A place to discuss and collaborate.

Our collaboration seeks to explore two apparently diverse phenomena that, while not new to the world of politics, appear to have taken on greater salience in recent times. These are what we provisionally term ‘unruly politics’ – understood as a public rebellion against the rule; and ‘mediation’ – understood as (often undemocratic) forms of representation of the poor and marginalised by unelected intermediaries. The hypothesis of this collaboration is that these forms of politics emerge in contexts where formal democratic representation is weak or non-existent, and speak to an underlying lack of legitimacy for mainstream forms of governance, thus creating a space to be filled by alternative and informal forms of politics.