Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation (2015, NYU Press)

Edited by Caroline W. Lee, Michael McQuarrie, and Edward T. Walker
Foreword by Craig Calhoun

Contributors: Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Emily Cummins, Ernesto Ganuza, Nina Eliasoph, J. Matthew Judge, Daniel Kreiss, Caroline Lee, Isaac Martin, Michael McQuarrie, David Meyer, Aaron Panofsky, Francesca Polletta, Amanda Pullum, David Schielfer, Steven Vallas, Edward Walker

Opportunities to “have your say,” “get involved,” and “join the conversation” are everywhere in public life. From crowdsourcing and town hall meetings to government experiments with social media, participatory politics increasingly seem like a revolutionary antidote to the decline of civic engagement and the thinning of the contemporary public sphere. Many argue that, with new technologies, flexible organizational cultures, and a supportive policymaking context, we now hold the keys to large-scale democratic revitalization. Democratizing Inequalities shows that the equation may not be so simple. Modern societies face a variety of structural problems that limit potentials for true democratization, as well as vast inequalities in political action and voice that are not easily resolved by participatory solutions. Popular participation may even reinforce elite power in unexpected ways. Resisting an oversimplified account of participation as empowerment, this collection of essays brings together a diverse range of leading scholars to reveal surprising insights into how dilemmas of the new public participation play out in politics and organizations. Through investigations including fights over the authenticity of business-sponsored public participation, the surge of the Tea Party, the role of corporations in electoral campaigns, and participatory budgeting practices in Brazil, Democratizing Inequalities seeks to refresh our understanding of public participation and trace the reshaping of authority in today’s political environment.

“Democratizing Inequalities is a timely and provocative compilation that demonstrates how participatory practices across a range of expected and unexpected locations cut both ways—opening up avenues for citizen engagement while also limiting the democratic potential assumed to follow. The chapters in this volume are a welcome empirical corrective to celebratory discourses of citizen participation, and the book is certain to be an important resource for researchers and practitioners interested in the democratic possibilities of the ‘new public participation.’” -Debra Minkoff

“This is an exceptionally timely volume, consistently strong in its individual contributions and coherent in its collective analysis. Democratizing Inequalities both defines a major question for contemporary politics—how and why does political participation matter—and advances a convincing contrarian argument. This volume and the questions raised within highlight a vital conversation about political theory and policy that is likely to be with us for many years.” -Elisabeth Clemens

http://www.amazon.com/Democratizing-Inequalities-Dilemmas-Public-Participation/dp/1479883360