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Abstract
Spectacular forms of politics are proliferating and a reappraisal of political spectacle is underway. This article intervenes in debates about the constitution and value of contemporary spectacles by analysing how three, ostensibly very different, governmental, popular media and social movement participative experiments were set up and enacted. To explore the public value of making democracy spectacular, the article considers some of the fraught (but not always insidious) ways these participative events tested‐out novel forms of democratic practice.
Notes
1. E.g., Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform (Ontario), available at www.citizensassembly.gov.on.ca, accessed November 2009.
2. E.g., www.buildingdemocracy.co.uk, accessed November 2009.
3. E.g., www.deliberative-mapping.org, accessed November 2009.
4. E.g., www.climatecamp.org.uk, accessed November 2009
5. E.g., see Antony Gormley’s 2009 experiment, ‘Clay and the Collective Body’ at www.antonygormley.com, last accessed November 2009.
6. E.g., see ‘How to Live in the 21st Century’, organised by the UK political campaigning group Compass, available at www.howtoliveinthe21stcentury.org.uk, last accessed November 2009.
7. E.g., a Conservative Party (UK) proposal for a ‘crowdsourcing experiment’; see Parker (Citationn.d.)
8. E.g., ‘Democracy 2’, available at www.positech.co.uk/democracy, accessed January 2010; or ‘Budget Simulator’, available at www.budgetsimulator.com, accessed January 2010.
9. See www.americaspeaks.org, accessed January 2010.
10. Harrow Open Budget website, October 2005
11. ‘Vote for Me’ press release, 14 April 2004.
12. 4th European Social Forum website and official programme, February 2006.
13. Ibid.
14. ‘Vote for Me’, episode 1, I TV, 10 January 2005.
15. Oxford English Dictionary, available at http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50232705?query_type=word&queryword=spectacle&first=1&max_to_show=10&sort_type=alpha&result_place=1&search_id=MCxh-RUc65r-318&hilite=50232705; and http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50232706?query_type=word&queryword=spectacle&first=1&max_to_show=10&sort_type=alpha&search_id=MCxh-RUc65r-318&result_place=1, both accessed November 2009.
16. See www.buildingdemocracy.co.uk, last accessed November 2009.
17. Ibid.