The world over, public institutions appear to be responding to the calls voiced by activists, development practitioners and progressive thinkers for greater public involvement in making the decisions that matter and holding governments to account for following through on their commitments. Yet what exactly 'participation' means to these different actors can vary enormously. This article explores some of the meanings and practices associated with participation, in theory and in practice. It suggests that it is vital to pay closer attention to who is participating, in what and for whose benefit. Vagueness about what participation means may have helped the promise of public involvement gain purchase, but it may be time for more of what Cohen and Uphoff term 'clarity through specificity' if the call for more participation is to realize its democratizing promise.

Unpacking 'Participation': models, meanings and practices

Debates about globalization have centered on calls to improve accountability to limit abuses of power in world politics. How should we think about global accountability in the absence of global democracy? Who should hold whom to account and according to what standards? Thinking clearly about these questions requires recognizing a distinction, evident in theories of accountability at the nation-state level, between “participation” and “delegation” models of accountability. The distinction helps to explain why accountability is so problematic at the global level and to clarify alternative possibilities for pragmatic improvements in accountability mechanisms globally. We identify seven types of accountability mechanisms and consider their applicability to states, NGOs, multilateral organizations, multinational corporations, and transgovernmental networks. By disaggregating the problem in this way, we hope to identify opportunities for improving protections against abuses of power at the global level.

Accountability and Abuses of Power in World Politics

Worldwide immigration and quests for rights by minority groups have caused social scientists and educators to raise serious questions about liberal assimilationist conceptions of citizenship that historically have dominated citizenship education in nation-states. The author of this article challenges liberal assimilationist conceptions of citizenship and citizenship education. He argues that citizenship education should be reformed so that it reflects the home cultures and languages of students from diverse groups, and he contends that group rights can help individuals to attain structural equality. In the final part of the article, he discusses the implications of his analysis for transforming citizenship education.

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Diversity, Group Identity, and Citizenship Education in a Global Age

While calls for ‘environmental justice’ have grown recently, very little attention has been paid to exactly what the ‘justice’ of environmental justice refers to, particularly in the realm of social movement demands. Most understandings of environmental justice refer to the issue of equity, or the distribution of environmental ills and benefits. But defining environmental justice as equity is incomplete, as activists, communities, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) call for much more than just distribution. This essay examines how definitions beyond the distributive in these movements can help us develop conceptions of global environmental justice. The argument is that the justice demanded by global environmental justice is really threefold: equity in the distribution of environmental risk, recognition of the diversity of the participants and experiences in affected communities, and participation in the political processes which create and manage environmental policy. The existence of three differe...

Reconceiving Environmental Justice: Global Movements And Political Theories

Justice has always been a major topic within political philosophy, but scholars in the behavioural sciences have largely avoided normative statements. After the urban uprisings of the 1960s and 1970s, however, leftist scholars adopted a critical approach that, while not specifying a concept of justice, injected a moral dimension into their work. Within urban studies, the argument of Henri Lefebvre, who defined space as a social construction and who maintained that all groups should have a ‘right to the city’, became particularly influential. During the 1990s, scholars began to be more explicit about the concept of justice. Three main approaches to urban justice were developed: (1) communicative rationality; (2) recognition of diversity; (3) the just city/spatial justice. Differences between the communicative and just city approaches revolved around emphasis on democracy versus equity, process versus outcome. I argue that democracy, diversity, and equity are the three governing principles for urban justice...

B Cruikshank

Papers

Inclusion and democracy.