Suchergebnisse

Citizen engagement is a key component of modern liberal democracy, especially at the local level, it is an important tool for generating political input, securing political support, mobilizing societal resources and finding creative solutions to the problems and challenges that governments face. Currently, we are witnessing an interesting shift in citizen engagement towards viewing citizens as co-creators of local governance, thus recognizing that citizens have both knowledge and resources that may help tackling wicked and unruly problems. Local governments increasingly focus on the design of co-creation processes and search for ways to support and enhance this new form of citizen engagement. To explore how processes of co-creation unfold at the level of local government, this article analyzes and compares a Danish and Dutch case of co-creation with local citizens. The comparative case study identifies the different reasons for initiating co-creation. It analyses the processes and outcomes of co-creation and reflects on the role of institutional design and leadership. The conclusion is that co-creation can be a viable strategy in very different situations if supported by the right design and leadership.

Citizen engagement is a key component of modern liberal democracy, especially at the local level, it is an important tool for generating political input, securing political support, mobilizing societal resources and finding creative solutions to the problems and challenges that governments face. Currently, we are witnessing an interesting shift in citizen engagement towards viewing citizens as co-creators of local governance, thus recognizing that citizens have both knowledge and resources that may help tackling wicked and unruly problems. Local governments increasingly focus on the design of co-creation processes and search for ways to support and enhance this new form of citizen engagement. To explore how processes of co-creation unfold at the level of local government, this article analyzes and compares a Danish and Dutch case of co-creation with local citizens. The comparative case study identifies the different reasons for initiating co-creation. It analyses the processes and outcomes of co-creation and reflects on the role of institutional design and leadership. The conclusion is that co-creation can be a viable strategy in very different situations if supported by the right design and leadership.

Citizen engagement is a key component of democracy, especially in local governments. It is seen as a way to generate input and support, and to find creative solutions to problems and challenges governments face. Currently, Western democracies are witnessing a challenge in which citizens have less trust in their government. This explorative study examines if citizen engagement is a valuable strategy based on citizen panels of three Dutch municipalities. Four different direct forms of citizen engagement are studied: (1) attending a council meeting, (2) an information meeting, (3) conversation with an official, and (4) other forms of citizen engagement (e.g. social media or letter). The regression results indicate that the different forms of direct citizen engagement seem not to contribute to the amount of trust citizen panel members have in their own municipality. Attending a council meeting, a conversation with an official and other forms of engagement seem to have no or a negative effect on trust. In addition, the number of times that citizens engage seems not to or even negatively contributes to the amount of trust that they have in their municipality.

By using information technology, local governments can develop alternative forms of citizen engagement. Civic crowdfunding campaigns supported by online platforms enable citizens to participate financially in social projects and can be matched with government funding. As such, an alternative for subsidies seems to be developing. In this paper, we assess empirically the success of civic crowdfunding campaigns in the Netherlands by using data collected during 2018 from 269 civic crowdfunding projects and local demographic data from the neighborhoods of these projects. The factors - the use of match-funding, the target amount of money, and the theme of the project, as well as the age structure, the province, and the degree of urbanization of the neighborhood of the civic crowdfunding project-turn out to be empirically related to the success of a civic crowdfunding campaign.