Browsing by Author "Smith, Laila. Rubin, Margot."

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    Beyond Invented and Invited spaces of participation: The Phiri and Olivia Road court cases and their outcomes
    (HRSC Press, 2015) Smith, Laila. Rubin, Margot.
    249 requires methods of public engagement that the local authorities responsible for delivery seldom have the knowledge or experience to carry out (as pointed to in Bénit-Gbaffou’s opening chapter). The result has been an increasingly frustrated public that is getting neither access to essential services nor the opportunity to engage meaningfully with the state (Bénit-Gbaffou & Oldfield 2011). The process of the public turning to the courts to hold the state to account for its enactment of socioeconomic rights has been a fascinating terrain where these governance and service delivery battles have merged into a single front. Classical legal theory argues that litigation is sought by groups because of fundamental belief in the ‘direct linking of litigation, rights, and remedies with social change’(Hunt 1990: 309). Ethnographers, such as Merry and Silbey (1984), argue that citizens turn to the law ‘when their situations or their personal, community, or economic problems seemed entirely intractable, unavoidable, and intolerable’(Merry 1990; Merry & Silbey 1984). Political opportunity theorists argue that if channels to decision-making are ‘closed’then citizens and residents will find, or invent, other methods to ensure that their voices are heard and that they are able to engage in some way with the decision-making process (Hilson 2002).