About the workshop

Increasingly, policy-makers with an interest in citizen participation are turning to other countries to share experience and ideas, and researchers are working across national and regional borders in order to identify common themes and explore further potential for mutual learning. The Network on Civil Society and New Forms of Governance in Europe (CINEFOGO) aims to share knowledge and learning across Europe. As a part of this initiative, and building on its links with other networks in Europe and the South, the University of the West of England, Bristol is hosting a workshop to bring together researchers from three networks. The three networks are:

The Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability at the Institute for Development Studies in Sussex

www.drc-citizenship.org
An international network of researchers and activists exploring new forms of citizenship that will help make rights real.

Non-Governmental Public Action

 www.lse.ac.uk/ngpa
An ESRC-funded research programme focusing on public action by and for disadvantaged people, undertaken by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other non-government actors. It aims to develop existing theory, generate new empirical data and develop beneficial links between researchers and users.

CINEFOGO: the European Network of Excellence on Civil Society and New Forms of Governance in Europe: the Making of European Citizenship

www.cinefogo.org

An EU-funded network that aims to enhance the understanding of social and democratic processes, citizenship and democratic participation in Europe.

By bringing these networks together, this workshop aims to share experience on citizen participation, and to make the learning from this dialogue more widely available to policy makers, practitioners and researchers across Europe and in the South. We aim to publish papers presented at the workshop in either book or journal form.

Call for papers

We would like to invite proposals for papers focusing on citizen participation and democratic engagement. These might include discussions on: rules of inclusion, formal and informal relations with representative institutions, the outcomes of participation and mechanisms for the selection and channelling of civil society organisation; the ways in which citizens mobilise for democracy; the role of networks and others in mediating state-society relations, etc.
We particularly encourage thinking about the value of comparing experiences across the globe and papers that will raise issues for international dialogue. Authors are encouraged to link their discussion of citizen participation and democratic engagement to our broader themes:

• Methodological challenges: how can we learn from comparing experiences between North and South (or East and West)?
• How do different state actors understand or promote conceptions of participation?
• What are the challenges for citizens engaging in new governance spaces, and how do these challenges vary between countries?
• How do citizens’ strategies for participation and democratic engagement vary?
• What are the ‘dividends’ or outcomes of citizen engagement and participation for deepening democracy and achieving developmental results?

Deadline - EXTENDED

Please send a short abstract (no more than one side of A4) to joanna.howard@uwe.ac.uk by 15 August 2008.