ESRC Seminar Series Exploring Civil Society Strategies for Democratic Renewal

近几十年来，民主状况已成为全球关注的问题。在已建立的多党制中，选民投票率和党员人数似乎处于最终下降状态（Norris 1999; Pharr & Putnam 2000）。此外，自2011年在中东和北非地区蔓延的民众民主起义以来，在“阿拉伯之春”的核心国家，暴力和压迫的浪潮不断上升（Davies 2014）。最近的政府和非政府倡议显示出在地方、国家、全球和虚拟各级加强民主的力量和活力的强烈动力。从公共空间占领和“电子公民”的出现，到英国设计委员会最近在“设计民主”方面的研究，人们普遍认为，民主进程的参与可以而且应该得到改善。许多学者把民主复兴的希望寄托在一个越来越直言不讳的公民社会上；今天，它在不同的空间，以不同的方式表达了它的主张。然而，一个关键的障碍是，政府机构尚未开发出有效理解或“倾听”21世纪“多孔”政治空间中发生的各种形式的政治表达的工具。此外，虽然已经开发了各种各样的理论方法来解决公民社会活动的战略维度，但这些文献很少相互接触，并且在涉及超越“言论”的政治表达时，在理论化方面仍然存在重大疏忽。将公民社会战略与民主复兴前景联系起来的文献在范围上是有限的，通常是基于一个由领土有限的主权民族国家组成的世界的传统假设——这一模式正日益受到质疑。通过关注现有研究中的各种空白；通过促进民间社会代表、政府官员和学者之间的学习交流，我们的系列研讨会将：i)对当前世界各地经历的“民主危机”投下批判性的学术视角，ii)探索21世纪民事争议策略能够并且确实有助于改善、加强或更新民主活力的方式。我们系列研讨会的一个主要目标是建立公共和机构的能力，以有效地理解和参与新的和新转变的政治表达和主张模式；这是加强民主的关键一步。

The state of democracy has emerged as a global concern in recent decades. In established multi-party systems, levels of electoral turnout and party membership seem to be in terminal decline (Norris 1999; Pharr & Putnam 2000). Additionally, since the popular democratic uprisings which spread across areas of the Middle East and North Africa from 2011, a rising tide of violence and oppression has been witnessed across states that were at the very heart of the "Arab Spring" (Davies 2014). Recent governmental and non-governmental initiatives exhibit a strong drive to improve the strength and vitality of democracy at the local, national, global and virtual levels. From public space occupations and the emergence of 'e-citizenship' to the UK Design Commission's recent research exercise in "Designing Democracy", there is a prevailing sense that participation in democratic processes can and should be improved. Many scholars have placed their hopes for democratic renewal on a civil society that is ever more vocal; and that today articulates its claims across multiple spaces, in multiple ways. One key obstacle however is that governmental bodies have not developed the tools to understand or 'listen' effectively to the myriad forms of political expression that take place across the 'porous' political spaces of the C21st. Additionally, whilst a wide variety of theoretical approaches have been developed to address the strategic dimensions of civil society activities, these literatures have rarely engaged with one another, and there remain crucial oversights in terms of theorising when it comes to political expressions that go beyond 'speech'. Literature linking civil society strategies to the prospects for democratic reinvigoration has been limited in scope, usually resting on traditional assumptions of a world of territorially bounded sovereign nation states - a model that is increasingly contested.By attending to various gaps in existing research; and by facilitating learning encounters between civil society representatives, public officials and academics, our seminar series will: i) cast a critical scholarly lens on the current 'crisis of democracy' experienced the world over, and ii) explore the ways that civil contentious strategies of the C21st can and do contribute to improving, strengthening or renewing democratic vitality. A key aim of our seminar series is to build public and institutional capacity to effectively understand and engage with new and newly transformed modes of political expression and claim making; a crucial step in strengthening democracy.