Gaventa, John2025-04-252025-04-252005-11-28Gaventa, John. (2005). Seeing Like a Citizen' Re-claiming citizenship in a neoliberal World.http://192.9.200.215:4000/handle/123456789/513The paper examines how various working groups have analyzed poor people's roles as citizens across different countries. It focuses on the dynamics of citizen-state relationships, highlighting how neoliberalism reshapes citizenship and state responsibility. It contrasts approaches like market-based, state reform, and civil society-led strategies with the "citizenship-based approach," which emphasizes citizens' perspectives in claiming rights. The discussion includes the weakening of the state, the rise of market actors, and the emergence of new spaces for citizen engagement at local, national, and global levels. The focus is on understanding citizenship as a participatory, rights-bearing concept that transcends institutional designs.Five years ago this month, many of us gathered at the University of Sussex for the first time to Launch the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability. In a draft concept note developed at the time we had argued, 'if development assistance is to be effective in meeting the poverty targets, new approaches, which attempt to rebuild the concept of citizenship and the ways in which citizens influence and contribute to more responsive and accountable institutions, are absolutely critical. In the proposal for future work in March 2001 we went on to say: If poverty is to be alleviated, new attention must be paid to the relationships between poor people and the institutions which affect their lives. To do so requires re-examining in different development contexts contemporary understandings for rights and citizenship and their implications for related issues of participation and accountabilityenNeo-liberalismDemocracyParticipatory CitizenshipSocial MobilizationCitizen-State RelationsWorking Paper