Does Agency Autonomy Foster Public Participation?

Allocation of public resources is an area in which considerations of both economic efficiency and democratic legitimacy are likely to be present. Public administrators are often blamed for being too devoted to the norms of bureaucratic ethos, such as efficiency, effectiveness, and top‐down control, and less so to the norms of democratic ethos, such as inclusiveness and bottom‐up decision making. This article examines whether managers in agencies with greater budget autonomy are more likely to include the public when allocating resources. Because participation offers an opportunity for agencies to enhance the legitimacy of their decisions, it is expected that the value of citizen input will increase with the degree of agency autonomy. Using data on the practices of citizen participation in budgeting in two state departments—transportation and environment—this study finds that agencies with a higher degree of autonomy tend to be more open to public comment than agencies with more centralized budget processes.     

From Porto Alegre to New York City: Participatory Budgeting and Democracy

Because of its popularity, there is now a large literature examining how participatory budgeting (PB) deepens participation by the poor and redistributes resources. Closer examinations of recent cases of PB can help us to better understand the political configurations in which these new participatory democratic spaces are embedded, and articulate the conditions that might lead to more meaningful outcomes. Who participates? For whose benefit? The articles in this symposium, on participatory budgeting in New York City (PBNYC), highlight both strengths and challenges of the largest American PB process. They focus less on redistribution, more on the dimensions of the process itself and of PBNYC’s successful social inclusion, new dynamics between participants and local politicians, and the subtleties of institutionalization. The symposium also reminds us, however, that contestations over meaningful participation are on-going, and that of all of PBNYC’s multiple goals, equity has proven to be the most elusive.     

Civil Society Making Political Claims: Outcries,Interest Advocacy,and Deliberative Claims

Increased citizen participation is proposed to remedy democratic deficits. However, it is unclear whether such participation improves reason‐based discussions or whether it serves mainly as a safety valve for discontented citizens. To what extent does citizen‐initiated participation involve reason‐based arguments? This study examines citizens’ reason giving based on unique data on citizens’ contacts with local authorities in Sweden. It provides support for proponents of deliberative participation, as an unexpected amount of contacts provided reasons for clearly stated positions and invitations to a constructive dialogue with authorities. There is variation across issues. More conflictual issues involve fewer intentions to participate in a reasoned exchange of arguments. The study shows that citizens deliver more reason‐based input to democratic decision making when they prepare their position in groups than when they participate as individuals. Findings are preliminary but clearly illustrate the fruitfulness of widening the research agenda on civic engagement in politics and public administration.     

Creating Civic Bureaucrats

ABSTRACT

Kirlin (1996a; 1996b) argued that big questions of public management should be placed within a democratic framework emphasizing government's role in creating “civic infrastructure.” For this study, those who build civic infrastructure are called “civic bureaucrats,” and new measures (Civic Bureaucrat Scale and subscales:civic skills, faith in the public, deliberative democracy value, civic motivation, and political system value) are used to examine which factors are associated with encouraging public servants, such as U.S. city planners, to pursue democratic processes. These measures are different from those that examine public service or public participation, and are more focused on finding public servants guided by democratic values. Variables that might influence civic bureaucrats are individual, job, work, and community characteristics. Regression results found Civic Bureaucrat levels associated with gender (being a woman), dedication to civic duty, citizens bashing government, cities’ civic capital levels, and non-competitive elections. Notably, Civic Bureaucrat levels go up when elections are less competitive, suggesting civic bureaucrats picking up the slack when democratic institutions falter. Understanding such factors sheds light on what boosts and saps the civic energies of public servants.     

Not again! Public perception,regulation, and nanotechnology

It is often argued that immediate government action regarding nanotechnology is needed to ensure that public opinion does not mistakenly view nanotechnology as dangerous, to restore public trust in government, and to increase the legitimacy of government action through increased public participation. This article questions whether governments can achieve these goals. As the world lurches toward regulation of nanotechnology, we should ask Why the rush? Can anticipatory action, perceived as the government doing something, fulfill the competing hopes to “restore trust,”“pave the way” for nanotechnology, “increase awareness,” and “satisfy democratic notions of accountability”? Or is government action more likely to increase existing divisions over nanotechnology's future?     

