This paper responds to calls for a pluralist approach to accounting and accountability research. It contributes to an emerging literature on stakeholder engagement that seeks to problematise extant practice and enquiry. Based on an environmental dispute over coal mining, it analyses stakeholder engagement through the lens of agonistic democracy. We develop a framework to illustrate and analyse how democracy in action occurs within the mining dispute.

Our framework focuses on three interrelated levels: 1) the construction of the contested issue, 2) the construction of identities, and 3) the construction of spaces for engagement. Data sources include a large archive of publicly available material (published reports, online media, blogs and print media) and interviews with participants representing multiple conflicting positions. Findings indicate the tensions that exist at each of the three interrelated levels in our framework, each of which affects not only how engagement is ‘practiced’ but also how it can (and we would argue should) be researched.

We contribute to the literature by providing a framework informed by agonistic democracy to analyse multi-stakeholder engagements in contested arenas. This framework broadens and opens up analyses of accountability relationships to contests over issues, rather than take organisation-centric foci, and to means of engagement beyond rational consensus seeking and reporting. It sheds light on conflict rather than shies away from it.

本文回应了对会计和问责研究采用多元化方法的呼吁。它促成了有关利益相关者参与的新兴文献，该文献旨在将现有的实践和调查问题化。基于煤炭开采的环境争议，它通过竞争民主的视角分析了利益相关者的参与。我们开发了一个框架来说明和分析民主如何在采矿纠纷中发生。

我们的框架侧重于三个相互关联的层面：1）争议问题的构建，2）身份的构建，以及 3）参与空间的构建。数据源包括大量公开可用材料（已发表的报告、在线媒体、博客和印刷媒体）以及对代表多个相互冲突立场的参与者的采访。调查结果表明，在我们的框架中三个相互关联的层面中的每一个层面都存在紧张关系，每一个层面不仅影响参与的“实践”方式，而且影响如何（我们认为应该）对其进行研究。

我们通过提供一个以竞争民主为依据的框架来分析多方利益相关者在竞争领域的参与，从而为文献做出贡献。该框架拓宽并开放了对问责关系的分析，以针对问题进行争论，而不是以组织为中心的焦点，以及超越理性寻求共识和报告的参与方式。它揭示了冲突，而不是回避它。