News and Events
Insights into the Politics of Poverty
Researchers from the Citizenship DRC presented their findings at a high-level meeting in June of policy makers hosted by the UK Department for International Development. For the event, DFID prepared a synthesis report, The Politics of Poverty: Elites, Citizens and States, which shows how research from four major DFID-funded research programmes that are closing this year is changing academic and policy thinking on governance. Also for the event, the Citizenship DRC prepared a short policy maker’s guide to the research of the Citizenship DRC entitled Putting Citizens at the Centre: Linking States and Societies for Responsive Politics.
Over the last two decades, the idea that citizen engagement and participation can contribute to improved governance and development outcomes has been mainstreamed in development policy and discourse. Yet despite the normative beliefs that underpin this approach, the impact of participation on improved democratic and developmental outcomes has proved difficult to assess. In one of the first of a series of overview papers by the Citizenship DRC, John Gaventa and Gregory Barrett analyse a non-randomised sample of 100 research studies of four types of citizen engagement in 20 countries. By mapping the observable effects of citizen participation through a close reading of these studies, they have begun to map the kinds of outcomes you might expect given particular forms of citizen engagement in different kinds of political contexts. Download the full version of So What Difference Does It Make? Mapping the Outcomes of Citizen Engagement or the executive summary of the paper.
Policy Briefing on Citizenship in Violent Contexts
Policy makers may have recognised that violence and everday insecurity are amongst the root causes of poverty, but recent initiatives have failed to account for how the poor and dispossessed often perceive the state as a perpetrator or accomplice in the violence visited upon them. For policy makers and practitioners eager to move beyond top-down approaches to reducing insecurity and violence, the Citizenship DRC has published a policy briefing on Broadening Spaces for Citizens in Violent Contexts on how local residents can be directly involved in complex environments.
Bangladesh's Paradox: A Synthesis Paper
Bangladesh has come to embody an interesting paradox. On the one hand, it has experienced rising rates of growth and a slow but steady decline in poverty. On the other hand, it has an abysmal record on governance, being ranked as the world's most corrupt country for five consecutive years by Transparency International. This paper seeks to explain this anomoly, arguing that the strategies adopted by the country's numerous NGOs have consequences for both democracy and development in the country. Download NGOs' Strategies and the Challenge of Development and Demoracy in Bangladesh.
Citizenship and Social Movements
The debates over social movements have suffered from a preoccupation with North America and western Europe, often neglecting the significance of collective action in the global South. This book – the fifth of a Zed Book series on Claiming Citizenship - seeks to partially redress this neglect with case study material from countries such as Brazil, India, Bangladesh, Mexico, South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. These examples point to the complex relationships that influence mobilisation, suggesting that previous theories have underplayed the influence of state power and elite dominance in the government and non-governmental organisations. Read more...
Citizen Action and National Policy Change
How does citizen activism win changes in national policy? Which factors help to make myriad efforts by diverse actors add up to reform? What is needed to overcome setbacks, and to consolidate the smaller victories? This book brings together eight studies of successful cases of citizen activism for national policy changes in South Africa, Morocco, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Turkey, India and the Philippines. They detail the dynamics and strategies that have led to the introduction, change or effective implementation of policies responding to a range of rights deficits. Drawing on influential social science theory about how political and social change occurs, the book brings new empirical insights to bear on it, both challenging and enriching current understandings. Read more...
Champions and Pioneers: Change from Within
One might even call it a movement. The effects from the 2007 Champions of Participation event continue to ripple out. In the last six months, there have been three new gatherings emanating from the original Champions of Participation event - one in South Africa and two in the UK - and more activities are in the works. The Champions of Participation is both an idea and a method. The idea is that within governments, there are often a few individuals striving to open the door for citizens; we have called this individuals "champions" and "pioneers" in recognition of their courage and creativity. The method is peer-to-peer learning. Read more...
PRIA Promotes Debate on Growth and Justice in India
In its most recent five-year plan, the Indian government set itself the goal of "inclusive growth": aiming for a robust 10 percent rate of economic expansion by 2012 that incorporates more women, scheduled castes and tribes and other minorities who have been left out of the country's development. The Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) is now challenging some of the basic assumptions of this plan with nearly ten years of research carried out for the Citizenship DRC that has explored how nomads, tribals (santals), and women have been excluded from basic rights of citizenship - and the implications for multi-party accountability in industrial projects. Read more...
Local Democratic Governance in Fragile Settings
How to work in fragile states is a hotly debated issue in The Netherlands, among policy makers and development organisations. At present, the discussion is focused on how to take a bottom-up approach to creating peace, security and democratic governance. John Gaventa, the Citizenship DRC's director, and Marjoke Oosterom, an PhD student, addressed this topic at a workshop in November in The Hague organised by the association PSO. Read more...