Ordering Stakeholder Relationships and Citizen Participation: Evidence from the Community Development Block Grant Program

Local administrative professionals typically are accountable to multiple stakeholders, including other governmental units, special interests in the business and nonprofit sectors, and citizens. How are these accountability relationships ordered? What is the position of citizens in that hierarchy, particularly the influence of citizen participation? Focusing on patterns of hearing participation and citizen impact on budgeting decisions for the Community Development Block Grant program, this statistical analysis employs ordered probit regression. The authors find that communities in which grant administrators feel most accountable to citizens for grant performance have higher degrees of citizen participation in hearings and higher levels of perceived citizen impact on budgetary processes. This relationship holds even in the presence of simultaneity between bureaucratic accountability to citizens and citizen participation. The findings point to the importance of instilling a public service ethic among government employees that places a high value on engaging as well as listening to citizens.     

Budget Control in Virginia Public School Districts

This article examines the selection and use of a budget approval technique. Specifically, two research questions are addressed: (1) Does the use of a particular budget approval method by a governmental body impact the execution of the budget? (2) What characteristics of a local government are associated with its decision to use a particular budget approval method? Both research questions are addressed by analyzing data from public school systems in the Commonwealth of Virginia, specifically, whether using categorical budget approval differs in the accuracy of budgeting versus using a lump-sum approval method. Characteristics of Virginia school districts are also analyzed according to whether any of them are likely to be associated with school districts using a particular approval method. The remainder of this article is organized as follows: the next section describes the role of budgeting control in schools; subsequent sections review Virginia school district budgeting practices, develop the empirical model used to test the hypotheses, describe the sample, analyze the results of empirical tests and discuss implications of the findings.     

Keeping warm cookies: Cultural discourses of fun talk in public participation

ABSTRACT

Declining rates of public participation in the United States of America have raised questions about the sustainability and effectiveness of U.S. democracy. Some scholars have called for making democracy fun through the use of game design to make public participation more accessible. Using cultural discourse analysis, this study explores the locally situated communication practices of a civil society organization called Warm Cookies of the Revolution that seeks to (re)imagine U.S. democracy by making public participation fun. The research employs ‘fun talk’ – a specific communication practice within public participation – as an analytical unit and finds that fun talk served as a discursive hub of emotion with radiants of meaning connected to being, acting, and relating. In contrast to those who have argued fun democratic practices should employ game design to improve public administration, participants understood fun talk as a way to introduce them to civic affairs, form relationships with neighbours, and take action to improve their communities. The article discusses implications for theories of emotion and affect in civil society scholarship.     

参与式预算与政治生态环境的重构——新河公共预算改革的过程和逻辑

新河的参与式预算为我们提供了一份从体制外自发生长到体制内有机融洽为过程,以民主理财,完善委托代理机制为主要内容,以公众参与为基础,以激活人大机制为目的,以重构政治生态环境为指归的独特的文本.通过对其的解读,试图回答公共预算改革为什么会发生在新河;如何使政府的目标函数与公众的偏好相符合;通过什么样的路径缩短委托代理链;新河预算改革的实际意义和应用价值何在;今后的指归是什么.新河的参与式预算是一个基于公众与政府之间和谐理念而设计出来的制度创新,是对传统公众与政府之间关系的一种变革.通过这样的创新和变革,树立了凡是与公众有关的事情都应让公众知道的思想,提高了预算编制的透明度和参与度,践行了治国的根本.这是一次人大与政府互动关系的良好发端,通过激活人大而对政府实行真正的制衡,是政治生态环境的重构过程,是新河参与式预算的实际意义所在.新河的阳光试验,正在为我国的公共预算改革探路,并为之积累经验,它将成为我国民主政治建设的一个新的起点.     

