Citizen Consultation Research Articles

Geoweb 2.0 for Participatory Urban Design: Affordances and Critical Success Factors

In this paper, we discuss the affordances of open-source Geoweb 2.0 platforms to support the participatory design of urban projects in real-world practices. We first introduce the two open-source platforms used in our study for testing purposes. Then, based on evidence from five different field studies we identify five affordances of these platforms: Conversations on alternative urban projects, citizen consultation, design empowerment, design studio learning and design research. We elaborate on these in detail and identify a key set of success factors for the facilitation of better practices in the future.

Can anyone hate the bicycle? The hunt for an optimal local transportation policy to encourage bicycle usage

Policies to promote bicycle usage in the city of Seville, Spain, are analysed, focusing on the development of a public hire-cycle system, and utilising a survey sample of 1530 citizens in the main parts of the historical old town and generalised ordered logit models. Despite the system being well-received and there being a growing number of users and a major modal shift towards the bicycle, it has had to contend with protests and reticence from some sectors of the population. Political and ideological variables are significant, and citizens' philosophy of a ‘global city'. A policy of this type demands a proper citizen consultation process and a suitable communication campaign to illustrate its advantages in terms of environmental protection and social justice, otherwise the risk is run of hostility turning to vandalism and endangering the scheme's economic viability.

Engendering Climate Change: The Swedish Experience of a Global Citizens Consultation

Research on gender dimensions of climate change response is needed if we are to succeed in providing decision-makers with a relevant scientific basis for climate change policy. Although action at the municipal level has become a high priority for Swedish climate change response, knowledge of how gender perspectives affect that response is scarce. This paper contributes knowledge of how to integrate a gender perspective in planning for climate change response, through the modification and application of a system of gender categorization that was originally developed for evaluating the World Bank's performance of environmental impact assessments. That system is used, in this paper, to analyse the Swedish component of a global citizen consultation, World Wide Views on Global Warming. The research is based on analysis of our participation in the World Wide Views as well as interviews and documentation. A conclusion from our analysis is that the Swedish part of the citizen consultation was driven by an approach that, according to the system of gender categorization, strongly demonstrated both feminine and masculine attributes. The results show that an approach that incorporates not only masculine attributes, but also feminine ones, is likely to generate a more robust and concrete climate change response.

Networks for citizen consultation and citizen sourcing of expertise

This study aims to explore how public websites facilitate the creation of networks for citizen consultation. Evidence-based analysis is applied to European public-sector websites to determine the degree to which they adopt digital mechanisms and strategies to facilitate citizen participation and collaboration. This study analyses outstanding European public-sector websites as categorised by the European Commission at the 4th European eGovernment Awards (EeGA) 2009. These finalists, which were selected by independent judges, are taken as a representative sample of the range of eGovernment projects in Europe. Although other eGovernment projects with exemplary features certainly exist, the unbiased nature of this list, which consists of 52 finalists from 31 countries, provides an objective criterion for inclusion, thus making our sample analytically stronger than an opportunistic sample. The selected websites are analysed and classified based on the taxonomy of citizen participation elaborated by Dutton, who defines three levels of digital citizen engagement: (1) sharing, (2) contributing, and (3) co-creating knowledge. These constitute a matrix describing different levels of maturity in an e-democracy. The results of the analysis and the application of this methodology provide an overview of the strategies and policies adopted by European governments to promote and support e-democracy. Interestingly, the results also show that the vast majority of European Union (EU) public websites adopt strategies to promote only the earliest stages of digital citizen engagement, primarily at level 1. This study also reveals how the public sector utilises various tools, social networks and digital resources to create virtual networks of citizen consultation and citizen sourcing of expertise. A valuable result of this study is the taxonomy of digital citizen engagement and its operationalisation, which may be useful for future research. Finally, this work identifies practices, strategies and mechanisms for fostering e-democracy in the EU.

Participation – In what? Radio, convergence and the corporate logic of audience input through new media in Zambia

Recent literature has pointed to the way in which new media such as the internet and mobile phones have the capacity to enable more participatory and interactive communication, either through user-generated content or through a broader participation of audiences in mainstream media’s content production. This potential is celebrated even more in contexts in which there is deemed to be a lack of political accountability or limited consultation of citizens by government. This article investigates the extent to which new technologies have changed the quality of audience participation in radio content production in Zambia. Engaging with literature on participation in media studies as well as development studies and based on interviews with station managers, producers and presenters of six radio stations in Zambia, the article examines both the opportunities and limits of the use of internet and mobile phones in audience participation. It argues that there is a need to situate these practices within a broader corporate logic in which participation is not merely about adding more voices but also feeds into radio stations’ commercial strategies of increasing revenue and accessing personal data of listeners through SMS and social media.

