ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the nature of residents’ associations and their role in different types of communities in the city of Dublin. In Irish society, as elsewhere, there is a growing interest in the role of civil society and the potential to create deeper and more embedded democratic culture and practice. In Ireland the development and strengthening of the organisations of civil society, particularly voluntary and community groups, is considered to be of importance and has been given credence by the publication of a government white paper on Voluntary and Community Activity by the Irish Government (Government of Ireland, 2000). More recently, the Democracy Commission has highlighted the centralised decision making system which prevails in Ireland as undermining the legitimacy of local democracy and militating against local participation in civic society bodies such as residents’ associations (Democracy Commission, 2004, p. 6). It is these residents’ associations that are the focus of the research on which this chapter draws. The hypothesis is that residents’ associations are one of the few ways that private neighbourhoods organize at a local level and interact collectively with the local state and that they provide a forum for community development and neighbourhood identification.
