democracy

The struggle for urban democracy – award winner!

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Mark Purcell’s article ‘The right to the city: the struggle for democracy in the urban public realm’ has been awarded the Ken Young Prize for Best Article Published in Policy & Politics in 2013.  

Mark Purcell
Mark Purcell

In a lucid and compelling contribution to Policy & Politics, Mark Purcell confronts the progressive liberal line of those who warn of the dangers of austerity and urge the (re)instatement of a welfare state. He argues that while a conventional liberal-democratic state may be more desirable than a neo-liberal state, they both fall far short of what we can and ought to imagine democratic society to be. Drawing on the work of French intellectual Lefebvre, Purcell outlines for citizens a state of ‘autogestion’ – a process and struggle where citizens both individually and collectively take control. They take control not to cede power to oligarchical state institutions or powerful state actors, but instead to co-ordinate in leaderless, non-hierarchical groups analogous to rhizomes – ‘centreless assemblages in which any point or individual can connect to any other’. Continue reading →

Crisis is not intrinsically problematic

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Originally posted on September 1st on the Crick Centre blog.

Mark Chou from the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne argues that crises aren’t necessarily bad for democracy, but can force us to think in new and innovative ways about how we organise our democratic societies.

Occupy_London_Tent

In The Confidence Trap, probably one of the most talked about books on democracy written in recent years, David Runciman tackles what he calls the history of democracy in crisis.

Like the GFC which consumed global financial markets, democracy too has been embroiled its own ‘crisis talk’ in recent years. From Britain, Australia and the United States to Egypt, Thailand and Russia, we’ve seen firsthand how vulnerable democracies – both new and established – can be. But unique as these democratic crises may feel, Runciman reminds us that they are in fact just the latest in a long line of democracies in crisis. Continue reading →

Pathways of local budgetary reform in the People’s Republic of China

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Xiaojun Yan and Ge Xin
Xiaojun Yan and Ge Xin

Xiaojun Yan and Ge Xin from the University of Hong Kong, discuss civic engagement in non-democratic states – the theme of their article now available on fast-track.

Democracies are built on civic participation; their governance depends upon the active engagement of citizens in the political processes that allow them to thrive. Indeed, generations of political scientists have studied the dynamic patterns of civic participation in democratic societies. Unfortunately, there is much less understanding of the process and substance of civic engagement in non-democratic states. This gap must be addressed, especially considering the rise in international influence and the endurance of the authoritarian regime in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Continue reading →

The recurrent struggle for real democracy

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Policy & Politics coverby Gary Bridge, Alex Marsh and David Sweeting, University of Bristol

The right to the city: the struggle for democracy in the urban public realm by Mark Purcell is available to download free during September.

In a lucid and compelling contribution to Policy & Politics, Mark Purcell confronts the progressive liberal line of those who warn of the dangers of austerity and urge the (re)instatement of a welfare state. He argues that while a conventional liberal-democratic state may be more desirable than a neo-liberal state, they both fall far short of what we can and ought to imagine democratic society to be. Drawing on the work of French intellectual Lefebvre, Purcell outlines for citizens a state of ‘autogestion’ – a process and struggle where citizens both individually and collectively take control. They take control not to cede power to oligarchical state institutions or powerful state actors, but instead to co-ordinate in leaderless, non-hierarchical groups analogous to rhizomes – ‘centreless assemblages in which any point or individual can connect to any other’.

As Purcell points out, this idea is not some abstract utopian notion of human organisation, but instead a recurrent feature of co-ordinated and democratic behaviour occurring spontaneously around the world in 2011, in sites such as Tahir Square in Cairo, Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Syntagma Square in Athens, and Zuccotti Park in New York. Rather than ‘lamenting these revelations as a failure’, we should, according to Purcell, ‘narrate the exhilaration that participant after participant reported having felt as they refused to be ruled and took on the challenge of ruling themselves… it is that joy and delight in discovering democracy and urban society that we must help to grow and spread’.

Purcell focuses on the urban public realm to develop his analysis, and his article is available free of charge in September. His is one of five contributions to the current themed issue of Policy & Politics (Volume 41, number 3, July 2013,) on ‘reconfiguring the local public realm’. This collection of papers aims to advance our understanding of local and urban governance and democracy through theoretical and empirical exploration of matters such as social movements, political participation, and institutional formation. Contributions are international, taking in global North and South, and are located both in theoretical literature and empirical analysis. Alongside Purcell’s contribution is a detailed empirical analysis of urban activism in Madrid by Andres Walliser; an examination of the potential of participatory forms of governance such as those found in Brazil to proliferate in the global south by Jeremy Seekings; a consideration of the relationships between state and civil society in Norway by Jacob Aars and Dag Arne Christensen; and, in a contribution that very much contrasts with Purcell’s, a consideration of the need on democratic grounds for powerful local government by Colin Copus, Melvin Wingfield, and David Sweeting.

Download Mark Purcell’s article here (free during September). Find out more about Policy & Politics at http://www.policypress.co.uk/journals_pap.asp