Bias in the formulation of local government budget problems

Government budgets are premised on forecasts of revenues and expenditures. These forecasts are subject to both stochastic error and strategic manipulation. Circumstantial evidence in the budgeting literature and in the popular media suggest that government officials routinely bias the forecasts underlying budgets. The research reported here asked three primary questions: To what extent are budget forecasts systematically biased? Why? (Are fiscal and electoral variables systematically related to the magnitude and direction of the biases?) What political and ethical difference do the biases make? From the literature and an analysis of the incentives facing politicians and bureaucrats, we developed hypotheses about budget biases. These hypotheses were tested using time series data for the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1941–1983); the City of San Diego, California (1950–1982); and the Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) School District (1946–1983). In these locales over the periods examined, budgets were systematically pessimistic; revenues were underestimated and expenditures were overestimated. The fiscal and electoral factors hypothesized to account for this pessimism are, however, very mixed in their ability to explain the biases.     

Materials and devices of the public: an introduction

Abstract

This introduction provides an overview of material- or device-centred approaches to the study of public participation, and articulates the theoretical contributions of the four papers that make up this special section. Set against the background of post-Foucauldian perspectives on the material dimensions of citizenship and engagement – perspectives that treat matter as a tacit, constituting force in the organization of collectives and are predominantly concerned with the fabrication of political subjects – we outline an approach that considers material engagement as a distinct mode of performing the public. The question, then, is how objects, devices, settings and materials acquire explicit political capacities, and how they serve to enact material participation as a specific public form. We discuss the connections between social studies of material participation and political theory, and define the contours of an empiricist approach to material publics, one that takes as its central cue that the values and criteria particular to these publics emerge as part of the process of their organization. Finally, we discuss four themes that connect the papers in this special section, namely their focus on (1) mundane technologies, (2) experimental devices and settings for material participation, (3) the dynamic of effort and comfort, and (4) the modes of containment and proliferation that characterize material publics.     

Public Capital Investment and Economic Growth in Forth Worth: The Implications for Public Budgeting and Infrastructure Management

There is a common assumption that local government investment in infrastructure stimulates private development. This article examines relationships in one southwestern city between public capital spending and city infrastructure assets and private economic activity as measured by building permit activity, permit values, and assessed property valuations. Two research questions are examined: (1) Is public investment in new capital associated with private capital formation? and (2) Is public investment associated with improvements in the property tax base? The findings hold implications for infrastructure planning, budgeting, and management. First, public and private capital spending patterns varied in tandem across several cycles, and tracking such cycles may help public managers predict short- and mid-term infrastructure needs. Second, utility capital spending is critically related to private capital formation, and may offer higher fiscal returns than other public infrastructure. Third, infrastructure capital had a strong significant effect on the assessed value of urban property, and will therefore influence the property tax base.     

Hard Lessons from Hard Times: Reconsidering and Reorienting the “Managing Decline” Literature

Does the public administration research from the late 1970s and 1980s on managing decline contain useful lessons for today's Great Recession? Do these studies serve our current research needs? Why has decline continued to be a major focus of research in generic management, but not in public administration? The answers to these questions give some clues as to a possible new, revitalized research agenda for our field. Whereas public administration often viewed organizational decline as a self‐contained set of problems requiring remedial action, generic management and sociology research on decline tended to view the topic as part of organizational phases and life cycles, linking decline to growth, stability, and change. Viewing decline as part of the organizational life cycle encourages researchers to take a longer view of organizations and their management, and thus its orientation is more strategic than reactive. Three areas of decline studies are identified as relevant irrespective of sector: (1) implications of decline for human resources management, (2) effects of decline on organization structure and design, (3) the relation of strategy and decline.     

When Will Public Officials Listen? A Vignette Experiment on the Effects of Input Legitimacy on Public Officials’ Willingness to Use Public Participation

Public officials can be reluctant to use citizens’ input in decision-making, especially when turnout is low and participants are unrepresentative of the wider population. Using Fritz Scharpf's democratic legitimacy approach, the authors conducted a survey-based vignette experiment to examine how the input legitimacy of participatory processes affects (1) public officials’ willingness to use public participation in administrative decision-making, (2) their assessment of the quality of the policy decision, and (3) their anticipation of popular support for the policy outcome. The study shows that turnout and participants’ representativeness have a positive and significant effect on public officials’ attitudes toward public participation. Specifically, participants’ representativeness influences public officials’ willingness to use citizens’ inputs more than turnout.     

