From Innovation to Convention: Legitimate Citizen Participation in Local Governance

In governance structure legitimacy is required not only of the governing system, local authorities or public organisations but also of other participants, including citizens. The legitimacy cannot be judged either by traditions of representative democracy or by innovative theories of deliberative or participatory democracy. The article analyses scientific publications on citizen participation in local governance. It asks how empirical studies on local sustainable development planning (SDP) and New Public Management (NPM) practices construct legitimate citizen participation. In general, studies on citizen participation have not conceptualised the relations between citizens and power holders as questions of legitimacy. However, the studies approaching citizen participation in the local processes of SDP and NPM include various empirical, theoretical and normative arguments for citizen participation. These arguments recognise, accept and support particular activities, arguments and outcomes of citizen participation, and include and exclude agents and issues. They construct and reflect the definition of legitimacy in the local governance. As constructed by scientific texts, justifications for citizen participation reproduce a discursive structure in which citizen participation becomes marginalised and citizens’ views excluded. The results illustrate that discursive structures of legitimate citizen participation support conventional governing practices and hinder innovative practices in local governance.     

Can the World Bank Build Social Capital? The Experience of Social Funds in Malawi and Zambia

Social funds have been one of the main manifestations of the World Bank's move toward promoting projects with a participatory orientation. Supporters of social funds argue that participation in social fund activities builds community social capital. Critics of the Bank's use of social capital argue that it ignores power structures but these critics have focused on the Bank's research rather than its operations. This paper examines ‘social capital’ in a project context: social funds in Malawi and Zambia. In contrast to the model of collective action suggested by proponents of social funds, it is shown that the nature of community participation is indeed shaped by existing power and social relations. Project identification and execution is led by a small number of people in the community, usually the head teacher in cooperation with the PTA and traditional authorities. The community is then mobilised using the traditional structures of village headmen. Most community members participate actively in making bricks, but passively in decision making. However, this process should be seen as an institutional adaptation to what social funds offer, not elite capture. Most community members are satisfied with the outcome, although the chosen project is not what they would have chosen themselves. Given these processes, social funds do little to build social capital but instead, appear to be users of existing social capital.     

The Influence of Direct Democracy on Political Interest,Electoral Turnout and Other Forms of Citizens’ Participation in Swiss Municipalities

Based on the data of a survey conducted among Swiss municipalities, this article inquires into the relationship between different institutional settings of local democracy and the amount of political interest of citizens as well as electoral participation and new forms of citizen participation like participatory planning or local agenda 21. The study identifies six distinct settings of local democracy in Switzerland, ranging from pure direct democracy to representative democracy. The analysis shows that the institutional setting of local democracy has no impact on the political interest of the citizens. It also reveals that instruments of direct democracy do not significantly weaken representative democracy as far as electoral participation is concerned. New forms of citizen participation are predominantly used alongside with means of direct democracy.     

Re-Engaging Citizens and Councils: The Importance of the Councillor to Enhanced Citizen Involvement

This article results from a number of research projects exploring councillor attitudes towards citizen participation and the role of the party group in local democracy. It considers how the cornerstone of the local government modernisation agenda – reengaging citizens and communities with the councils that represent them – rests on councillors' responses to an increased participatory element in local representative democracy. Citizens wishing to influence local political decision-making have a number of methods available to them. It is not whether citizens see these tools as effective methods of influencing their councillors that matters; rather that councillors, as holders of power, view them as providing citizens with a clear and legitimate ability to influence the political processes and are thus willing to be influenced by their use. The article shows that the councillors political affiliation is an indicator of attitudes towards citizen participation in local political decision-making.     

