Democracy in Action

Abstract

Around the globe citizens are leading practical experimental civil society efforts to solve complex problems in areas such as crime and punishment, energy, care, environmental conservation, planning, food security, and substance use. This book casts light on these spaces of citizens' governance and draws out their potential benefits and risks for democracy. Drawing on more than 30 case studies from diverse regions and policy domains, the book shows how citizens in these bottom-up initiatives often interconnect their governance work with public and private sector actors; while keeping their agency, they draw resources and authority on the one hand, and model innovation and change on the other. The book renders more visible the citizen motivations, associational form, knowledge production, and democratic work of these spaces, and considers key lessons they hold for boosting and deepening political participation in modern systems of democracy. Citizen spaces reset expectations for citizen action and break down conventional understandings of crystalized divisions of labor in governance between citizen, official, and market. Show more