Deliberation in the face of power: Stakeholder planning in Egypt

This paper explores how the expansion of processes of public engagement underpinned by the increasingly globalised principles of deliberative democracy depends on the presence and conscious exercise of discursive and institutional power. Using a case study of participatory planning programmes in the rural villages and smaller cities of Egypt – a context in which participation is an unfamiliar activity and governance is only nominally democratic – I address how the promotion of deliberation intersects with existing modes of governance and their underpinning institutional structures and cultural assumptions. This leads to a discussion of the potential for deliberation to contribute to broader democratisation processes, and of the nature of ‘deliberative democracy’, in politically hostile contexts. I conclude that designers of deliberative processes need to embrace the power-laden nature of all governance, and consciously ‘design in’ democratising institutional structures and discourses.