The Inaugural Pacific Feminist Forum, held in Suva, Fiji in 2016. Citizens often find informal political spaces more effective than formal. Formal spaces have their own obligations which limit the possibility of genuinely engaging citizens in the decision-making process. Their mechanisms are often rigid in terms of structure and procedures which hinder the engagement of ordinary people in decision-making. Formal spaces equipped with so-called technocratic expertise may not understand the language ordinary people use. Hence citizens tend to also assemble in informal spaces to discuss their most pressing social problems.
Finally, each and every individual in informal space is regarded as equal, as opposed to in formal spaces where individuals are hierarchically placed in different rankings. These logics have been well studied in the literature of participatory governance, and have been supported by prominent thinkers of participatory and deliberative democracy. But what happens to citizen participation in a context of emerging democracy? Which informal participatory routines manage to cut through when formal spaces are difficult? How can citizen participation in informal spaces enrich the practice of participatory democracy?
Although this discussion has been proliferating across many emerging and advanced democracies alike, we identify significant gaps that can be traced through the literatures of political science and democracy studies alike, and in praxis across many political contexts.
