Citizen Dialogue Research Articles

Online citizen dialogue for SDGs: a Finland-Japan cross-cultural deliberation

This study explores the potential of cross-border citizen dialogues on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for uncovering cultural barriers and catalysts in sustainability transformations. We utilised a form adapted from the Open Dialogue approach, originally developed in Finnish mental health care, now refined for broader applications in facilitating open citizen dialogues on gender equality (Goal 5) and biodiversity conservation (Goals 14 and 15). Indicators were developed and used to assess attitudinal shifts post-dialogue. The dialogues increased the sense of urgency and importance of gender equality and biodiversity conservation, particularly among the Japanese participants, who initially displayed less engagement than their Finnish counterparts. The dialogue also expanded the scope of collaboration among the Japanese participants, reflected in a heightened sense of global citizenship, as measured by trust scores. Both Finnish and Japanese participants showed a moderate increase in recognising cultural influences on sustainability. Further research is necessary to understand how cross-cultural dialogues can enhance reflection on sustainability at the group level. Additionally, integrating such dialogues into decision-making processes may bolster collective reflexivity.

Dialogue and collaboration for sustainable development in Japan and Taiwan: Epistemic foundation of partnership toward Sustainable Development Goals

This study utilized an online social survey of the public in Japan and Taiwan to examine their willingness to learn about various energy and environmental policy issues, their willingness to participate in random-sampling-based citizen dialogues about such policies, their attitudes toward having these dialogues with others who hold different views, their attitudes toward collaboration-based moral foundations, and the boundaries of such collaborations. We measured the attitude toward dialogues with a scale that was previously developed for research on citizen dialogues in Japan. Furthermore, we measured the boundaries of the collaboration by referring to the trust questionnaire in the World Values Survey, and morality was measured using the Morality-as-Cooperation Questionnaire (MAC-Q). Lastly, we statistically analyzed the relationships between these variables and found that Taiwanese respondents had a stronger willingness to learn about environmental issues and participate in citizen dialogue, a more positive attitude toward having dialogues, and a broader boundary of collaboration than among Japanese respondents, as measured by trust ratios. The perceptional attributes that led to significantly lower trust ratios were educational level, profession, and economic level for the Japanese respondents, but were religion, political orientation, and economic level for the Taiwanese respondents. Finally, the openness implied by the attitude toward having dialogues and the boundaries of the collaborations measured by trust was positively associated with the willingness to participate in citizen dialogues on energy and environmental policy in both Japan and Taiwan, with specific characteristics for each society, such as speaking in Japan and listening in Taiwan.

Recasting the Role of Citizens in Diplomacy and Foreign Policy: Preliminary Insights and a New Research Agenda

Summary Over the last decade, relations between the state and its citizens have changed in the fields of diplomacy and, more generally, foreign policy in some Western democracies. Both sides have begun to transform their roles through novel formats of citizen dialogue and participation. The full breadth and depth of these phenomena remain understudied, despite the fact that they constitute an important catalyst of the apparent ‘societisation’, or even further democratisation, of diplomacy. Based on our analyses of participatory formats in German diplomacy, we offer insights into the transformative potential of this development and discuss to what extent it simultaneously perpetuates unequal power relations. In order to further scrutinise these preliminary hypotheses on how the complex relationship between state diplomacy and domestic society is currently changing, we propose a new research agenda on citizen participation in foreign policy.

Moral Stress and Moral Agency in Swedish Eldercare

Background: Ageing population, high levels of sick leave among eldercare personnel and financial constraints on municipal budgets impact eldercare. Daily care work is complex and ethical dilemmas are constantly present for eldercare personnel. This project aims to a) identify situations that give rise to moral stress, b) study the relationship between moral stress and moral agency c) explore how moral agency can be fostered in eldercare. The argument underpinning this research project is that ethical dilemmas in the work cause moral stress among staff in eldercare. While much research on moral stress highlights the connection between moral stress and negative effects on health and wellbeing, our focus is on the possible connection between moral stress and moral agency. Moral agency encompasses cognitive capacity, feelings, skills, and actions.
 Methods/Design: This project has a systemic approach to eldercare and interprets eldercare as an advanced system where a range of different skills is required. Participatory action research (PAR) will be used as an overall methodology. Focus-groups and research circles will be conducted with care workers, first line manages and needs assessors. 
 Discussion: An ongoing discussion on relevant knowledge production in research, stresses the importance of participation. This is expressed by concepts such as deliberative democracy, user participation, empowerment, collaboration, follow-up research and citizen dialogue. In our research project we refer to robust knowledge as relevant knowledge that is valid in the eyes of care workers, care municipal needs assessors and first line managers. As the research is performed in collaboration with these three vocational groups, local politicians, and trade unions in three municipalities as well as two educational settings, different sorts of knowledge will be present. This unique stand will show how moral agency, as a response to moral stress, can be the ground for social changes and improve quality of care.

