Year: 2007
Financed by: Open Society Institute Think-Tank Fund
Language:  English

The monitoring project Shrinking Citizenship aims to attract public attention to the cases when politicians and opinion leaders attempt to limit the field of democratic citizenship arbitrarily. They do this by using intolerant and exclusionary rhetoric about minorities and NGOs, or by attempting to introduce a hierarchy of civic participation (e.g. suggesting that some forms of participatory citizenship should be guarded from 'disloyal elements'). The ability of NGOs and other civil society actors to effectively oppose the arbitrary attempts to 'shrink citizenship' depends on their ability to provide evidence-based assessment of these attempts and to mobilise public support for inclusive and participatory policy-making. In order to document this tendency and to provide reliable data for advocacy, Centre for Public Policy PROVIDUS monitors politicians' initiatives and rhetoric aimed at the 'shrinking' of participatory citizenship.

The project team monitors the media and parliamentary debates in Latvia and keeps track of legislative and policy initiatives aimed at 'shrinking' or broadening of participatory citizenship.

This is the English summary of  Interim Report (212.00 KB) on the monitoring of parliamentary debates. For further information, please contact project director Maria Golubeva (maria@providus.lv).