Participation In Governance Processes Research Articles

Building social capital in post-conflict communities: Evidence from Nicaragua

Studies of social capital have focused on the static relationship between social capital and health, governance and economic conditions. This study is a first attempt to evaluate interventions designed to improve the levels of social capital in post-conflict communities in Nicaragua and to relate those increases to health and governance issues. The two-year study involved a baseline household survey of approximately 200 households in three communities in Nicaragua, the implementation of systematic interventions designed to increase social capital in two of the locales (with one control group), and a second household survey administered two years after the baseline survey. We found that systematic interventions promoting management and leadership development were effective in improving some aspects of social capital, in particular the cognitive attitudes of trust in the communities. Interventions were also linked to higher levels of civic participation in governance processes. As in other empirical studies, we also found that higher levels of social capital were significantly associated with some positive health behaviors. The behavioral/structural components of social capital (including participation in groups and social networks) were associated with more desirable individual health behaviors such as the use of modern medicine to treat children's respiratory illnesses. Attitudinal components of social capital were positively linked to community health behaviors such as working on community sanitation campaigns. The findings presented here should be of interest to policy makers interested in health policy and social capital, as well as those working in conflict-ridden communities in the developing world.

Learning from Political Sociology: Structure, Agency and Inclusive Governance

AbstractIn this article, we consider the inclusion of children and young people in participatory governance processes. Whilst limitations are often evident in such processes, we argue that even participatory opportunities that are provided by the state and regarded as spaces into which citizens are invited can be "conquered by civil society demands for inclusion" (Cornwall and Coelho, 2006: 1). To this end, we suggest a practice-based and diachronic approach to studying the interactions between participatory structures and children and young people's agency. Being attentive to the agency of children and young people, and adopting a more diachronic approach to evaluating participatory initiatives, point to the possibility, we suggest, of seeing these relationships unfold in sometimes unexpected ways.

But Is It for Real? The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly as a Model of State-Sponsored Citizen Empowerment

Emerging forms of empowered participatory governance have generated considerable scholarly excitement, but critics continue to ask if such initiatives are “for real”: Are participatory governance processes sufficiently independent? Do citizen participants make good policy choices? An in-depth look at the case of the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform suggests that real citizen empowerment depends on both the institutional constraints of the participa-tory setting and how citizen interests and arguments for policy outcomes crystallize over the course of a participatory process.

Ideological Extremism and Public Participation*

Objectives. Does aggregate ideological extremism reduce public participation? Does participation in governance processes fall when the social environment shifts to the extreme left or the extreme right of the political spectrum? Our main hypothesis is that the aggregate ideological orientation of the social environment constrains volunteerism in social regulatory programs.Methods. We test our hypothesis using a panel tobit analysis of data from the federal Long‐Term Care Ombudsman Program.Results. Our model of public participation (expressed as volunteerism) shows that participation expands when the ideological position of a state's citizens is at the extreme left or right of the political continuum. We show the differential effects of two types of aggregate ideological orientation: of citizens and their political leaders. We further find that participation is greatest in states with extremely liberal citizen ideological positions.Conclusions. These findings paint a more complex picture of the effect of extremism in the social environment on public participation measured as production volunteerism. In sum, public participation is greatest when the social environment is ideologically polarized, and social regulation is strongest when volunteerism is greatest.

The Students’ Role in French Academic Deliberative Democracy

AbstractSince 1968, according to the French higher education law, elected students must participate in the different academic boards in every university. As trustees, they must formulate opinions about the institutional policy. Moreover, they must deliberate on equal terms with teachers.According to a common discourse, this democratic activity is still considered as a nonsense because of some students’ structural weaknesses: very low turnout at the elections of their representatives, very high absenteeism rate of these miselected representatives and incapacity to formulate responsible and pragmatic proposals. This students’ uselessness in the academic participatory governance process would come from a post‐modernist air du temps: youth apathy, individualism, democratic societies’ crisis . . .In accordance with the scientific questioning about the contemporary processes of political communication, I propose an alternative set of explanations focused on the spirit and practices which rule French academic boards. I assume that the development and improvement of student participation are also limited by endogenous factors that are closely linked with the functioning of the academic boards.I propose an ethnographic analysis of a French university board. I compare the elected students’ absenteeism to the others members’ (teachers, staff members and guests) attendance rates. Then I study the cultural patterns which structure the interactions. Discursive freedom would be the sine qua non condition of academic autonomy and the structural explanation of weak student participation by teachers.

Using Stakeholder Decision-making Simulation to Teach Integrated Coastal Management

A simulation technique to teach aspects of stakeholder participation in integrated coastal management is described and evaluated. Through student feedback, it was found that the benefits of the simulation included improved understanding of interdisciplinary coastal issues, greater insight into the challenges facing contemporary coastal managers and an expanded suite of marketable skills. It is concluded that while this type of simulation requires a re-evaluation of the relationship between the lecturer and students, it has the potential to be transplanted successfully into other areas of geographic study that require understanding of participatory governance processes.