Cherry‐picking participation: Explaining the fate of proposals from participatory processes

Abstract

What happens to the proposals generated by participatory processes? One of the key aspects of participatory processes that has been the subject of rare systematic analysis and comparison is the fate of their outputs: their policy proposals. Which specific factors explain whether these proposals are accepted, rejected or transformed by public authorities? In this article contextual and proposal‐related factors are identified that are likely to affect the prospect of proposals being implemented. The explanatory power of these factors are tested through multilevel analysis on a diverse set of 571 policy proposals. The findings offer evidence that both contextual and proposal‐related variables are important. The design of participatory processes affects the degree of implementation, with participatory budgeting and higher quality processes being particularly effective. Most significant for explaining outcomes are proposal‐level, economic and political factors: a proposal's cost, the extent to which it challenges existing policy and the degree of support it has within the municipality all strongly affect the chance of implementation.

Counter-Governance: Citizen Participation Beyond Collaboration

“…The institutionalisation of means for ex post citizen contestation of institutional action would go some way to broadening inclusion. It could help to improve a long-standing problem of collaborative governance initiatives: that they often result in frustration for participants as competing institutional imperatives thwart implementation (Lowndes, Pratchett, & Stoker, 2001;Newman, Barnes, Sullivan, & Knops, 2004) or authorities cherry-pick proposals that fit existing agendas (Font, Smith, Galais, & Alarcon, 2017). Properly constituted forms of citizen prevention, oversight and judgement could reduce officials' discretion to side-line citizens' priorities.…”

‘Come together?’ Citizens and civil servants dialogue and trust

“…Playful or socialising activities could help in this regard (Brugué et al., ). In the case of projects that are not directly realisable, these workshops should give greater support to the groups to reconfigure their initial objectives and be able to adjust expectations and propose a viable prototype. Besides, future studies would need to look further into what happens with the projects arising from this type of initiatives, if they move forward towards more comprehensive programmes or if, on the contrary, they eventually die as a consequence of bureaucratic routine or survive as small isolated projects, more as tokens that examples of a real exercise of policy co‐creation (Font, Smith, Galais, & Alarcon, ).…”

The participatory turn in local policies: A product of the market

“…A great number of studies, mainly rooted in the literature on deliberative democracy and governance, have explored the ability of participatory mechanisms to democratize public policies (Fung, 2006). Despite a better method for tracing citizens' proposals (Font, Smith, Galais, & Alarcón, 2018), these studies all tend to conclude that the influence of participatory mechanisms on public policies is limited and depends, among other factors, on the local contexts of implementation and on the design of the procedures (Bherer, Fernández-Martínez, Garcia Espin, & Jimenez Sanchez, 2016;Font & Galais, 2011;Michels, 2012;Michels et al, 2017).…”