Engaging with Public Opinion at the Micro-Level: Citizen Dialogue and Participation in German Foreign Policy

AbstractThis article analyzes how and why foreign policy (FP)-makers use dialogue and participation processes (DPPs) with (groups of) individual citizens as a source of public opinion. Taking Germany as a case study and drawing on DPP initiatives by the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt, AA) since 2014, we analyze the officials’ motivation for establishing such processes and find four different sets of motivation: (1) image campaigning, (2) educating citizens, (3) listening to citizens, and (4) changing the citizens’ role in FP. Our article makes three contributions. First, we provide a novel typology of the sources of public opinion upon which FP-makers can draw. Second, our study points to the importance of, and provides a framework for, analyzing how officials engage with public opinion at the micro-level, which has so far been understudied in FP analysis. Finally, our empirical analysis suggests that both carefully assessing and influencing public opinion feature prominently in motivation, whereas PR purposes are of minor importance. Recasting the citizens’ role in FP gains in importance over time and may mirror the increased need to legitimize FP in Western democracies vis-à-vis their publics.

Who talks and who listens? A qualitative analysis of citizen dialogues in rural Sweden

ABSTRACT Inclusion in local policy processes through citizen dialogue has been depicted as both the solution to many democratic challenges and a democratic problem in itself. Nevertheless, it has been widely adopted throughout Europe. The hierarchically flat, co-governing setup of these instruments can be expected to clash with representative-heavy political cultures, such as that in Sweden, which raises questions about what role they end up having in this context and whether they complement representative democracy. By conducting a comparative study of two rural Swedish municipalities, we confirmed that traditional, hierarchical governance indeed dominates the studied processes. Our results also suggest that, due to skewed participation and unclear input handling, the studied instrument does not appear to constitute a viable complementary democratic institution in terms of representation. Instead, we argue that, conducted in this way, it may potentially fill a range of different purposes without aspiring to fully complement representative democracy.

Who is responsible for the hockey rink? – A critical analysis of a citizen dialogue meeting in a small Mill town

Sweden is often perceived as “a model welfare state” (Castell, 2013, p. 1) with a generous welfare system (Bergh, 2011). A substantial part of the welfare provision is organized and administered at...

Increasing public transport patronage – An analysis of planning principles and public transport governance in Swedish regions with the highest growth in ridership

Increasing the attractiveness of public transport is a key issue in the endeavours towards more sustainable transport systems. While there is a lot of knowledge on what can be done to increase public transport patronage, there is a lack of empirically based research analysing how to do this in practice. Using a comparative case analysis of six regions in Sweden with the highest increase in passenger volumes for public transport between 2009 and 2015, this paper examines the prerequisites for increasing public transport patronage, with a focus on the governance conditions required to implement such measures. The empirical material consists of semi-structured interviews with public transport planners and strategy documents for the six regions. The findings show that all regions but one employed a similar approach and implemented measures aimed at concentrating resources to corridors where the potential demand was the greatest. Only one region chose a different approach by investing in services in both strong routes and in the peripheral network. However, regardless of approach, the results highlight that there is considerable coherence regarding the governance conditions that enable implementation. Three main conditions were identified, namely political support, well-functioning collaboration between organisations, and public support through citizen dialogue. The results support key findings on collaborative conditions from previous research, including the importance of joint objectives, trust between key individuals, and the need for long time frames in order to develop collaborative capacity.

