Yves Sintomer
Vice-Director, Marc Bloch Centre (Berlin)
Professor of Sociology, Paris 8 University
in collaboration with Carsten Herzberg and Anja Röcke
Models of Citizen
Participation
Cinefogo Conference, Bristol, 14-15/02/2007
Introduction
A strange phenomena
• In the last three decades, impressive
development of participative mechanisms
• Various methodologies, quite different
contexts, opposite ideologies
• Only a fashion? A global phenomena?
• What explanation?
Some questions
• Participatory democracy as a tool against
neo-liberal globalization (the WSF) vs.
participation as a tool a good governance
(the world bank)?
• Painting, building housing?
• A global dynamics, a convergence?
• Two parts: methodological, 6 models
I. Towards a typology of
participatory dynamics
Four steps in the research on
participation
• First step: monographs
• Second step: comparison of field-works
• Third step: integrated comparative
research on one methodology (example:
participatory budgeting)
• Fourth step? integrated comparative
research on various instruments
Problems of comparative
studies
• Problem of definition (nominalist, essentialist,
normative/political, methodological)
• Problem of explanation: structural/ functional vs.
interactions and networks
• Problems of methods: broad overview vs.
ethnologic field studies
• Problems of generalization: statistical reasoning
vs. “penser par cas” (case thinking)
Definition
• Various terms: participatory democracy,
participative governance, deliberative
democracy, citizen participation…
• A first (empirical) definition: the broad meaning
of citizen participation: association of non
elected citizens in the decision making process
• Other (methodological) definitions: stricter
meanings → models
Why do we need a typology?
• First risk: one-dimensional analysis
• Second risk: to get lost in the infinity of
cases of concrete experiments
• We need a typology
• A tool for “case thinking”
Ideal-types
• Ideal-typical map instead of empirical table
• Typology that includes the context, the
procedures, the general dynamics and the
effects of participatory democracy
• Previous comparisons (step 2), comparative
study on participatory budgeting (step 3)
• PB: a prism for a general understanding of
participatory politics
• A work in progress towards step 4
Participatory Budgets in Europe: Between Civic
Participation and Modernisation of
Administration
Team:
Research director: Yves Sintomer
Researchers: Carsten Herzberg, Anja Röcke
In collaboration with 14 researchers from 8 countries:
• Belgium: Ludivine Damay, Christine Schaut
• France: Marion Ben-Hammo, Sandrina Geoffroy, Julien Talpin
• Great Britain: Jeremy Hall
• Italy: Giovanni Allegretti (coordinator), Pier Paolo Fanesi, Lucilla Pezzetta, Michelangelo
Secchi
• Netherlands: Hugo Swinnen
• Poland: Elzbieta Plaszczyk
• Portugal: Luis Guerreiro
• Spain: Ernesto Ganuza
Administrative director: Hans-Peter Müller, Humboldt University (Berlin)
Source of funding: Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, Marc Bloch Centre (Berlin)
Internet page: www.buergerhaushalt-europa.de
Five criteria
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Socio-political, legal and economic context
Ideological references, frames and pragmatic goals
Participative procedures
Dynamics of collective action
Relation between participatory and conventional
politics
One additional dimension
Strengths, weaknesses, challenges
Criterion 1: Socio-political, legal
and economic context
• Role of market and state (and community sector)
• Type of welfare state (liberal, conservative, socialdemocratic)
• Modernisation of local administration (degree, main
tendency: internal reform, market- or citizen-orientation)
• Political colour of local government (left, right,
variable/coalition)
• Margins of action for local authorities
Criterion 2: Ideologies, normative
frames and pragmatic goals
•
•
1)
2)
3)
Ideologies and normative frames
3 types of pragmatic goals
Administrative goals (modernisation of public action,
neighbourhood management…)
Social goals (social justice, inclusion, solidarity) and
other goals (economic growth...)
Political goals (school of democracy, legitimation of
local government or local administration…)
Criterion 3: Participative
procedures
• Main concrete participative procedures
• Transparency of rules, quality of deliberation
• Accountability
• “Procedural autonomy” of civil society (coelaboration of methodology, meetings of civil
society without administration/councillors, etc.)
• Decision-making competence vs. “selective
listening”
• A “4th power” emerging through new institutions
combining representative and direct democracy
Criterion 4: Dynamics of
collective action
• Social classes that participate
• Strong or weak civil society in the participatory process
• Type of actors (parties, foundations, NGOs, international
organisations...)
