Pod Academy

Involving citizens in the governance of public services - education, housing, transport - holds out the promise of more responsive, better run and more democratically accountable services. But it is a big ask.  Many people won't have the experience, the time or the confidence to get involved. In this podcast, which was first broadcast on the New Books Network, Heath Brown talks to Daniel Altschuler about the factors that can help ensure successful participatory governance. This question has long drawn the interest of scholars in political science. The promise of increasing civic engagement through institutions that allow citizens to participate has been studied extensively, but often in urban environments. Daniel Altschuler and Javier Corrales  build on this literature in their book, The Promise of Participation: Experiments in Participatory Governance in Honduras and Guatemala, but shift to rural parts of Honduras and Guatemala. The book focuses on Community Managed Schools and the participation of paren