Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Councillor's Dilemma between Strong Mayors and Citizens' Needs
In: Local government studies, Band 41, Heft 6, S. 841-860
ISSN: 1743-9388
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In: Local government studies, Band 41, Heft 6, S. 841-860
ISSN: 1743-9388
In: Local government studies, Band 41, Heft 6, S. 841
ISSN: 0300-3930
In: Local government studies, S. 1-20
ISSN: 0300-3930
In: Routledge studies in democratic innovations
"Reclaiming Participatory Governance offers empirical and theoretical perspectives on how the relationship between social movements and state institutions is emerging and developing through new modes of participatory governance. One of the most interesting political developments of the past decade has been the adoption by social movements of strategies seeking to change political institutions through participatory governance. These strategies have flourished in a variety of contexts, from anti-austerity and pro-social justice protests in Spain, to movements demanding climate transition and race equality in the UK and the USA, to constitutional reforms in Belgium and Iceland. The chief ambition and challenge of these new forms of participatory governance is to institutionalise the prefigurative politics and social justice values that inspired them in the first place, by mobilising the bureaucracy to respond to their claims for reforms and rights. The authors of this volume assess how participatory governance is being transformed and explore the impact of such changes, providing timely critical reflections on: the constraints imposed by cultural, economic and political power relations on these new empowered participatory spaces; the potential of this new "wave" of participatory democracy to reimagine the relationship between citizens and traditional institutions towards more radical democratic renewal; where and how these new democratisation efforts sit within the representative state; and how tensions between the different demands of lay citizens, organised civil society and public officials are being managed. This book will be an important resource for students and academics in political science, public administration and social policy, as well as activists, practitioners and policymakers interested in supporting innovative engagement for deeper social transformation"--
In: European journal of political research: official journal of the European Consortium for Political Research, Band 60, Heft 3, S. 716-737
ISSN: 1475-6765
AbstractScholars of participatory democracy have long noted dynamic interactions and transformations within and between political spaces that can foster (de)democratisation. At the heart of this dynamism lie (a) the processes through which top‐down "closed" spaces can create opportunities for rupture and democratic challenges and (b) vice‐versa, the mechanisms through which bottom‐up, open spaces can be co‐opted through institutionalisation. This paper seeks to unpick dynamic interactions between different spaces of participation by looking specifically at two forms of participatory governance, or participatory forms of political decision making used to improve the quality of democracy. First, Mark Warren's concept of 'governance‐driven democratization' describes top‐down and technocratic participatory governance aiming to produce better policies in response to bureaucratic rationales. Second, we introduce a new concept, democracy‐driven governance, to refer to efforts by social movements to invent new, and reclaim and transform existing, spaces of participatory governance and shape them to respond to citizens' demands. The paper defines these concepts and argues that they co‐exist and interact in dynamic fashion; it draws on an analysis of case study literature on participatory governance in Barcelona to illuminate this relationship. Finally, the paper relates the theoretical framework to the case study by making propositions as to the structural and agential drivers of shifts in participatory governance.
In: Policy and society, Band 37, Heft 3, S. 347-367
ISSN: 1839-3373
The concept of coproduction primarily refers to direct user involvement in the production of services. This paper identifies the main dimensions of this broad and at times fuzzy concept and focuses on types and styles of leadership that can emerge from, and sustain, effective coproduction practice. We do so by carrying out a narrative review of cases of coproduction in the UK, with a focus on the role of citizens, bureaucrats and, specifically, local politicians, to unpick how the latter can facilitate or hinder coproductive processes. The analysis distances itself from a traditional understanding of leadership to examine relational dynamics rather than organisation structures as the key variable of leadership within coproductive practices.
In: Italian politics: a review ; a publication of the Istituto Cattaneo, Band 30, Heft 1
ISSN: 2326-7259
In: International journal of urban and regional research, Band 38, Heft 6, S. 2256-2273
ISSN: 1468-2427
In: International journal of urban and regional research, Band 38, Heft 6, S. 2256-2273
ISSN: 1468-2427
AbstractParticipatory arrangements have become a popular way of addressing modern challenges of urban governance but in practice face several constraints and can trigger deep tensions. Facilitative leadership can play a crucial role in enabling collaboration among local stakeholders despite plural and often conflictual interests. Surprisingly, this style of leadership has received limited attention within debates linking urban governance and participatory democracy. We summarize the main insights of the literature on facilitative leadership and empirically develop them in the context of participatory urban governance by comparing recent participatory processes in two Italian cities. Whereas in one city facilitative leadership gradually emerged and successfully transformed a deep conflict into consensual proposals, in the other city, participatory planning further exacerbated pre‐existing antagonism, and local democratic culture was only later slowly reinvigorated through bottom‐up initiative. These diverging pathways explain how facilitative leadership is: (1) important for making things happen; (2) best understood as situated practices; (3) an emergent property of the practices and interactions of a number of local actors and (4) a democratic capacity for dealing with continuous challenges. Key to this style of leadership is understanding participatory urban governance as an ongoing democratic process.
Bua and Bussu's (2021) article charted transitions between democracy-driven and governance-driven institutional reforms in the case of Barcelona. Their work is useful in identifying dynamism and tipping points shifting between elite-led and bottom-up forms of democratic governance. Building on this work, this chapter adds comparative analytical leverage to Bua and Bussu's insights by comparing the paradigmatic cases of "democracy-driven governance" in Barcelona (Spain) and "governance-driven democracy" in Nantes (France). Based on an analytical framework derived from previous work explaining the institutionalisation of participatory governance (Bussu 2012; Fung and Wright 2003; Heller 2001), the chapter develops knowledge as to the conditions under which DDG-like forms of participatory governance develop, flourish and are sustained or undermined. Nantes and Barcelona are appropriate cases because they have governance histories and contextual features but vary on the recent development of DDG in Barcelona and the sustenance of GDD in Nantes. This chapter explains this divergence, seeking to identify conditions that support DDG.
In: Critical policy studies, Band 16, Heft 2, S. 133-145
ISSN: 1946-018X
In: Qualitative research, Band 21, Heft 5, S. 667-685
ISSN: 1741-3109
This paper contributes to the literature on ethics in Participatory Research by looking at the Researcher-in-Residence model and its application within health services research in three East London boroughs. The Researcher-in-Residence is embedded in the organisation to enable knowledge mobilisation and knowledge coproduction. Whereas negotiation of different types of expertise to coproduce evidence might raise issues of power differentials, the embedded nature of the role also requires careful negotiating of relationships. As the researcher is immersed in the context under evaluation, the boundaries between the researcher and the participants' everyday working life can become blurred. The paper explores these ethical issues and suggests that, whereas the requirements of ethics committees, based on an ethics of principle, at times fail to offer appropriate guidelines for this methodological approach, an ethics of care based on relationships can offer a complementary framework to address some of the thorny challenges that emerge from everyday practice in participatory research.