Across the world, as new democratic experiments meet with and transform older forms of governance, political space for public engagement in governance appears to be widening. A renewed concern with rights, power and difference in debates about participation in development has focused greater attention on the institutions at the interface between publics, providers and policy-makers. Some see in them exciting prospects for the practice of more vibrant and deliberative democracy; others raise concerns about them as forms of co-option, and as absorbing, neutralising and deflecting social energy from other forms of political participation, whether campaigning, organising or protest. The title of this Bulletin reflects some of their ambiguities as arenas that may be neither new nor democratic, but at the same time appear to hold promise for renewing and deepening democracy. Through a series of case studies from a range of political and cultural contexts û Brazil, India, Bangladesh, Mexico, South Africa, England and the United States of America, contributors to this Bulletin explore the interfaces between different forms of public engagement. Their studies engage with questions about representation, inclusion and voice, about the political efficacy of citizen engagement as well as the viability of these new arenas as political institutions. Read together, they serve to emphasise the historical, cultural and political embeddedness of the institutions and actors that constitute spaces for participation. The bulletin comprises the following articles: Citizen participation in the health sector in rural Bangladesh: perceptions and reality by Simeen Mahmud; Citizenship, community participation and social change: the case of Area Coordinating Teams in Cape Town, South Africa by John J. Williams; Institutional dynamics and participatory spaces: the making and unmaking of participation in local forest management in India by Ranjita Mohanty; Brazil's health councils: the challenge of building participatory political institutions by Vera Schattan P. Coelho; Civil society representation in the participatory budget and deliberative councils of SÒo Paulo, Brazil by Arnab Acharya et al.; The dynamics of public hearings for environmental licensing: the case of the SÒo Paulo ring road by Angela Alonso and Valeriano Costa; Power, participation and political renewal: issues from a study of public participation in two English cities by Marian Barnes et al.; A sea-change or a swamp? New spaces for voluntary sector engagement in governance in the UK by Marilyn Taylor et al.; AIDS activism and globalisation from below: occupying new spaces of citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa by Steven Robins and Bettina von Lieres; Social strategies and public policies in an indigenous zone in Chiapas, Mexico by Carols Cortez Ruiz; Increasing space and influence through community organising and citizen monitoring: experiences from the USA by Andy Mott. The abstracts for each separate article can be found on http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/bookshop/bulletin/bull352.html
