EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Assessing the impact of public participation

Assessing the impact of public participation

Introduction

Expanding citizens’ roles in the policy process has become a key issue for many public authorities over the past years. But what effects are these efforts having on the political and civic engagement of the participants? Do policy makers and practitioners use the available research evidence to design and improve public participation initiatives? These are the key questions addressed in the research report ‘Assessing the impacts of public participation’. The authors show that public participation evaluation, despite its importance, is still in its infancy. Public participation scholars, practitioners and policy makers need to engage in a structural dialogue to develop workable evaluation frameworks and criteria.

Description

Public participation is undertaken for different purposes and with different underlying goals. Some authorities view participation as an essential element of successful democracy. Others see participation as a means for achieving something else, such as a more informed, accountable or legitimate decision-making. The report explores to what extent public participation initiatives can meet or have met these goals.

The authors review the current state of knowledge about the impact of public participation and identify different theoretical and conceptual approaches to evaluation. They also review empirical literature on public participation evaluation and discuss the results of interviews with policy makers and practitioners on this issue. The report concludes with a discussion of the limits to public participation evaluation and its uptake, and recommends strategies for promoting further evaluation practice and methods.

Background information

There is much talk these days about involving ordinary citizens more definitively and directly in the policy process. Dialogue, deliberation and citizen engagement are increasingly familiar landmarks on the current public participation landscape as efforts to design public involvement processes compete with more traditional top-down approaches. The origins of this trend have been widely discussed and include arguments of

declining citizen deference to public officials
vociferous calls for greater legitimacy and accountability
a desire to bring government closer to people

Methodology

The research for this report was composed of:

a review of theoretical and conceptual literature on public participation evaluation
a review of the published empirical public participation evaluation literature collected over the 2000-2005 period
interviews with policy makers and public participation practitioners

Conclusions

There is little good quality research evidence about public participation. It is therefore too early to make any conclusive statements about public participation’s impact on public policy. The authors identify several research gaps that the academic community needs to address.

Although steps have been taken to develop public participation frameworks and toolkits, the practice evaluation is still in its infancy. Lack of time and resources within public authorities is a major impediment. In some cases, a lack of organisational commitment to evaluation is underpinning this deficiency of resources. There is a need for a ‘culture shift’ with respect to both evaluation and public participation. More work is needed to reach agreement about

a common set of evaluation criteria
the defining features of public participation mechanisms
how to categorise and evaluate the role of contextual variables, such as the issue and the composition of the participating community, in shaping and influencing public participation

The authors encourage the formation of forums that bring together public participation scholars, practitioners and policy makers to exchange knowledge, but also to seek agreement about evaluation frameworks and criteria.

Contact info

Canadian Policy Research Networks – Public Involvement Network
public_involvement@cprn.org

Publication date

/03/2006

Researcher

Julia Abelson and François-Pierre Gauvin, Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis

Links

Canadian Policy Research Networks Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis

Assessing the impacts of public participation: concepts, evidence and policy implications (PDF, Eng, 2.6 MB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration > Community development

Keywords

Citizens' participation