Citizen Action and Climate Change
How can collective deliberation by citizens lead to wise and timely action on climate change? Alberta will be a testing ground for this question over the next five years: an international team of scholars, NGOs, businesses, and governments led by a Citizenship DRC collaborator will be addressing it, supported by $1 million in funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and over $3 million in contributions from other sources. The research team, headed by David Kahane, Associate Professor at the University of Alberta, will seek to show how citizens can lead effective responses to climate change, and how political leaders and institutions can skilfully engage with citizens to develop policy. The project website is www.albertaclimatedialogue.ca.
As donors, policy makers and civil society organisations recognise the importance of power relations in their work, there is growing demand for better tools to understand power and respond to it strategically. A new online resource guide, powercube.net, now offers both practical methods and conceptual groundings for engaging with power. Powercube.net responds to growing requests from around the world for resources to help people think about and respond to power relations both within their organisations, and in the wider social and political issues with which they work. Launched in March 2010, it is designed as an accessible guide for both researchers and practitioners
International IDEA's New Focus on Participation
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an intergovernmental organisation with a leading role in the field of democracy promotion, has recently launched a series of new projects linked to participatory democracy. The Citizenship DRC attended a weeklong workshop in Amman hosted by International IDEA to solicit input from a range of stakeholders on how they can shape their future agenda in this area, including a greater focus on participatory democracy within its democracy assessments and new module on participation as part of its training programme BRIDGE. International IDEA also has a new programme to strengthen the ability of political institutions to deliver on development.
The Citizenship DRC has released the first of a series of short case studies that capture some of the citizen strategies documented over the last ten years of reearch. The first two sets of case studies look at citizen actions in the realms of accountability and health.
A recent event in Cape Town uniquely brought together more than 30 councillors, officials and civil society leaders who are on the front line of democracy. The Pioneers of Participation event, jointly hosted by The Isandla Institute and the African Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, carried on the tradition set by the Champions of Participation events held in 2007 and 2008 in the UK. Pioneers from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Botswana, Congo-Kinshasa, Uganda and Kenya met for a week to discuss common challenges and to share innovative solutions, and at the end of the week communicated their lessons to a panel of policy-makers including MP Stone Sizani ,Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Rural Development.
A Global Campaign with Local Roots?
The Make Poverty History campaign, which was criticised for losing touch with people in developing countries, is being followed by a new mega-campaign, complete with the ballyhoo of international football celebrities. Yet unlike Make Poverty History, which emerged opportunistically, 1 GOAL builds on the strength of the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), which began nearly a decade ago and is distinguished by its democratic approach to involving southern partners. Research by the Citizenship DRC points to the lessons from this extraordinarily successful campaign. Read more…
In the midst of violent clashes between the police and drug traffickers in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, some residents are trying to reassert control over their lives and neighbourhoods though community organising. Research by the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability looked at these grassroots efforts to counter the violence in Rio, and recently hosted politicians, government officials and civil society leaders in public debates in four favelas to encourage new policies to support the many, though inchoate, initiatives to build peace through consensus-building. Read more…
Nigeria's House of Representatives is considering a possible electoral reform that some say could deliver the country's first free and fair vote since the end of military rule a decade ago. As civil society actors unite to weigh in on the policy debate, the Citizenship DRC’s partners in Nigeria have been informing the movement at every level with lessons from their research into the state of citizenship in Nigeria. Read more…
Importing Democracy to the US
John Gaventa, the director of the Citizenship DRC, spoke to a group of more than 100 activists and experts representing different streams of democratic thought in the U.S., including five officers from President Barack Obama's administration. Speaking at the Strengthening Our Nation's Democracy conference in Washington D.C. in August, Gaventa described the innovations in democratic techniques that have emerged around the world in the past 15 years, and stressed the lessons these hold for the movement to deepen democracy in the US. The presentation was received so well that it inspired one of the gathering's final action point: to host a conference that highlights these international lessons for a US audience.
Local Workshops in Angola
Researchers in Angola have spent the recent months presenting their results at national and provincial events. In the town of Dombe Grande, where Citizenship DRC researchers have investigated the bourgeoning of a new civil society at the grassroots, representatives of local civic organisations and public institutions and traditional authorities created a photographic exhibition to recap the research process and reflect on the lessons learned. Researchers also presented their work to about 40 members of civil society groups in the province of Cuanza Sul, and at national events in Benguela and Luanda.
