Spaces for Change? The Politics of Participation in New Democratic Arena (Intro)

The challenge of building democratic polities where all can realize their rights and claim their citizenship is one of the greatest of our age.Reforms in governance have generated a profusion of new spaces for citizen engagement.In some settings, older institutions with legacies in colonial rule have been remodelled to suit contemporary governance agendas; in others, constitutional and governance reforms have given rise to entirely new structures.These hybrid 'new democratic spaces' (Cornwall and Coelho 2004) are intermediate, situated as they are at the interface between the state and society; they are also, in many respects, intermediary spaces, conduits for negotiation, information and exchange.They may be provided and provided-for by the state, backed in some settings by legal or constitutional guarantees and…