Introduction

During the past two decades, many societies have seen an accelerating movement towards the idea that children should participate in public affairs and have a voice in relation to decisions that affect them. Enshrined in Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), this notion has gathered both general support and efforts at practical implementation. Indeed, it has become part of the rhetorical orthodoxy, even among those such as the current English government, which has been a generally unenthusiastic proponent of children's rights. For example, five years ago the Children and Young People's Unit (CYPU) was established to develop a ‘joinedup policy’ in this area and stated that:

The burden of our argument in this chapter is that research (and indeed wider discussions) of children's participation have, in the main, been too isolated from the debates about participation in general. That body of work, it is true, refers almost entirely to adult participation. Nevertheless, we believe there is much that those concerned with children's participation can learn from it.

An important prima facie case for linking the research literatures on adults’ and children's participation comes from considering how they both form part of a larger pattern of social change. The emergence of children's voice is, in part, the product of a more general shift in institutional practice that has affected children and adults alike. It is a sociological commonplace to remark that we live in a period of rapid social change. Theorists such as Beck (1992) and Giddens (1990, 1991) argue that this has eroded and fragmented once taken-for-granted institutions and has led to a new sense of uncertainty and risk. A widespread response to (and subsequent cause of) this destabilisation has been the installation of techniques of reflexivity into institutional practice. Reflexivity, it is argued, is needed in order to create the more responsive and flexible institutions demanded by the conditions of late modernity. The rise in calls for participation and the summoning up of the voice of a multitude of actors is the result. Political parties poll voters and conduct focus groups.