Understanding emerging democratic practices in the context of the wider, and changing, system of governance in which they operate poses problems for research, not least because broader concepts, such as political culture, focus on historical patterns and are not able to capture contemporary developments. We approach this problems by proposing the concept 'democratic milieu' as a focus for interpretive understanding of the way in which the structuring legacy of conventions about 'how we do democracy' interacts with the agency offered by new policy spaces and discourses about 'how we might do democracy'.
This is an electronic version of an article published in Representation: Farrelly, M. and C. Skelcher "DEMOCRATIC MILIEU: ANALYSING DEMOCRATIC PRACTICE IN THE NEW GOVERNANCE." Representation 46(2): 139 - 150. Representation is available online at: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a924492730~frm=titlelink.