Who Engages in the Coproduction of Local Public Services and Why? The Case of Atlanta,Georgia

With the resurgent interest in coproduction, questions arise around who joins with government in coproducing services and why. This article reports an exploratory study of these questions using data from Atlanta, Georgia. To guide the research, the article first proposes a set of hypotheses on involvement in coproduction based on theories of political participation, where psychological motivations and social factors dominate, and citizen‐initiated contacting, where perceived needs for public services are usually primary. The hypotheses are tested using survey data on the engagement of 797 neighborhood organization participants in various forms of local coproduction in Atlanta. The findings provide some support for both theories along with evidence for significant idiosyncratic variations suggested by neither theory. A concluding section considers implications of the findings for future research and for public management.     

Public Value Accounting: Establishing the Philosophical Basis

Questions of how best to define the ends, justify the means, and measure the performance of governments have preoccupied political economists for centuries. Recently, the concept of public value—defined in terms of the many dimensions of value that a democratic public might want to see produced by and reflected in the performance of government—has been proposed as an alternative approach. This article develops three philosophical claims central to the practice of public value accounting: (1) when the collectively owned assets of government are being deployed, the appropriate arbiter of public value is the collectively defined values of a “public” called into existence and made articulate through the quite imperfect processes of democratic governance; (2) the collectively owned assets include not only government money but also the authority of the state; (3) the normative framework for assessing the value of government production relies on both utilitarian and deontological philosophical frameworks.     

Patterns of Disagreement in Democratic Politics: Comparing Germany, Japan, and the United States

An important ingredient in democratic politics is the experience of disagreement through social communication and political discussion. If people fail to encounter contrary viewpoints, their own views are never challenged, they are never forced to reconsider initially held opinions, and they are effectively excluded from democratic deliberation. This article examines patterns of political agreement and disagreement within the communication networks of citizens in Germany, Japan, and the United States. Several questions are addressed. Are there cross‐national differences in patterns of agreement and disagreement among citizens? To what extent are these patterns subject to individual attitudes, to the structure of communication networks, and to levels of aggregate support for particular preferences and opinions? Finally, what are the implications of disagreement for civic capacity and political engagement? Empirical analyses are based on cooperative election surveys conducted in each country during the early 1990s.     

Understanding Business Improvement Districts: A New Governance Framework

What is the current state of research on business improvement districts (BIDs)? What is an appropriate framework for analysis? What are key questions for advancing future BID research? BIDs can be understood best within a network governance framework. The research shows, first, a blurring of the line between the public and private spheres as a result of BIDs; second, BIDs are increasingly important actors in urban governance; third, BIDs engage in collaborative, conflictual, and co‐optative relations with local and state governments; and fourth, difficult accountability and management problems are created by their interdependent relationships with local governments. Future research needs to focus on understanding the role of BIDs in urban governance and assessing their impacts on metropolitan areas, as well as their inherently complicated public accountability and management challenges.     

Democratic legitimacy in regional economic organizations: the European Union in comparative perspective

Regional organizations have been widely criticized for lacking democratic legitimacy, but these criticisms have been rather ad hoc, concerned with single case studies and reliant on unclear standards or metrics. Are all organizations similarly deficient? And how does the European Union (EU), the target par excellence of the criticisms, fare in comparative perspective? In this paper, we take a first step towards answering these questions by leveraging the rich debate on the EU to identify several institutional dimensions of democratic legitimacy and operationalizing them for comparative analysis. We then investigate the most important regional economic organizations (REOs) in the world. Our findings are three-fold: (i) there is systematic variation across REOs, with a group doing rather well, one mixed, and one poorly; (ii) procedural dimensions fare better than those related to representation or local self-determination; (iii) no organization exhibits or lacks legitimacy in all dimensions. These results qualify the perception that democratic legitimacy deficits are indiscriminately pervasive and indicate that the EU belongs to the most democratically legitimate group.