Hacia un Constitucionalismo Ambiental en la Región Andina: Breve estudio de las Constituciones de Bolivia, Ecuador y del proyecto de nueva Constitución de Chile del 2018

Este trabajo aborda la noción ambiental presente en el proyecto de nueva Constitución de 2018 (Boletín 11617-07), así como el diálogo ciudadano previo al proyecto. El objetivo es determinar hasta donde se extiende dicha protección y cuánto del Constitucionalismo Ambiental Andino de Ecuador y Bolivia está presente esa propuesta de reforma para Chile.

« Répondre à la vulnérabilité » : l’éthique et les CHSLD au temps de la COVID-19

L’irruption de la COVID-19 au Québec témoigne de l’échec des résidences pour personnes âgées à protéger adéquatement ces dernières. Est clairement apparue la longue insouciance de toute une société à l’égard des personnes âgées fragiles. Le texte se divise en deux parties. La première partie montre qu’autant l’hôpital québécois, sous la direction du ministère de la Santé, était prêt à faire face à la pandémie, autant les centres de longue durée pour personnes en perte d’autonomie ne l’étaient pas. La deuxième partie discute du type d’éthique qui a guidé les responsables dans leurs décisions. Ce type d’éthique ne me semble pas correspondre à la vision éthique qui serait appropriée dans les soins de longue durée. L’éthique devrait en être une qui correspond à la nature de ces centres, elle devrait être une réponse à la vulnérabilité. La conclusion invite au dialogue citoyen pour parvenir à une réponse appropriée à la situation de ces personnes.

Visualization for Citizen Participation: User Perceptions on a Mainstreamed Online Participatory Tool and Its Usefulness for Climate Change Planning

Citizen participation is obligated in municipal planning but is often criticized because of its inadequate implementation. To increase the usefulness of citizen participation and the involvement of underrepresented groups, online participatory tools (OPTs) have attracted attention, in particular, on topics related to climate change. Although many OPTs have been developed and are becoming more widely used, assessments of their usefulness in real-world planning remain scarce. This study aimed to disentangle prospects and pitfalls of this still novel way of practicing citizen dialogue. Specifically, we apply criteria derived from related literatures to assess a mainstreamed OPT in Norrköping, Sweden. The CityPlanner™ tool was discussed with citizens and planners using focus group methodology and semi-structured individual interviews. Moreover, citizen contributions in four applications of the OPT were analyzed. The results reveal that the biggest challenges for citizen dialogues on planning in general and on climate change, in particular, appear not mainly rooted in the technical functions of the OPT. Rather, problems lie in (i) the lack of municipal strategy for citizen participation and in applying OPTs, (ii) a disparagement in citizens’ abilities to contribute to forming robust and sustainable cities, and (iii) in diverging views about the role of citizen contributions. This is reflected in how the OPT is used. While the examined OPT shows potential, the results indicate that visualized contexts for planning might be too scant to be entirely meaningful, and it lacks mechanisms for feedback. Not using the full potential of the OPT makes citizens less engaged and risks to adversely affect learning and citizens’ contributions to solving complex issues.

Aesthetic Preference as Starting Point for Citizen Dialogues on Urban Design: Stories from Hammarkullen, Gothenburg

This article sets out to describe the role of aesthetics in citizen dialogues during the upgrading of a local swimming pool in Hammarkullen, Gothenburg. The swimming pool became an important project because of its role in a larger neighbourhood renovation project that allowed the municipality to focus on citizen engagement and inclusion. The engagement process showed the importance of the local swimming pool for a marginalized group of women of Somali origin, and a decision was made to keep the swimming pool instead of demolishing it. This led to collaboration between project coordinators, the Public Art Agency, an artist and an architect. Individual qualitative interviews focusing on storytelling were undertaken with key stakeholders. The findings show that aesthetic quality mediated the communicative processes between project coordinators and citizens. Art in public space is more than just aesthetics or something to look at; art provokes a wide variety of responses and artists use a variety of means to engage with their public and creating dialogue. Yet the project managers failed to consider the creative process of the architect and her perspective on aesthetic quality and building functionality. Stakeholders take different stances to whether aesthetic quality can be a way of grounding, communicating and evolving, or whether it is a matter of beauty where the artist or architect takes the lead. While the project coordinators affirm sameness, different understandings of aesthetic quality actively negotiate social differences. Inability to consider creative practices’ work processes in relation to citizen dialogue can result in conflicts between art, architecture and governance during the transformation of a neighbourhood.

