK, bringing together work on institutionalised participation and mobilization. To understand how public and citizen involvement shapes health services, this article suggests, closer attention needs to be paid to issues of representation, framing and the politics of identity and knowledge. By exploring the synergies between mobilization and invited participation, the article explores what insights might be gained into the ways people negotiate health citizenship and influence the institutions and decisions that affect such a fundamental dimension of their lives.
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Cornwall, A
OpenDemocracy (www.opendemocracy.net), 10 February
Call me romantic, but there’s something about ordinary people feeling as if they have a right to have a say about wha...
Call me romantic, but there’s something about ordinary people feeling as if they have a right to have a say about what their government does that moves me. Picture these scenes. A bus, a mode of transport used only by the poor, rolls through the countryside in northeast Brazil. We are surrounded by sugar cane plantations, scenes of some of the most brutal exploitation and inspiring activism in this region. The man in front of me reaches into his bag and pulls out a book...
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Cornwall, A
A report from the Olhar Critico project, with support by DFID, ActionAid and the Citizenship DRC
In the two decades since military rule ended in Brazil,there has been a remarkable flowering of new democratic practi...
In the two decades since military rule ended in Brazil,there has been a remarkable flowering of new democratic practices and spaces for participation. Brazil’s 1988 ‘Citizens’ Constitution’ created the legal basis for some ofthe world’s most progressive democratic institutions. Democratic innovations such as participatory budgeting (orçamento participativo) have brought Brazil to the forefront of debates on tackling democratic deficits through participatory governance. Brazil’s social movements and left-wing political parties have played an active part in this process of democratisation, engaging citizens in making demands on the state and claiming their rights, and promoting new, expanded understandings of citizenship and democracy. What lessons do Brazil’s democratic experiments offer other countries? This briefing shares some of the insights that arose from a DFID-Brazil funded project called Olhar Crítico– ‘a critical look’– that brought together activists, academics and practitioners in an innovative research process,to enquire,with a critical eye,into Brazil’s experiences with participation in governance.
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Romano, J, Shankland, A & A, Cornwall
Discussion Paper 389, joint Action Aid-IDS publication
Brazil's emergence from two decades of military dictatorship in the mid-1980s gave rise to a flowering of democratic ...
Brazil's emergence from two decades of military dictatorship in the mid-1980s gave rise to a flowering of democratic innovation. Experiences during the struggle for democracy shaped the experiments that took place over the following years to create institutions that could ensure the accountability and responsiveness of the new democratic state. Innovations in participatory governance, such as participatory budgeting and sectoral policy councils and conferences at each tier of government, provided crucibles for new meanings and expressions of citizenship and democracy. Brazil's participatory institutions have attracted considerable international attention. Academics, activists and practitioners in countries, with very different political histories and cultures of governance, have looked to Brazil for inspiration and have sought to replicate Brazil's democratic experiments in their own contexts.
Brazilian models may seem an attractive new component to include in the democracy building packages favoured by aid agencies. But, this paper suggests, the contribution that Brazil's democratic innovations have to deepening democracy, enhancing accountability and engaging citizens may lie not only in their innovative institutional design but also in what Brazilian experience can teach us about the pre-conditions for effective participatory governance. Focusing on the north and north east of the country, whose experience is under-represented in the international literature, this paper draws together insights from four extended case studies, carried out as part of a research process that brought together activists, practitioners and academics, in a collaborative study of the meanings and practices of participation and citizenship in Brazil.
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Cornwall, A
Politics & Society, 36(4): 508-31
Brazil’s health councils appear to offer inspiring examples of what Fung and Wright (2003) term “empowered participat...
Brazil’s health councils appear to offer inspiring examples of what Fung and Wright (2003) term “empowered participatory governance.” But what happens in practice? This article narrates an episode in the life of a municipal health council in northeast Brazil, in which democracy itself came under deliberation. It seeks to locate normative assumptions embedded in theories of deliberative democracy and participatory governance in everyday conduct in one of these institutions. It suggests that assessing the democratizing potential of the myriad new spaces that now populate governance landscapes the world over calls for far closer attention to be paid to power, political culture, and politics.