Regime Responsiveness to Basic Needs: a Dimensional Approach

Despite a considerable amount of research over the last three decades, an unequivocal conclusion regarding democracy’s impact on social outcomes has not been reached. This paper attempts to enhance understanding of the impact of political regimes on social outcomes by applying a dimensional approach. Unlike previous studies, which have focused on the overall effect of democracy, this paper separates the dimension of elite competition from the dimension of popular participation and tests their relative effects on the satisfaction of basic needs. Cross-national statistical tests demonstrate that effective participation has a positive effect on need satisfaction, whereas excessive competition has a negative impact. Theoretical explanations of these different impacts are provided. It is argued that the best way to understand the relationship between democracy and social outcomes is to realize that democracy’s overall effect might conceal the existence of opposing effects of its component parts. This finding suggests more nuanced ways of reforming political systems that bypass the possible trade-off between democratization and social development.     

Strategic bureaucracies: transnational funding and mundane practices of Ghanaian local governments

The influence wielded by international development actors in Global South bureaucracies remains enormous. These actors actively shape the policy-making practices and funding of local state bureaucracies. Nevertheless, local bureaucracies have become adept at strategically appropriating that influence to their own benefit and to appear legitimate in order to exact development funds for their everyday tasks. Empirical data from two local self-governing areas in Ghana show that attempts towards gaining legitimacy are not only influenced by self-interest but also by external development funds seeking to promote the performance of the local state. Despite numerous institutional changes to enhance participation, the daily tasks of the local political structures tend rather to focus on assessments and qualification for development funds. Although these funds add to the local resource pool, at the same time they inhibit the realisation of the local state’s grandiose promise of reforms promoting participatory development.     

In participatory budgeting we trust? Fairness,tactics and (in)accessibility in participatory governance

ABSTRACT

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a significant innovation in democracy and local development. PB provides the opportunity for citizens to engage in processes of deliberation and decision-making upon the allocation of public funds. As new critical discourse emerges surrounding this model of local government spending, a significant area warranting investigation concerns how trust, and indeed mistrust, factor into PB. Through an analysis of interviews with residents and Council staff engaged in PB processes in a county in the north of England, we highlight the ways in which issues of trust can impact on participation in these initiatives, and also strengthen relationships between voting delegates, project teams and local government. This paper argues that increasing the perceived accessibility, and reconsidering the inclusion of mass membership groups in PB, might help to create progressive, effective and trustful participation.     

Participatory development and empowerment: The dangers of localism

Recent discussions in development have moved away from holistic theorisation towards more localised, empirical and inductive approaches. In development practice there has been a parallel move towards local ‘participation’ and ‘empowerment’, which has produced, albeit with very different agendas, a high level of agreement between actors and institutions of the ‘new’ Left and the ‘new’ Right. This paper examines the manifestations of this move in four key political arenas: decentralised service delivery, participatory development, social capital formation and local development, and collective actions for ‘radical democracy’. We argue that, by focusing so heavily on ‘the local’, the see manifestations tend to underplay both local inequalities and power relations as well as national and transnational economic and political forces. Following from this, we advocate a stronger emphasis on the politics of the local, ie on the political use of ‘the local’ by hegemonic and counter-hegemonic interests.     

Modernisation or Backward Step? Women Councillors and New Decision-Making Structures in Local Government

Following the 1997 general election New Labour took power with a commitment to ‘modernising’ government, including local government. This modernisation was based upon a variety of approaches including the introduction of new decision-making structures, improving local democracy, improving local financial accountability, creating a new ethical framework for councillors and council employees and improving local services. It is with the first two of these and their potential impact upon women councillors that this article is concerned. It analyses past evidence on women's participation in local government in the UK and examines the impact of the new political structures on progression to senior posts in local government.     

Political-Administrative Relations in Collaborative Environmental Management

One of the central ideas of liberal democracy is to ensure broad-based citizen participation in the governance process that goes beyond simply voting. However, evidence shows that on many occasions it has been failing to do so both in the developed and developing countries. As such, this paper, based on an empirical study, analyzes the scopes, forms, and nature of citizen participation in the urban local governance process in Bangladesh. It is found that citizen participation has been nominal in the local governance process due to a number of social, political, and institutional factors, for example, electoral politics, limited citizen’s accesses to various decision-making bodies, the existence of clientelistic politics and the presence of a weak civil society.     

