A seat at the table? A study of community participation in two Healthy Cities Projects

Abstract

Achieving community participation has become a statutory obligation for many national and local governments, building on the optimism about the possible benefits to partnerships. However, there have been substantial critiques of the limited gains made in increasing the levels and outcomes of community participation. This paper explores the role of meetings in shaping the contribution of communities to two Healthy Cities programmes. Meetings are the key site at which partnership work visibly happens, and how they are managed shapes the outcomes of partnership programmes. We argue that by offering ‘a seat at the table’ to community partners, but controlling the form and content of meetings, statutory authorities elide the structural imbalance between contributing participants, but make possible the incremental shifts that do offer some possibility of change, at least at the margins.