The Limits to Citizen Power: Participatory Democracy and the Entanglements of the State

Victor Albert

ISBN 10: 0745336175 / ISBN 13: 9780745336176

Published by Pluto Press, 2016

About this Item

Can a political project exist outside of the power relations from which it is trying to emerge? In the twilight of Brazil's twenty-one year military regime, a new union movement emerged in Sao Paulo's industrial region, giving life to a new political party: the Workers' Party. The electoral success enjoyed by the party enabled it to champion a whole raft of democratic reforms and Brazil is now celebrated as a laboratory for popular and participatory forms of government. However, through analysis of the trajectory of the Worker Party's democratic experiment, the true challenge of embedding democracy inside existing state structures emerges. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, Victor Albert provides a critical analysis of citizen participation in Santo Andre, in the region of Greater Sao Paulo where the Workers' Party was founded, holding a microscope to the power relations between political appointees, public officials and local community activists. Albert also reveals how different social actors think and feel about citizen participation away from formal assemblies, and how some participants engage in what is a tenuous, and at times mutually distrustful, tactical and strategic relationship with political patrons.

Seller Inventory # 0055280

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Limits to Citizen Power: Participatory Democracy and the Entanglements of the State
• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0745336175
• ISBN 13: 9780745336176
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Today, Brazil is celebrated as a laboratory for popular, participatory forms of government. However, no political project can exist entirely outside the power relations from which it emerges. Participatory Democracy and the Entanglements of the State offers a fascinating window into the power relations between political appointees, public officials, and local community activists in a Brazil still emerging from its autocratic past. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, Victor Albert provides a critical analysis of citizen participation in Santo André, in the region of Greater São Paulo, where the Workers’ Party was founded. He explores the challenges participants face as they take part in institutions pervaded by the administrative culture of the state and how some participants engage in what is a tenuous, and at times mutually distrustful, tactical and strategic relationship with political patrons.

About the Author

Victor Albert is a postdoctoral fellow at the Digital Ethnography Research Centre, at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, in Melbourne, Australia.