Indigenous Local Governments for Palestine: A Roadmap for Replacing Imposed Institutions to Build Stability and Confidence

Occupying empires and states and expatriates have imposed structures of local government in the West Bank and Gaza. As a result, Palestinians have little confidence in the existing units of local government. That lack of confidence inhibits the development of a civil society. Proposed reforms must understand the history and actions that minimized opportunities for participation and the professionalism of bureaucracies that could produce and deliver the public services needed to sustain economic and social development. Establishing a stable civil state will require bureaucratic reforms anchored in theory and an understanding of the unique past that has left more than four million residents of Palestine without the public services needed for economic and social development. All parties to a resolution of the conflicts between Israel and Palestine and between Palestinians must help build new local structures of local government; the recommended steps presented here are grounded in theroy and histroy and also based on empirical research.     

Examining Citizen Participation: Local Participatory Policy Making and Democracy

Citizen participation is usually seen as a vital aspect of democracy. Many theorists claim that citizen participation has positive effects on the quality of democracy. This article examines the probability of these claims for local participatory policymaking projects in two municipalities in the Netherlands. The article focuses on the relations between citizens and government from a citizens' perspective. The findings show that the role of citizens in these projects is limited, serving mainly to provide information on the basis of which the government then makes decisions. Nevertheless, the article argues that citizen involvement has a number of positive effects on democracy: not only do people consequently feel more responsibility for public matters, it increases public engagement, encourages people to listen to a diversity of opinions, and contributes to a higher degree of legitimacy of decisions. One negative effect is that not all relevant groups and interests are represented. The article concludes that for a healthy democracy at the local level, aspects of democratic citizenship are more important than having a direct say in decision-making.     

Local Governance and Local Democracy: The Barcelona Model

Using Barcelona as a case study, this article examines the relationship between local governance and local democracy. It begins with the terms of the debate and continues by identifying the context in which a particular model of governance arose in Barcelona. The article then looks at the extent to which governance fosters democracy, by strengthening the role of civil society organisations in government and creating new spaces of deliberation between the state and the citizenry. The final section examines the limitations of Barcelona's model of local governance in enhancing local democracy. The key finding is that the predominant role of the local council in facilitating citizen participation has as many strengths as it has weaknesses. In short, when participation becomes public policy it becomes a double-edged sword.     

‘Executive ombudsman’ in an American city—a mechanism for handling complaints

Community Politics has been a political strategy of the Liberal Party, now the Liberal Democrats, since 1970. It involves a critique of traditional representational relationships and argues for a participatory democracy based upon deliberation to build consensus out of competing interests. Whilst the associated campaigning techniques have made the third party an important force in local government, this article uses new empirical evidence to assess the success of the strategy in transforming representational relationships and extending popular participation in local government. It is argued that its success in respect of these objectives has been limited, principally because of popular disenchantment with political parties and the inherent tensions and limitations that accompany popular participation in deliberative democratic structures.     

What happens after a local referendum? The effect of direct democratic decision-making on protest intentions

Proponents of direct democracy claim that participation in decision-making stimulates future engagement. However, there is also evidence showing that participation is lower in systems that provide comparatively more opportunities for direct democratic involvement. Hence, it is unclear whether direct democratic involvement promotes or discourages other forms of political participation. In this study, the relationship between direct democratic involvement and the intention for political protest is evaluated empirically, based on data that was gathered in the scope of a local referendum in Belgium. Unique two-wave panel data from before and after the referendum is complemented by qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with local policymakers and citizens. While the findings generally support the claim that direct democratic involvement fosters future participation, there is no indication that the relationship is mediated by political efficacy. Apparently, the theory of participatory democracy is also useful in societies that have little experience with direct democratic decision-making.     