Othering mechanisms among political opposition on Twitter during the 2017 Mexico state elections

El presente trabajo reporta los resultados de un análisis de contenido cualitativo realizado a una muestra de 11.576 tweets de simpatizantes ciudadanos de los partidos y candidatos de oposición durante el período electoral de 2017, partiendo de la discusión de candidatos a la gubernatura de Coahuila. El objetivo de dicho análisis fue identificar los mecanismos de otrificación empleados para la construcción de opositores binarios a la propia identidad política entre los ciudadanos, a la luz del recrudecimiento y polarización de las divisiones ideológicas en la esfera pública nacional e internacional, tanto en línea como en el espacio físico. El estudio encontró que los simpatizantes de izquierda tienden a deshumanizar a aquellos que enuncian opiniones diferentes, caracterizándolos como conspiradores en plurales arbitrarios como «la Mafia del Poder», y que los simpatizantes de derecha hacen extenso uso del desdén como mecanismo de otrificación. Se concluye que ambas prácticas son contraproducentes y altamente dañinas para la construcción de diálogo ciudadano y de la esfera pública del país, y que contribuyen a una concepción de los procesos democráticos, no como una búsqueda del mejor sistema de gobierno para el bien común, sino como un juego de suma cero en el cual no hay nada más importante que la derrota del bando opuesto.

Conflict resolution and asymmetric conflict: The contradictions of planned contact interventions in Israel and Palestine

This paper critically analyses a contradictory phenomenon experienced by local-level conflict resolution initiatives in Israel and Palestine. Despite their widespread utilization in other contexts of inter-communal conflict, facilitated contact interventions, including citizen dialogue and arranged encounters between Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, are being rejected and publicly denounced by many within the Palestinian and Israeli conflict resolution community in this case. This paper contributes to an understanding of this rejection by investigating arguments in favour of and against planned contact intervention initiatives through an analysis of interview narratives from 40 respondents working for peace and conflict resolution organisations in Israel and the West Bank as well as secondary research reports. Our analysis reveals deeply conflicting viewpoints. Arguments in favour of contact-based strategies suggest that they have the potential to disrupt an entrenched status quo of asymmetry-inspired social segregation. Conversely, arguments against suggest that these conflict resolution initiatives are struggling to level power asymmetry and bypass the structural and historical drivers of violence. In response, this paper introduces a grounded proposal for conflict resolution inside asymmetric conflict that emerges from the interview narratives of practitioners, themselves, regarding effective strategies, the nature of agency, and the scope of influence of local-level contact-based conflict resolution initiatives inside asymmetric conflict.

Control, Fear and Suppression: A political ecology of voice study into resource extraction industry-community engagement in Peru’s Loreto Region

This article studies resource extraction industry-community engagement and meaningful participation through a focus on the ability and willingness of local citizens to report environmental pollution incidents. This is conducted through the political ecology of voice (PEV) theoretical framework which comprises investigation into economic, political, social and geographical factors over an explicit period and their impact on different actors’ voices. The case-study was centred around Peru’s Loreto Region, the state-run oil company Petroperu and the interview testimonies of two communities affected by Petroperu pollution incidents. This PEV study finds that the community relationships are strictly controlled by Petroperu who, wherever possible, avoid citizen dialogue and engagement which raises significant difficulties for citizens wishing to report environmental contamination events. However, through deliberate threats to their provision of important community economic and development opportunities, Petroperu generated a climate of fear which sought to silence the willingness of citizens to report contamination events or the company’s poor and abusive post-spill response. This suppression of voice was only overcome through the actions of strong, independent citizens, and the accessibility to exterior community-based organisations. However, the latter’s involvement does not always outweigh the powerful influence which companies like Petroperu wield over citizens and their voice.