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Cornwall, A
London: Demos
In the UK, getting citizens more involved in different aspects of governance has become an important part of reinvigo...
In the UK, getting citizens more involved in different aspects of governance has become an important part of reinvigorating democracy. The UK government has recently put in place legislation that makes public involvement a statutory duty. In doing so, the UK falls in line with a growing number of countries around the world that have established legal frameworks for citizen participation. And in the last decade, we’ve seen growing political commitment at the highest levels to giving citizens more of a voice in the decisions that affect their lives, and to engaging citizens in making government more responsive and accountable. But the UK has a long way still to go in making this promise a reality.
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Robins, S, von Lieres, B & A, Cornwall
Third World Quarterly, 29(6): 1069-86.
Abstract: This paper by Steven Robins, Andrew Cornwall and Bettina von Lieres argues for an approach to researching c...
Abstract: This paper by Steven Robins, Andrew Cornwall and Bettina von Lieres argues for an approach to researching citizenship and democracy that begins not from normative convictions, but from everyday experiences in particular social, cultural and historical contexts. The authors consider the ways in which the terms ëdemocracyí and ëcitizenshipí have been used in the discourses and approaches taken within mainstream studies of citizenship and democracy, drawing attention to some of the conceptual blind spots that arise.
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Cornwall, A
IDS Working Paper 292
Brazil’s participatory policy councils may have gained less international attention than Participatory Budgeting. Yet...
Brazil’s participatory policy councils may have gained less international attention than Participatory Budgeting. Yet the thousands of sectoral participatory policy councils that have come into being since the early 1990s, with their hundreds of thousands of civil society representatives, are as significant a democratic innovation. As the literature on Brazilian health councils continues to grow, it has become evident that the promise of these new democratic spaces is proving less easy to fulfill than their architects might have imagined. Analysts have drawn attention to the gap between the ideals of deliberative governance and the realities of pervasive cultures of politics and the replication of embedded inequalities in conduct within these spaces. The tension between the assumptions about participation, accountability and democracy that are embedded in contemporary debates about participatory governance and deliberative democracy, and the understandings and practices of the actors who animate these institutions is under-explored in this literature, and forms the focus for this paper. Through an extended case study of an incident in the life of a municipal health council in a small municipality in the impoverished north-eastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, it seeks to explore the meanings and practices associated with democracy in this context. To do so, it deploys a technique unfamiliar in much of the literature on governance: ethnographic ‘thick description’. By evoking everyday meanings and practices of democracy in the council, the paper seeks to demonstrate the importance of locating the normative assumptions that are embedded in theories of deliberative democracy and participatory governance in lived experience in particular cultural, historical and political contexts.
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Coelho, VSP & A, Cornwall
In A Cornwall & VSP Coelho (eds) Spaces for Change? The Politics of Citizen Participation in New Democratic Arenas. London: Zed.
This book addressed one of the biggest challenges of our age: that of building democratic politics where all can real...
This book addressed one of the biggest challenges of our age: that of building democratic politics where all can realise 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 institutionalise participation and the reality of exlusion of poorer and marginalised 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 examin how the democratic potential of these new spaces might be enhanced.
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Cornwall, A
In A Cornwall & VSP Coelho (eds) Spaces for Change? The Politics of Citizen Participation in New Democratic Arenas. London: Zed
Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordere...
Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.
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Cordeiro, S , Giordano Delgado, N & A, Cornwall
In P Newell & J Wheeler (eds) Rights, Resources and the Politics of Accountability. London: Zed.
Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordere...
Due to copyright restrictions, we can only share the first three pages of this chapter online. The book can be ordered from Zed Books at www.zedbooks.co.uk/citizenship or purchased at the IDS bookstore.
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Musembi, C.N. & A, Cornwall
IDS Bulletin, 36(1)
This article seeks to explore some of the trends that have led to the emergence of todays interest in human rights. T...
This article seeks to explore some of the trends that have led to the emergence of todays interest in human rights. The grounding of rights-based approaches in human rights legislation, some would argue, makes them distinctively different to others, lending the promise of re-politicising areas of development work, particularly, perhaps, efforts to enhance participation in development that have become domesticated as they have been mainstreamed. But the label rights-based approach, other would point out, is fast becoming the latest designer item to be seen wearing and is being used to dress up the same old development issues. We ask why rights has come to be of interest to international development actors, and why now, and explore some of the implications of the shift to thinking and talking about rights for the politics and practice of development.
