The institutional forms of liberal
democracy developed in the nineteenth century seem increasingly ill-suited to
the problems we face in the twenty-first. This dilemma has given rise in some
places to a new, deliberative democracy, and this volume explores four
contemporary empirical cases in which the principles of such a democracy have
been at least partially instituted: the participatory budget in Porto Alegre;
the school decentralization councils and community policing councils in Chicago;
stakeholder councils in environmental protection and habitat management; and new
decentralised governance structures in Kerala. In keeping with the other Real
Utopias Project volumes, these case studies are framed by an editors'
introduction, a set of commentaries, and concluding notes.
