Re-enchanting democracy as a mode of governance
Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: In this article, I explore the contribution of governance micro-practices to the transformative co-production of policy processes and political cultures, drawing on experiences of ‘democracy-in-action’ in the finegrain practices of spatial planning and urban policy. Following an introduction, the first section introduces the tensions which the designs and practices of programs in these fields are called upon to negotiate, and the experimentation in both fields which reaches towards more participative and ‘people-centered’ ways of working. I illustrate the challenges and potentials for such transformations through two cases of energetic civil society governance activity, one (from north east England) where old social democratic practices have lived on, and another (from central Japan) where more participative practices centered on people's daily life concerns have evolved. I then outline a conception of a participative, pluralistic, richly-informed, people-centered polity, drawing on older contrasts between elite and participative forms of democracy. I argue that, in current times in countries such as the UK, the new forms of ‘network governance’ which are appearing within and around the long-established designs and practices of representative democracy hold a potential for more people-centered forms to emerge. How far such potentials are realized, however, depends on contingent particularities and struggles. I conclude by offering a range of hypotheses about qualities to encourage in the particularities of micro-practices for those seeking to promote more progressive governance cultures and resist regressive trajectories.
Source: Critical Policy Studies
Author: Patsy Healey
Institution: Newcastle University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1983873974