Fragmented Communities and the Challenge to Democracy

Abstract

In Chapter 6 we sought to extend and develop existing models of citizen participation and control to provide a framework from which to consider how, in practice, the balance between citizens and the local state could be shifted in favour of the former. Although the framework we offered may, to many readers, have seemed quite complex, in one crucial way it was too simple. For in counterposing the power of ‘the citizens’ or ‘the people’ with that of ‘the state’, we draw attention away from the fact that ‘the people’ themselves are not a homogenous block, but highly differentiated. Within the context of local civil society, these differences find expression in the patterns of interaction occurring between the many communities which are contained in a given locality, communities which are not only diverse but often in conflict.