• Top-down, bottom-up or mixed process
• Target of participatory procedures (social sectors,
organised/active/ordinary/all citizens...)
• Consensus orientation; cooperative resolution of
conflicts; empowerment, “countervailing power”
Criterion 5: Participatory and
conventional politics
• A criterion that results from the others
• No relation: Participation as mere management
procedure
• Substitution: Participation develops parallel to
conventional politics
• Support: Participation as an instrument for conventional
politics
• Combination: a virtuous circle
Additional dimension: Strengths,
weaknesses, challenges
• A cognitive and normative evaluation
• The strengths, weaknesses and challenges of each
model are first explained regarding its internal logic
• They are also explained according to a comparison
between the various models
II. 6 models of
citizen participation
Six models
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Participative democracy
Proximity democracy
Participative modernisation
Participative Public-Private-Partnership
Community development
Neo-Corporatism
Six models of citizen participation:
A map of European participatory budgets
1. Participative democracy
• Strong politicization, strong local government
• Some combination between top-down and bottom-up
movements
• Autonomy of civil society, empowerment,
countervailing power
• Co-decision
• Left-wing parties and movements
• Some outcomes on social justice
• Weaker relation to administrative modernization
• Some combination possible between conventional
and non conventional politics
• POA participatory budget
2. “Proximity” democracy
• 2 dimensions of “proximity”: neighborhood democracy
and “selective listening”
• Strong local government
• Top down, merely consultative beyond the micro-local
level
• No clear rules, limited autonomy of civil society, no
empowerment/countervailing power, consensus oriented
• Various political tendencies; urban regeneration frame,
deliberative democracy
• No impact on social justice
• Modernization above all on the neighborhood level
• Instrumental use of non-conventional participation
• Neighborhood councils, neighborhood investments funds
3. Participative modernization
• Participation is only a secondary dimension of a
modernization process of local administrations, no
politicization
• Making public services competitive rather than
privatizing
• Social-democrat, social-liberal parties, citizens orientated
tendencies of New Public Management
• Top-down movement, civil society has a limited
autonomy, consensus oriented, no empowerment
• Only consultative
• Not impact on social justice
• Representation of users/public service consumers,
quality Charta, citizen/consumer panels, pools, citizen
juries
4. Participative public-privatepartnership
• Weak local government, weak civil society, strong
market organizations
• Negotiation table
• Top-down process
• More right-wing/”Third way” governments, “participative
neo-liberalism”; governance
• Weak articulation with the modernization of local
administration
• No impact on social justice
• Consensus-oriented, no empowerment/countervailing
power
• PPP negotiation-tables between politicians, business
and NGOs
5. Community development
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Dissociation between participation and local government
Strong market and community sector
Real autonomy of civil society
Top-down and bottom-up, co-decision
Some impact on social justice
Empowerment, countervailing power
Indirect relation with the modernization of local
administration
• Non-conventional politics tends to substitute
conventional politics
• Community Development Corporations, community
funds
6. Neo-corporatism
• A state which wants to affirm its action
• Association of organized interests (unions, NGOs,
business organizations, churches, universities)
• Various political tendencies; neo-corporatism,
governance
• Top-down process, strong civil society
• Weak autonomy of civil society, new governance power
rather than “4th power”
• Consensus oriented, no empowerment, “countervailing
power”
• Local Agenda 21, strategic planning, participation around
public “sectors”
Conclusion
Why?
• Context and structural problems: partly similar:
-
Globalization, regional integration
No alternative to representative democracy and weakening of the
political system’s legitimacy
Crisis of bureaucracy/classical public policy and capitalist markets
criticized
Integration of citizens’ demand for participation
Progress of democratic equality (Tocqueville’s meaning)
• Heterogeneous networks of dissemination.
Example: Participatory budgets from Porto
Alegre to the World Bank – and back
Some common tendencies
• Deliberative and participative norms
• Articulation participation/administrative
modernization
• New professional, associative, academic
and political skills
A convergence?
• No convergence towards some unique model
• Development of sub-models and mixed models,
multiplication of hybrid experiments
• A new field on which various tendency will
struggle
• Participative tendency: one among others
• Convergence of various actors
Citizen Participation in Policy Making
Wednesday 14th and Thursday 15th February 2007
Coffee: 15:00- 15:30
Coffee Break until 15.30
Coming up…
15:30 –
Workshop Session 1 in rooms 1a,1b and 1c upstairs & here in the
auditorium