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Coelho, VSP & A, Cornwall
IDS Bulletin, 35(2)
Across the world, as new democratic experiments meet with and transform older forms of governance,political space for...
Across the world, as new democratic experiments meet with and transform older forms of governance,political space for public engagement in governance appears to be widening. A renewed concern with rights, power and difference in debates about participation in development has focused greater attention on the institutions at the interface between publics, providers and policy makers. Some see in them exciting prospects for the practice of more vibrant and deliberative democracy.Others raise concerns about them as forms of co-option, and as absorbing, neutralising and deflecting social energy from other forms of political participation. The title of this Bulletin reflects some of their ambiguities as arenas that may be neither new nor democratic, but at the same time appear to hold promise for renewing and deepening democracy.
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Musembi, C.N. & A, Cornwall
Third World Quarterly, 25(8): 1415-37
This paper seeks to unravel some of the tangled threads of contemporary rights talk. For some, the grounding of right...
This paper seeks to unravel some of the tangled threads of contemporary rights talk. For some, the grounding of rights-based approaches in human rights legislation makes them distinctively
different to others, lending the promise of re-politicising areas of development work - particularly, perhaps, efforts to enhance participation in development, that have become domesticated as they have been 'mainstreamed' by powerful institutions like the World
Bank. Others complain that like other fashions, the label 'rights-based approach' has become the latest designer item to be seen to be wearing, and has been used to dress up the same old development. We pose a series of questions about why rights have come to be of interest to international development actors, and explore the implications of different versions and emphases, looking at what their strengths and shortcomings may come to mean for the politics and practice of development
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Cornwall, A
DRC-IIS/UNAM, Documento de Trabajo, 1, August
Using the concept of space as a lens through which to view practices of participation, this paper seeks to explore is...
Using the concept of space as a lens through which to view practices of participation, this paper seeks to explore issues of power and difference in the making and shaping of spaces for participation in development. It examines the emergence of different kinds of space for participation in development, highlighting salient tracks and traces in previous times and their imprint on contemporary practice. It goes on to explore the dynamics and dimensions of participation in institutionalised and non-institutionalised spaces, both those of invited participation and more organically created spaces, made and shaped by people for themselves. The paper concludes that supporting the realisation of inclusive, active citizenship calls for a greater understanding of the micro-politics of participation as a situated practice. This, in turn, calls for approaches that locate spaces for participation in the places in which they occur, framing their possibilities with reference to actual political, social, cultural and historical particularities.
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Cornwall, A
IDS Working Paper 170
Around the world, there has been growing interest in ways to enhance public involvement in governance, and with it ...
Around the world, there has been growing interest in ways to enhance public involvement in governance, and with it the quality and legitimacy of democratic decision-making. The intersection of growing demands to be included with the widening of political space, in some contexts through changes in laws and policies, complement conventional models of political participation and with a new architecture of democratic practice. Whether in budgeting, policy dialogue, planning, project appraisal, poverty assessment, monitoring or evaluation, participatory alternatives to expert-driven processes have gained ground. At the same time, contextual variation in constitutional and legal framework, the forms and styles of political and civil activity, and histories of engagement with external actors, etch distinctive traces on the invited spaces that have become the new development blueprints. Using the concept of space as a lens through which to view practices of participation, this paper seeks to explore issues of power and difference in the making and shaping of spaces for participation in development.
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Cornwall, A
IDS Bulletin, 33(2)
In recent years, citizens in many countries have been on the receiving end of a wave of interest from governments, NG...
In recent years, citizens in many countries have been on the receiving end of a wave of interest from governments, NGOs, donors and lenders in ways of involving them more actively in shaping decisions that affect their lives. Innovative experiments in governance have opened up spaces for public involvement in deliberation over policies and a greater degree of control over certain kinds of resources. Levering open arenas once closed off to citizen voice or public scrutiny, these moves have helped to widen political space for citizens to play more of a part in shaping some of the decisions that affect their lives.
