[Tps] TPS/ECPR Policy Network - New Book - Deepening debate about Deepening democracy

[navdeep]

*Triumph, Deficit or Contestation? Deepening the 'Deepening Democracy' 
Debate*
John Gaventa - 2006

ISBN 1 85864 617 0
32 pages      £12.95

IDS Working Papers - 264

Around the world concepts and constructions of democracy are under 
contestation. Some analysts see the spread of democratic institutional 
designs as evidence of democracy's triumph. Others -- across both north 
and south -- point to growing democratic deficits, and how they threaten 
democratic legitimacy. Following a review of these debates, this paper 
focuses on emerging debates within what is often referred to as the 
'deepening democracy' field, a school of thinking that focuses on the 
political project of developing and sustaining more substantive and 
empowered citizen participation in the democratic process than is often 
found in representative democracy alone. Within this 'school', the paper 
explores four broad approaches -- 'civil society' democracy, 
participatory democracy, deliberative democracy and empowered 
participatory governance -- and how they differ from one another as well 
as from 'thinner' forms of democracy associated with liberal and 
neoliberal thinking. The paper argues that democracy-building is an 
ongoing process of struggle and contestation rather than the adoption of 
a standard institutional design, and poses a series of challenges which 
future conceptual and practical work on deepening democracy may need to 
address.

Available Free at: http://www.ntd.co.uk/idsbookshop/details.asp?id=944


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://malagigi.cddc.vt.edu/pipermail/tps/attachments/20060721/a9e23054/attachment-0001.html