Taking a Citizens Perspective

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• Taking a Citizens Perspective
• John Gaventa
• IDS

Wilton Park
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Beyond Citizens as residuals

• A neo-liberal market approach citizens as
  consumers
• A state-based approach citizens as users of
  state services
• A thin democracy approach citizens as voters
• A civil society (NGO) approach citizens as
  beneficiaries of projects and programmes

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Reversing the Telescope Seeing Like a Citizen

• Sees citizens themselves as key social actors,
  rights bearers, and sources of knowledge about
  democracy building
• Asks how citizens perceive their rights and
  identities as actors for democracy and how they
  engage with the institutions that affect their
  lives.
• Taking this perspective gives us a very different
  view - in some cases the institutions being
  strengthened by external assistance are the very
  ones seen by citizens as anti-democratic

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Bringing citizens in.

• Deepening forms of democracy e.g. expanding the
  scope and quality of democratic engagement
  involves strengthening voice of citizens in
  multiple spheres, including the social, the civic
  and the political
• The spaces for citizen engagement are many, far
  more than voting. They include engagement outside
  the state (protests, collective action), with the
  state (on councils, consultations), through
  parties and through civil society.
• The spaces are dynamic, opening and closing over
  time. Citizens need staying power to move
  across them over time.

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Active citizens build democracies, not (only) the
other way around

• Citizens can contribute legitimacy,
  responsiveness, capability, accountability.
• But the challenge is how to build active
  citizens
• Citizenship is often learned outside the state,
  but with implications for the state
• Citizenship is about recognition, not only
  redistribution
• Citizenship (skills, identities, practices) are
  emergent and take time, but often transferable
  from one sphere to another
• Start from the assets of citizenship

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When citizens do engage

• Alliances with champions of democracy on the
  inside are critical.
• Work from the inside out as well as the
  outside in
• Vertical alliances that link local, national
  and global - are also important for
  strengthening democratic spaces
• Civil society actors can play a crucial role in
  both holding the state accountable and in helping
  the state regulate non-state actors

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Where is the citizen perspective in democratic
assistance?

• Where and how do those patrons of democracy
  support, hear and engage with the knowledge and
  voices of clients about their visions and needs
  for democracy building?
• Where is the support for the citizen side of the
  equation under the modalities of the Paris
  agreement?