Citizenship and agency in the context of Nicaragua’s participatory authoritarianism

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses the technologies of participatory authoritarianism (Owen 2020) and how they construct citizenship through discourses and spaces. It further analyses how marginalised citizens generate a sense of citizen agency through recognising their personal and collective agency and constructing alternative narratives. This article theorises marginalised citizenship by drawing on existing theory, and on data generated through participatory research with groups of marginalised citizens in Nicaragua. The research illuminated how ideas, experiences and expressions of citizenship are shaped by governmental discourses and invited spaces of participation, and by citizens’ own subjectivities and histories. The research employed mixed methods including document analysis, key informant interviews, and participatory methods which incorporated sequenced storytelling and collective analysis. This approach identified factors which are generative of citizen subjectivity and agency within participatory authoritarianism.