Counter-Governance: Citizen Participation Beyond Collaboration

Abstract

The theory and practice of urban governance in recent years has undergone both a collaborative and participatory turn. The strong connection between collaboration and participation has meant that citizen participation in urban governance has been conceived in a very particular way: as varying levels of partnership between state actors and citizens. This over-focus on collaboration has led to: 1) a dearth of proposals in theory and practice for citizens to engage oppositionally with institutions; 2) the miscasting of agonistic opportunities for participation as forms of collaboration; 3) an inability to recognise the irruption of agonistic practices into participatory procedures. This article attempts to expand the conception of participatory urban governance by adapting Rosanvallon's (2008) three democratic counter-powers-prevention, oversight and judgement-to consider options for institutionalising agonistic participatory practices. It argues that these countergovernance processes would more fully realise the inclusion agenda that underpins the participatory governance project.

Coproducing Urban Governance

“…Perry et al (2018) caution that there has been "insufficient critical examination of the presumed 'neutrality' or 'safeness' of new boundary spaces", and suggest this as a future research agenda. Dean (2018) proposes exploration of how collaborative and agonistic practices may be combined in governance, and under what conditions difference forms may be more appropriate.…”

“…He reminds us that agonistic practices, such as separation between the executive and legislature, are already well-established within institutions, but primarily used for elite contestation. Dean (2018) suggests a series of practical ways that these ideas might be developed in governance, such as strengthening a city-level right to petition, as a means of popular prevention of impropriety in decision-making.…”

Moving towards hybridity in causal explanation: The example of citizen participation

“…Some possible specific approaches have been discussed in this paper, such as QCA. None are perfect; more work is needed on qualiquantalogical (Dean, ) methods, which mirror (Jasanoff, ) hybridity in forms of causal explanation.…”

“…Some scholars have advocated for particular specific methods to pursue these goals, including Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), which some have referred to as one of a growing number of hybrid qualiquantalogical (Dean, ) methodologies. The use of QCA is intended to allow for rich, deep case‐specific understandings, alongside generalisable claims about causal mechanisms.…”

Governance Lessons from Urban Informality

“…Perry, Patel, Bretzer and Polk (2018) go farther, spotlighting local interaction platforms that assemble varied stakeholders to co-produce knowledge and strategy for urban sustainability. Dean (2018) takes the ruptural step of categorizing citizen conflict, as well as collaboration, with the state, as a form of participation in governance. Silver's (2018) "everyday radicalism" moves beyond dissensus to rebellion and utopian prefiguration.…”