The title of this special issue was chosen for two reasons. First, to re-affirm that community development has an intrinsic interest in the fostering of a democratic culture within and between communities, and between communities and state institutions. Second, we wish to explore the relationship between the politics of culture including policy analysis and policy formation, and cultural politics, those democratic and aesthetic practices that challenge mainstream democratic models We are particularly interested in the potential of community development to catalyse and nourish this relationship. Of course neither of these intentions is free of context, and specific circumstances are crucial in determining the parameters of choice and possibility. This means that there are both re-assuring commonalities and instructive differences in the responses to the title, which are presented in this issue.
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Meade et al. (2007) studied this question.