Does Citizen Participation Matter?: Toward the Development of Theory

Abstract

Requirements for private citizen involvement in the local implementation of federal programs have existed for a number of years now. In urban planning programs, a role for "citizen participation" has been formalized since the "workable program" of the Housing Act of 1954. During the three decades since 1954, requirements for citizen participation have been incorporated in programs of a number of other fed eral agencies as well. As a result, a number of scholars have focused their attention on a variety of aspects of citizen participation and an impressive body of literature has been developed. There is, however, little in that literature that focuses upon the effect of "required" citizen participation on decision outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to add an additional dimension to the existing literature by proposing a conceptual framework for examining the impact of mandated citizen participation on planning decisions. Based on the assumptions that (1) mandated citizen participation groups can be regarded as interest groups, and (2) that the nature of the administrative and deci sion making processes to which mandated citizen participation committees are as cribed are political rather than technical, the paper suggests the uttlity of a decision making framework for the analysis of the impact of citizen participation efforts. A model of the decision making process based upon reference group theory is proposed for examining the role of mandated citizen participation in the decision making pro cess. While the proposed model explicitly addresses mandated citizen participation in the role of contributor to a planning decision, the conceptual framework should be applicable to other organized efforts to "participate" in public policy decisions.