Building Citizenship in Bangladesh
In July, the Deepening Democracy, Building Citizenship and Promoting Participation research group at BRAC Development Institute, BRAC University, held a national dissemination seminar at the BRAC Auditorium on "Building Citizenship from Below." The seminar was attended by 270 participants, including policymakers, civil society representatives, international NGO staff, members of the donor community, researchers, activists and the media. Researchers emphasized how the distinct forms of mobilisation used by NGOs in Bangladesh lead to different kinds of outcomes for the poor.
Engaging Latin American Scholars
After presenting on various panels at the Latin American Studies Association's 2009 Congress in Rio de Janeiro, researchers from CEBRAP hosted their own seminar on the sidelines of the gathering. The seminar provided an opportunity to debate and evaluate the mechanisms of social participation that have been implemented in Latin America over the last fifteen years. Presenters drew upon results from across the Citizenship DRC's work on the challenges of democratizing politics from a citizen-centred perspective.
Who’s Fighting for National Participation in the UK?
John Gaventa, Director of the Citizenship DRC, gives a seminar on a paradox of participation in the UK. At the local level, citizen participation is flourishing. But where are the champions for citizen participation in national politics? Examples from Brazil and India suggest that civil society organisation in the UK may need to lead the charge. Listen here.
Local-Global Literature Review
This literature review is an attempt to draw together some of the insights emerging from research on how power once held by the state is increasingly fragmented among global, transnational and local actors. The review identified six main bodies of literature and attempted to identify the relevance of these distinct theoretical perspectives to how citizens perceive and engage with global processes and in turn, what impact global processes actually have on the meanings and practices of citizenship.
In an article published by Alliance Magazine, John Gaventa and Nick Benequista write about a new model for democracy promotion - one that values the innovations in democratic practices that have occurred across the globe in the last 15 years and that recognizes all nations as equal partners. Read more…
From Porto Alegre to Tower Hamlets
The experience of the Citizenship DRC suggests this: if you change how people see public policy, people will see to it that public policy changes. Shazia Hussain of the London borough of Tower Hamlets demonstrates the point. Inspired by the people she met at the Citizenship DRC-organised workshop “Champions of Participation,” Shazia has convinced her council to set aside millions of pounds for an experiment in participatory budgeting. Read more…
Nigeria: The Informal Road to Formal Democracy
After three elections all marred by vote rigging, Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua inaugurated an Electoral Reform Committee to figure out how to bring an end to the fraud. But will the country’s political classes have the will to implement the radical reforms recommended by the committee? Civil society organisations and ordinary citizens are not waiting idly to find out. Jibrin Ibrahim, Director of Nigeria’s Centre for Democracy and Development, gave a seminar on civil society’s efforts to protect the vote in Nigeria through a campaign that is boldly making the case to the public: defend your vote because your life depends on it. Read more...
New Flows of Accountability in Mexico
A reconfiguration of power relations in southern Veracruz, Mexico has occurred partly as a result of a research project supported by the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability. Read more...
Global Citizen Engagement Paper Series
A series of IDS Working Papers will be published over the coming months exploring how the diffusion of power and governance resulting from globalisation gives rise to new meanings and identities of citizenship and new forms of citizen action.
Upcoming Events
Taking Stock of Ten Years
In June, the Citizenship DRC will take part in a high-level event hosted by the UK Department for International Development to showcase the major bodies of research funded by the organisation over the last ten years. The Citizenship DRC's research will feature on panels dedicated to the topics of citizenship, rights, violence and service delivery. Participation in this event is by invitation only.
Reimagining Development
In May, Brazilian policymakers, researchers, development practitioners and indigenous leaders will gather in the town of São Gabriel da Cachoeira in the Rio Negro region of Amazonas State to discuss innovative ways to respond to the multiple crises affecting food security, energy affordability, financial stability, social development, political legitimacy and environmental sustainability. This is just one of 34 projects intended to "reimagine development" in light of the multiple crises affecting the poor.
Understanding Our Way of Working
The Citizenship DRC has won support from the Rockefeller Foundation to hold a week-long workshop at the Bellagio Center, located on the shores of Italy's Lake Como. Present and former collaborators of the Citizenship DRC will gather to discuss and reflect on the network's way of working. This is part of the Citizenship DRC's final efforts to synthesise and distill lessons from the last ten years of work. The workshop will ultimately generate a series of outputs focused on particular aspects of the the Citizenship DRC's way of working, including: methodological choices and researchers' positionality, knowledge and influence in the research process, and the iterative process of research and the collaborative culture of the Citizenship DRC as a network. More to come...