Citizen Participation and Sense of Community in the Development of the Permanent Conservation Project Plan

Algeria is a country known for its diversity. Indeed, each of its regions stands out for its urban landscape, heritage, customs and traditions. The urban landscape of the Souf region is exceptional. This one is known for the originality of its architecture. Its two old districts "Messaaba and Acheche" having the status of safeguarded sector since the year 2013, were endowed with a project of elaboration of the permanent plan of safeguarding. The citizen is a key element in this project because it is the element that makes this heritage live. Therefore, citizen dialogue must be at the heart of the project process. To facilitate the consultation process and win public confidence for its full support to projects, it is necessary to establish a collaborative approach and establish mechanisms connecting the project. The effectiveness of its participation depends on individual differences. These variables could be demographic (age groups, educational level, economic context ... .etc), personality, or sense of community. The purpose of this article is to examine sense of community level that influences the process of participation of citizens concerned by the elaboration of the permanent safeguarding plan project, through a survey that was initiated with the inhabitants of two old districts "Messaaba and Acheche" to the city of El Oued.

Citizen dialogue for whom? Competing rationalities in urban planning, the case of Gothenburg, Sweden

This paper analyses citizen dialogue in urban planning from a governmentality perspective. We focus on (1) how motives and goals connected to ‘citizen dialogue’ and the activities and practices initiated to accomplish these can be understood in light of competing rationalities and (2) how public officials and other actors involved in organising citizen dialogues understand and manage the tensions between competing rationalities. The analysis draws on a case study of urban development in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden. We suggest a critical approach to the use of citizen dialogue as a technology of government, an approach enabling an analysis of various functions and implications of citizen dialogues.

Willingness to know and talk: Citizen attitude toward energy and environmental policy deliberation in post-Fukushima Japan

By employing an online social survey in a prefecture that is home to a nuclear power plant and a prefecture that consumes a large amount of energy, this paper investigates the following elements: levels of desire to understand the issues relevant to complex energy and environmental policies, their willingness to talk about such issues in a random sample at the national and prefectural levels, and the relationship between these two elements. Results found that 70–85% of respondents showed a moderate or strong willingness to learn about 14 relevant issues ranging from nuclear waste management to policy transition periods. Moreover, 35% of respondents indicated a moderate or strong willingness to participate in a national- or prefectural-level random sampling citizen dialogue on energy and environmental policy. A stronger desire to learn about the issues is directly associated with a greater willingness to participate in public discussions. The Japanese government produces and disseminates pertinent information reflecting the results of public dialogue, which shows citizens’ increasing willingness to participate in debates at the national level, particularly for those who are more inclined to pay for renewable energy. This survey shows the propensity of Japanese citizens to engage in talks on energy and environmental policy.

Political and environmental attitude toward participatory energy and environmental governance: A survey in post-Fukushima Japan

The Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent Fukushima nuclear accident triggered citizen dialogue on energy and environmental management in Japan. However, an international survey has shown that the willingness of Japanese citizens to participate in political and social activities has declined since the Fukushima accident. Employing an internet-based survey in four urban or nuclear power plant-hosting prefectures in Japan, this study examines the willingness to participate in random sampling deliberation on post-disaster energy and environmental policy. It focuses on the effects of political, environmental, and social attitudes towards willingness to participate in citizen dialogue. The survey shows around 40% of respondents may participate in energy and environmental deliberation. Statistical analysis reveals that environmental consciousness raises the propensity to participate in deliberation, while political obedience and social hesitation decreases the will to participate. The effect of environmental attitudes is larger than that of political and social attitudes. The survey also finds that governmental response to deliberation, i.e., information generation and disclosure based on requests from citizen dialogue, encourages participation in deliberation in a conservative prefecture, when citizen dialogue is held at the national level. Random sampling deliberation opens a new mode of environmental governance regardless of local political and social characteristics.

Debating Technology for Dialogical Argument

Debating technologies, a newly emerging strand of research into computational technologies to support human debating, offer a powerful way of providing naturalistic, dialogue-based interaction with complex information spaces. The full potential of debating technologies for dialogical argument can, however, only be realized once key technical and engineering challenges are overcome, namely data structure, data availability, and interoperability between components. Our aim in this article is to show that the Argument Web, a vision for integrated, reusable, semantically rich resources connecting views, opinions, arguments, and debates online, offers a solution to these challenges. Through the use of a running example taken from the domain of citizen dialogue, we demonstrate for the first time that different Argument Web components focusing on sensemaking, engagement, and analytics can work in concert as a suite of debating technologies for rich, complex, dialogical argument.