ESRC Seminar Series Exploring Civil Society Strategies for Democratic Renewal

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.

Our proposed ESRC Seminar Series would seek to make an impact across three principal sectors, each of which has a key stake in enhanced understanding of civil society strategies for democratic renewal:

1. Civil society actors will be able to develop improved knowledge and understanding of both the strategies available to them, and the factors which need to be taken into consideration in order effectively to apply these strategies. Prospective participants from civil society have been identified for every seminar in the case for support. The breadth of civil society actors to be brought together in this series is expansive, including not only formally organised advocacy organizations but also artists' collectives, digitally-mediated networks, and independent activists. These representatives would have the opportunity to learn from deliberation with one another, as well as from engagement with officials and academics.

2. Public officials, through the seminar series, will gain much needed insight into the ways that they might engage more effectively with civil society members in order to address the challenges to their own democratic legitimacy that have been brought about by contemporary processes of globalisation.

3. The wider public at local, national, and international levels, constitute the 'demos' that the strategies explored in these seminars are intended to serve. The general public will be engaged not only indirectly, through the civil society and public official participants in the seminars, but also directly though our extensive public engagement strategy outlined in the pathways to impact.

By bringing together stakeholders from civil society, public office, and academia, the series would provide conditions for meaningful engagement between three groups that often talk past each other. Moreover, through its critical discussion of civil society strategies for democratic renewal, it will unearth and illuminate the problems and prospects faced by publics seeking to advance political objectives across local, national, global spaces and virtual spaces.

Through deepening our understanding of the range of democratic strategies available to public officials, civil society organizations, and the general public the seminars will help equip public officials and civil society representatives to address wider contemporary challenges which they face, such as public disillusionment with institutionalized politics reflected in low voter turnout, and the increasing questions being asked in relation to the legitimacy of civil society organizations.

Our seminar series will also serve a crucial function in terms of bringing civil society actors and public officials into dialogue about the challenges that each face in engaging with the other. In this sense, our seminars will act as crucial bridges and learning spaces for non-academic actors.

The means by which civil society actors, public officials, and academics will be brought together in the seminars will extend far beyond traditional formats of seminar engagement such as presentations and commentary: as outlined in the case for support and pathways to impact, engagement will take place through experiential experiments involving novel artistic and media practices.

Moreover, each of the key stakeholders will be informed through our extensive communications strategy, which will involve both traditional and social media aimed at both civil society sectoral and general public audiences.