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(W5) Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance

(W5) Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance

The article tries to develop a framework for understanding the range of institutional possibilities for public participation.

Mechanisms of participation vary along 3 important dimensions:

Participation is a complex topic in at least 3 ways:

  1. There is no canonical form of direct participation in modern democratic governance
  2. Master principles as "equal influence" and "respect for individual autonomy" are too vague
  3. Direct participation is not a strict alternative to political representation or expertise

Participant selection

When running a participatory process, the first dimension we need to analyse is who is going to participate.

According to Archon Fung, the main reason to have a participatory process is to overcome decision makers deficiencies such as: knowledge, competence, public purpose, resources or respect needed to command compliance and cooperation.

Whether participation can help fill in those deficiencies depends largely on who's participating:

We can highlight in total 8 selection methods:

  1. Self-selected
  2. Selective recruit (active)
  3. Selective recruit (passive)
  4. Randomly selected
  5. Lay stakeholders
  6. Professional stakeholders
  7. Professional politicians
  8. Expert administrators
Classic Alternative
Self-selected Selective recruit (active)
Professional politicians Selective recruit (passive)
Expert administrators Randomly selected
Lay stakeholders
Professional stakeholder

These can be arrange from more exclusive to more inclusive:

(W5) Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance 2025-09-27 18.11.39.excalidraw.png

We can group the 8 methods in 3 macro-groups:

Public

Self-selected participants

This is the most common way of selecting participant. The participatory process is left open to everyone who wishes to attend. Therefore, participants are a self-selected subset of the general population.

This method though, may cause some issues:

Mini publics

Mini publics are a subset of the population identified in different ways.

The list above shows the mini publics: this is a subset of the population

Selective recruit (active)

Active selective recruit is the explicit selection of a certain group of people.

We can purposely select under represented community such as low income and minorities.

Selective recruit (passive)

Sometimes, the topic of the meeting acts as a selective method by itself. For example, on discussing measures to implement for senior citizens, they will automatically be more interested in participating than other groups of people. Another example: a venue addressing sewers will attract more disadvantaged citizens as the wealthy will find this issue less pressing.

Randomly selected

An effective way of selecting participant is to actively select them at random from the general population.

Lay stakeholders

Lay stakeholders are unpaid citizens who have a deep interest in some public concern and thus are willing to invest more time and energy to represent those who have similar interests but choose not to participate.

Professional stakeholders

These are stakeholders that need to be heard in some processes due a regulatory framework in place. For example environmental management.

State

Professional politicians

They are usually elected by the citizens and supposedly represent our interests.

Expert administrator

These are part of the public administration but this group is composed of professionals in different fields.

Communication and Decision

3 modes of communication and 3 modes of decision:

The following figure, lists the 6 aforementioned communication and decision making modes in from least intensive to most intensive.

(W5) Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance 2025-09-27 19.07.12.excalidraw.png

Communication

The upcoming methods focus mainly on communication. They are a way to inform individuals and maybe hear their individual opinions but do not attempt to reach a collective view or decision.

Listen as spectator

Participants are present only to be informed on a project (or similar) and do not interact at all with their opinion or questions.

This is quite rare as there usually is a space to at least speak up with questions or concerns ([[#Express preferences]]).

Express preferences

Almost all meetings offer some opportunity to express preferences to the audiences and officials present.

Develop preferences

Some meetings are organised to allow participants to explore, develop and perhaps transform their preferences and perspectives.

Often they discuss issues with one another (usually in small groups).

Decision

Aggregate and Bargain

In this mode, participants know what they want. Their views are aggregated into a social choice. They need to give-and-take in order to reach the best available alternative to advance the joint preferences they have.

Deliberate and Negotiate

Participants deliberate to figure out what they want individually and as a group.

Participants usually absorb educational materials and exchange perspectives to develop their views and discover their interests.

First, there is a process of interaction and edification. Then, they enter the deliberation phase aiming toward agreement with one another, based on reasons, arguments and principles.

Deploy Technique and Expertise

Sometimes decisions are simply taken by the technical expertise of officials. See planners, regulators, social workers, teachers, police officers...

Authority and Power

The third dimension gauges the impact of public participation.

We can distinguish 5 categories of institutionalised influence and authority that can be divided in 2 categories: those that barely influence public action (indirect power) and those with a direct power:

The categories can be listed from least authority to most authority:

(W5) Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance 2025-09-27 19.26.33.excalidraw.png

Indirect power

Personal benefits

In many participatory venues, participants don't really expect to have a great impact. They are there simply to derive the personal benefit of edification or fulfil a sense of civic obligation.

Communicative influence

In many cases, the participatory mechanisms exert influence by indirectly altering or mobilising public opinion.

Advise and consult

In this, more officials preserve authority and power but commit to receiving input from participants.

Direct power

Co-governance

There can be organisations that strictly collaborate with officials to take and develop public actions.

Direct authority

This is rare but it exists. Some participatory bodies can have direct authority over public decisions.

The democracy cube

The 3 dimensions analysed ([[#Participant selection]], [[#Communication and Decision]] and [[#Authority and Power]]) and their corresponing methods can be visualised on a 3-dimensional plot:

(W5) Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance 2025-09-27 19.37.27.excalidraw.png

The plot also shows 2 examples of participatory processes:

The first, agencies, are a pool of experts that use technical expertise to take direct decisions.

The latter, public hearings, are processes that usually allow the whole population to participate. Participants are usually allowed to state preferences but they have little power on the decision making.

Legitimacy

The author states: A public policy or action is legitimate when citizens have good reasons to support or obey it.

Officials try to legitimise initiatives in a number of ways. These usually imply a participatory process that tries to be more representative:

Justice

Injustice often results from political inequality. This is mainly when a specific group of citizens cannot influence the political agenda.

Participatory mechanisms can improve justice in 2 ways:

A great example is the Participatory Budget applied in Pôrto Alegre in Brazil. Citizens were allowed to have direct authority on budget spending: they were entitled to allocate budget to the neighbourhoods they wanted and on the most pressing matters. This was extremely successful.

The concept of this system is to avoid corrupt officials taking decisions solely based on money. Citizens are able to better judge where certain investments were most needed.

Another big advantage was representativeness. Even though this was basically an open venue, the nature of the issues automatically selected participants that were from lower classes in society, making this process fall under the [[#Selective recruit (passive)]] type of [[#Participant selection]].

The highlight is on any participatory mechanisms that enhances justice by altering who makes particular decisions and policies. The only way to achieve this, is to give these individuals/groups direct authority.

Effectiveness

Even when public decisions are just and legitimate, state agencies may be incapable of implementing those decisions.

It's important to involve citizens as they may know, locally, the most pressing issues more than professionals that have no deep knowledge of the area (see 03. Civita di Bagnoregio - Fragilità).

On the other hand, professional may come up with innovative solutions that local citizens may never figure out on their own.

One aspect to keep in mind is the contrast between enhancing effectiveness and [[#Justice]]. When enhancing effectiveness, it's probably better to have a limited amount of very passionate people ([[#Lay stakeholders]]) that can invest time and energy in understanding an issue and coming up with a solution. For justice, instead, more representativity is necessary.