Spaces for Change?

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.

Table of Contents

Foreword - John Gaventa
Acronyms
1. Spaces for Change? The Politics of Participation in New Democratic Arenas - Andrea Cornwall and Vera Schattan P. Coelho
Part I - The Challenge of Inclusion
2. Brazilian Health Councils: including the excluded? - Vera Schattan P. Coelho
3. Spaces for participation in health systems in rural Bangladesh: the experience of stakeholder community groups - Simeen Mahmud
4. Gendered subjects, the state and participatory spaces: the politics of domesticating participation in rural India - Ranjita Mohanty
5. Social change and community participation: the case of Health Facilities Boards in the Western Cape of South Africa - John J. Williams
6. Civil organizations and political representation in Brazil's participatory institutions - Graziela Castello, Adrián Gurza Lavalle and Peter P. Houtzager
7. Inclusion and representation in democratic deliberations: lessons from Canada's Romanow Commission - Bettina von Lieres and David Kahane
Part II - The Politics of Institutionalised Participation
7. Negotiating participation in a Brazilian Municipal Health Council - Andrea Cornwall
8. Subverting the spaces of invitation? Local politics and participatory budgeting in post-crisis Buenos Aires - Dennis Rodgers
9. Participation, mutation and political transition: new democratic spaces in peri-urban Angola - Sandra Roque and Alex Shankland
10. Participation, mutation and political transition: new democratic spaces in peri-urban Angola - Sandra Roque and Alex Shankland
11. Citizen participation in South Africa: land struggles and HIV/AIDS activism - Bettina von Lieres
12. Whose spaces? Contestations and negotiations in health and community regeneration forums in England - Marian Barnes

About the Authors:

Short author blurbs
Andrea Cornwall is a Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. Her research interests include the ethnography of democracy and the politics of citizen engagement in governance.

Vera Schattan Coelho is a researcher and research group co-ordinator at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her interests centre on new forms of citizen participation, deliberation, and consultation to improve social policies and democracy.



Long blurbs
Andrea Cornwall is a Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. Her research interests include the ethnography of democracy and the politics of citizen engagement in governance. She is author of Beneficiary, Consumer, Citizen: Perspectives on Participation for Poverty Reduction (Sida Studies, 2000), co-editor of Realizing Rights: Transforming Approaches to Sexual and Reproductive Wellbeing (with Alice Welbourn, Zed Books, 2002) and Pathways to Participation (with Garett Pratt, IT Publications, 2003).

Vera Schattan P. Coelho is a political scientist. She is a researcher and project co-ordinator at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) in São Paulo, Brazil. Her interests centre on new forms of citizen participation, deliberation, and consultation to improve social policies and democracy. She is the author of numerous articles on health policy, pension reform, and participatory governance and is editor of Pension Reform in Latin America (FGV, 2003) and Participation and Deliberation in Contemporary Brazil (with Marcos Nobre, 34 Letras, 2004).