The Role of the Public Manager in Inclusion: Creating Communities of Participation

Abstract

In this article, we focus on the role of the public manager in bringing about inclusion. While inclusion often implies public participation, we have observed that one of the challenges for public managers practicing inclusive management is the necessity of combining information and perspectives of three domains: the political, the technical, and the local or experiential. Inclusion, from this perspective, involves the creation of communities of participation in which representatives of these three domains can use their knowledge to address public problems. We examine the ways in which managers do informational and relational work to enact such communities of participation.

Policy forums: Why do they exist and what are they used for?

“…Between these two ideal-typical extremes, there are forums in which facilitators, leaders, or moderators are responsible for the design of the internal decision making process (Feldman and Khademian 2007). The presence of a facilitating leader simplifies the collaborative process (Vasseur et al 1997;Folke et al 2005;Ansell and Gash 2008), not least because a leader might absorb transaction costs by providing critical resources (Emerson et al 2012).…”

“…A public manager thus has an interest in bringing together relevant actors in order to enhance the design as well as the implementation of policies (Feldman and Khademian 2007) via mutual exchange of expertise before a decision is made.…”

“…Corporatist arrangements (Öberg 2002), boundary organizations (Hahn et al 2006) and deliberative forums (Hendriks 2006) all create trust and a common understanding of given issues among participating actors, which facilitates a long-term dialogue (Feldman and Khademian 2007;Crona and Parker 2012). For example, bargaining between trade unions and employers' associations relies on the experience of employers' associations that their concessions indeed lead to cooperative behavior of the trade unions' constituency.…”

“…Including the political domain can be important for finding out what actions are likely to be adopted and funded, or how to achieve political awareness of an issue. The scientific or technical domain is important for informing actors on what actions will solve particular problems (Feldman and Khademian 2007), especially with respect to highly complex and uncertain policy issues (McAllister et al 2013).…”

“…On the other hand, the literature also discusses positive aspects of policy forums. It notably emphasizes civil society participation and the establishment of a "public sphere" as well as balanced decisions due to extensive deliberation (Rowe and Frewer 2000;Parkins 2002;Feldman and Khademian 2007;Klijn and Skelcher 2007). In addition to this increased input legitimacy, a higher "quality" of decisions can be expected due to the contribution of expert and stakeholder knowledge that is otherwise inaccessible to decision makers.…”