Title: Participation, Citizenship and Democracy: Reflections on 25 Years' of Pria
Abstract: When participation was first introduced in development discourse thirty years ago, it was seen as a marginal concept, to be piloted at small scale by non-governmental organizations. Since then, participation has been mainstreamed; and, it has been coopted to mean different things. The last decade has seen re-connections between political aspects of participation with its developmental dimensions in the framework of democracy and citizenship. Participatory democracy and active citizenship have organized principles of claiming rights and securing entitlements by the poor and the excluded. This paper traces the historical evolution of this journey of ideas, and recounts the trajectory of PRIA as a civil society actor in this period. In so doing, it poses questions for the re-imagination of democracy as an exercise of citizen power.
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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