The Politics of Mediation in Fragile Democracies: Building New Social Contracts through, and for, Democratic Citizenship in Angola

Abstract

It has become widely accepted that the institutions of liberal democracy have a significant, but inadequate role to play in building inclusive societies in the global south (Gaventa 2006). While acknowledging the importance of the pluralist politics it proposes, many commentators argue that liberal democracy offers ineffective and weak forms of political representation for marginalised communities. Excluded groups frequently fail to access crucial state resources through liberal democracy’s institutional and party-political processes. They often do not have the capacity to represent themselves in the formal corridors of liberal democracy and the institutions of liberal democracy, in turn, do not have the flexibility to accommodate the highly informal political practices of marginalised and unorganised people (Chatterjee 2004). As a result, for many marginalised people in the global south, the liberal state is disconnected from their everyday lives and appears to function ‘as much as an absence as a presence’ (Corbridge et al. 2005: 20).