Peace building and the depoliticisation of civil society: Sierra Leone 2002–13

Over the past two decades there has been a rapid increase in funds for local civil society actors in fragile states. Current peace-building and development efforts strive for the recreation of a vibrant, active and ‘liberal’ civil society. In the case of Sierra Leone, paradoxically, this growing support has not strengthened civil society actors based on that liberal idea(l). Instead of experiencing enhanced proactive participation stemming from the civil sphere, Sierra Leone’s civil society appears to be largely depoliticised. Drawing on empirical data gathered over the past four years, this article offers three interrelated causal explanations of why this phenomenon occurred during the country’s peace-building phase from 2002 to 2013. First, Sierra Leone’s civil society landscape has become instrumentalised to serve a broader liberal peace-building and development agenda in several ways. Second, Western idea(l)s of participatory approaches and democracy are repeatedly challenged by the legacies of colonial rule and socially entrenched forms of neo-patrimonialism. Third, abject poverty and the lack of education affect activism and agency from below.     

Participatory Initiatives and Political Representation: The Case of Local Councillors in Sweden

The health of political parties and the institutions of representative democracy have been extensively questioned during the last decade due to evidence of a widespread decline in voting turnout, political trust, and party membership as well as identification. An often-proposed, but also often-questioned, strategy to strengthen representative democracy is for political institutions to offer alternative forms of political participation through so-called participatory initiatives. The literature suggests that participatory initiatives will have little impact on representative democracy if no adaptation among political representatives is apparent. This paper explores the consistency between participatory initiatives in Swedish municipalities and the attitudes, practices and role-taking of local councillors, comparing pioneer municipalities where extensive numbers of participatory initatives have been executed vis-à-vis hesitator municipalities where few initiatives have been implemented. The study indicates that local participatory initiatives may stimulate political representation by creating new channels for citizen input and communication between citizens and representatives that are supported by local councillors in the pioneer municipalities. However, the core roles of parties and councillors in representative democracy appear not to be challenged by these initiatives, being similar in both groups of municipalities. The article is concluded by a discussion of the implications of these results for the function of participatory initiatives in local democracy.     

Substantive Participation: A Model of Public Participation that Works for Citizens and Administrators

Decision-makers and affected parties engaged in solving contemporary governmental problems are recognizing that traditional decision-making strategies are insufficient. A participatory democracy approach to public participation has been offered as a potential solution to these problems; however, a more sophisticated understanding of this approach is needed. This study defines a more substantive brand of public participation, identifies barriers to its implementation, and provides recommendations for implementation. Models of substantive participation should empower and educate all stakeholders, reeducate public administrators, and establish new administrative structures and processes. These objectives as well as a discussion of particular barriers to substantive participation are outlined.     

Decentralisation and recentralisation in the historical development of the local government system in zimbabwe

Local government as an institution constitutes one of the many resources at the disposal of central government for achieving certain ends. The local government system is therefore a means directly related to some perceived ends although in certain cases it can also be pursued as an end in itself. In many countries including Zimbabwe the ends of local government are often unclear and multidimensional including the promotion of local democracy and participation in national politics and development; providing structural framework for the provision of local services, promoting local administrative efficiency and in rather few cases, providing a framework for local economic development.

In many countries local government system is used to either strengthen a top-down hierarchical approach or a bottom-up or horizontal approach to administration and national economic development. Such goals of local government inevitably result in different types of philosophy, administrative theories and strategies, decentralisation models, organisational structures, centre-local relations and the nature of powers ceded to local government by central government. The main theme of this paper is that within the context of Zimbabwe, there has been a major discrepancy between the largely territorial goals or ends to be achieved by post colonial local government transformation and its continuing functional organisation inherited from colonialism. This contradiction is described in the title as decentralisation and recentralisation.     

Culture on the Rise: How and Why Cultural Membership Promotes Democratic Politics

Selectively using Tocqueville, many social scientists suggest that civic participation increases democracy. We go beyond this neo-Tocquevillian model in three ways. First, to capture broader political and economic transformations, we consider different types of participation; results change if we analyze separate participation arenas. Some are declining, but a dramatic finding is the rise of arts and culture. Second, to assess impacts of participation, we study more dimensions of democratic politics, including distinct norms of citizenship and their associated political repertoires. Third, by analyzing global International Social Survey Programme and World Values Survey data, we identify dramatic subcultural differences: the Tocquevillian model is positive, negative, or zero in different subcultures and contexts that we explicate.