Administering Public Participation

Abstract

Participation and administration have long had an uneasy coexistence. On one hand, public participation in decisions that affect citizens is consistent with citizenship and democracy; on the other hand, much of what government does is complex and requires some level of technical understanding to make decisions. In this article, we report on public administrators’ perceptions of public participation and the ways that they understand the participation process. We find that public participation is managed by public administrators; they determine the extent of participation, shape the ways that the participation takes place, and decide whether or not participation is valuable for their work. In some cases, the process is rather democratic, whereas in others, it is not. We find that it is up to administrators to shape the spaces for participation and select the participants in a manner consistent with their understanding of the task to be accomplished. We explore this process in the context of Environmental Impact Analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Citizen–State Collaboration in Combating COVID-19 in China: Experiences and Lessons From the Perspective of Co-Production

“…In an emergency context, some residents’ participation could be voluntary, while others’ participation might be influenced by public administrators. As revealed in a United States’ case on public participation, “it is up to administrators to shape the spaces for participation and select the participants in a manner consistent with their understanding of the task to be accomplished” (Eckerd & Heidelberg, 2020). Many of Chinese citizens were very likely to voluntarily sacrifice their freedom to go outside and thus comply with the lock down and/or stay-at-home policies not just because they trusted the central government but also because they were informed of and understood the harmfulness of the virus.…”

Encounters with the organisation: how local civil servants experience and handle tensions in public engagement

“…In connection to this, participatory processes may conflict with formal politics. Even though local governments facilitate participatory processes, politicians and administrators often decide how these processes are designed and how the outcomes will be taken into account (Hoppe 2011;Verloo 2019;Eckerd and Heidelberg 2019).…”

Institutional Injustice: How Public Administration Has Fostered and Can Ameliorate Racial Disparities

“…As Alexander (1997) notes, race is rarely portrayed positively in administrative decision-making, but it is often a basis for decisions. Within the task orientation of administrative decision-making (Eckerd & Heidelberg, 2020), race becomes a factor to manage to, rather than a meaningful social concept that requires attention and thoughtfulness (Alexander, 1997).…”

“…But it will yield more valid measures that add necessarily contextualization to simple dichotomous measures of race and help external perceptions shift from knee-jerk to nuanced. It can enhance the open-mindedness that administrators already have (Eckerd & Heidelberg, 2020), and the capacity building for communities to tell their stories in a way that administrators can understand and use. It can provide administrators with a way to better understand the experience of social injustice rather than just noting the presence of it, and this is the pathway toward deriving policy that can more effectively improve social injustice.…”