The Maturing Concept of E-Democracy: From E-Voting and Online Consultations to Democratic Value Out of Jumbled Online Chatter

ABSTRACT Early literature on e-democracy was dominated by euphoric claims about the benefits of e-voting (digital direct democracy) or continuous online citizen consultations (digital representative democracy). High expectations have gradually been replaced with more genuine approaches that aim to break with the dichotomy of traditional notions of direct and representative democracy. The ensuing question relates to the adequate design of information and communication technology (ICT) applications to foster such visions. This article contributes to this search and discusses issues concerning the adequate institutional framework. Recently, so-called Web 2.0 applications, such as social networking and Wikipedia, have proven that it is possible for millions of users to collectively create meaningful content online. While these recent developments are not necessarily labeled e-democracy in the literature, this article argues that they and related applications have the potential to fulfill the promise of breaking with the longstanding democratic trade-off between group size (direct mass voting on predefined issues) and depth of argument (deliberation and discourse in a small group). Complementary information-structuring techniques are at hand to facilitate large-scale deliberations and the negotiation of interests between members of a group. This article presents three of these techniques in more depth: weighted preference voting, argument visualization, and the Semantic Web initiative. Notwithstanding these developments, the maturing concept of e-democracy still faces serious challenges. Questions remain in political and computer science disciplines that ask about adequate institutional frameworks, the omnipresent democratic challenges of equal access and free participation, and the appropriate technological design.

Dealing with discretionary decision making in e-government: an open government approach

Administrative discretion refers to matters where, under legal framework, the degree of latitude or flexibility is left to be exercised by an official when making decisions. Such powers are often viewed as a major source of poor governance and should be replaced using information technology. This paper argues that the hollowing out of administrative discretion may not always achieve good governance and suggests an 'open government' approach as a means to prevent arbitrariness in discretionary decisions. The citizen consultation process and the e-government discretionary framework are introduced as a lens with which to analyse and design e-government applications.

Deliberative group dynamics: power, status and affect in interactive policy making

English Many proponents of interactive policy making view citizen consultations as a ‘rational deliberation between equals’. Power, authority, rhetoric and emotions are considered to be obstructive factors. In this article it is argued that interactive policy settings are characterised by status and authority hierarchies and affect dynamics. First, two types of deliberative bodies are introduced: citizen forums and stakeholder committees. Next, eight possible power and emotion dynamics are distinguished, including problems maintaining facilitative authority, trust-building work of experts, occurrence of charisma, persisting fear and distrust, hope turning into disappointment, and increasing mutual recognition. The last sections examine in which respects these dynamics occur in the two types of deliberative organisation.

Processes and Mechanisms of Democratization

Unlike Artistotle's analysis, recent treatments of democratization identify pathways and propose necessary conditions but fall short of specifying cause-effect relations. Democratization does not follow a single path, and is unlikely to have universally applicable necessary or sufficient conditions. A political process analysis of democratization defines it as movement toward broad citizenship, equal citizenship, binding consultation of citizens, and protection of citizens from arbitrary state action. High levels of all four elements depend on a significant degree of state capacity. Democratization emerges from interacting changes in public politics, categorical inequality, and networks of trust, which in turn depend on specifiable mechanisms of change in social relations. When the shocks of conquest, confrontation, colonization, and revolution promote democratization, they do so by accelerating the same causal mechanisms. The next round of research and theory on democratization requires identification, verification, and connection of the relevant causal mechanisms.

Living Together: International Aspects of Federal Systems

Living Together: International Aspects of Federal Systems

Community participation in the design of the Boulder Creek branch library

This case study describes how citizen input was incorporated into the design of a 4600 square foot branch library located in Santa Cruz County, California. Emphasis is placed on the selection and design of the participation process and citizen consultation techniques, and illustrates how the consultation with local people helped create the library's site plan, floor plan arrangement, building form, and many of the significant architectural features of the library. Furthermore, it is the intent of this paper to stress that the process of being involved in the design as well as the acceptability of the design were benefits of the participation process. The Boulder Creek Branch Library opened in March 1985 with a community celebration attended by over 300 local people. Work by local artists is incorporated directly into the building design. The author designed and facilitated the community participation process.

The National Interest and Foreign Languages: A Discussion Guide and Work Paper, Prepared for Citizen Consultations

The National Interest and Foreign Languages: A Discussion Guide and Work Paper, Prepared for Citizen Consultations

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:The National Interest and Foreign Languages: A Discussion Guide and Work Paper, prepared by William R. Parker. (For Citizen Consultations initiated by the U. S. National Commission for UNESCO, Dept. of State, Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. Preliminary edition, April 1954.Del Río Angel, Antología General de la Literatura Española, Dryden Press, New York, 1954, Tomo Primero (Desde los orígenes hasta 1700), pp. 908+xvi, Tomo Segundo (Desde 1700 hasta 1936)Cru, Albert L. and Guinard, Aurea, Le Français moderne, Livre II. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951Lizaso, Félix, Martí, Martyr of Cuban Independence. Translated by Esther Elise Shuler. The University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1953Paul Siwek, S. J., Ph.D., S.T.D.: The Riddle of Konnersreuth, A Psychological and Religious Study. Translated by Ignatius McCormick, O.F.M. Cap. The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee. 1953