Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation

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.