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Public Encounters in Participatory Democracy: Communicative Capacity as a Mechanism for Bridging

Theory and Context

Koen P.R. Bartels – School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow*

Abstract

Participatory democracy has developed from radical alternative into contingent conundrum.

In the absence of conclusive answers about its practical feasibility in diverse contexts, this

paper presents a theory of public encounters in participatory democracy that overcomes the

current impasse between theoretical ideals and contextual conditions. From a grounded

theory analysis of three community participation projects in widely diverging socio-political

contexts, it appeared that the differences in their dynamics and outcomes were different

empirical manifestations of the same underlying mechanism: the communicative capacity.

This generative mechanism does not provide causal-deterministic accounts of the conditions

under which A invariably causes B, but explains what generates the variety in outcomes of

participatory projects across different places and points in time. Instead of trying to identify a

one-best-way or stable equilibrium, communicative capacity is an ideal typical norm and a

variable practice. By setting out its epistemological basis and constitutive elements, the paper

argues that the communicative capacity of public professionals and citizens is as difficult to

sustain as it is crucial for thriving and robust public encounters in participatory democracy.

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Paper prepared for the 24th Annual Meeting of the Public Administration Theory Network,

May 19-23, 2011, Norfolk (VA)

* Adam Smith Building 703, G12 8RT, Glasgow, United Kingdom, k.bartels.1@research.gla.ac.uk

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INTRODUCTION

Participatory democracy has developed from radical alternative into contingent conundrum.

As there seems to be broad consensus for the idea that deliberation and participation need to

counterbalance the shortcomings of liberal representative democracy, the debate is currently

mostly concerned with exploring the practical feasibility of such reforms (Bohman, 1998).

Research continues to aim for identifying the empirical conditions under which participatory

democracy works and better grounding theories in practice. In the absence of conclusive

answers, some have advocated that we are best off taking a contingency approach to

understanding the role of contextual conditions (Fung & Wright, 2003; Ansell & Gash,

2007). Others have argued that we need to broaden our scope to examining the nature and

quality of communication in participatory democracy, as the notion of deliberation is only „a

partial remedy to the ills it seeks to cure‟ (Young, 2000; Rosenberg, 2007). Although this

„communicative turn‟ continues to face the predicaments of practical feasibility, it also offers

more scope to resolve this conundrum.

This paper sets out a theory of public encounters in participatory democracy which

overcomes the practical feasibility conundrum. By understanding public encounters as the

communicative capacity of public professionals and citizens to establish patterns of

constructive and productive communication, it provides a framework for identifying patterns

of, and barriers to, communication, explaining context-specific opportunities and constraints,

and evaluating how the communicative capacity might be improved. This theory of public

encounters does not provide causal-deterministic accounts of the conditions under which A

invariably causes B, but should rather be understood as a generative mechanism which

explains what generates the variety in outcomes of participatory democracy across different

places and points in time. Instead of trying to identify a one-best-way or stable equilibrium, it

proposes communicative capacity as an ideal typical norm and a variable practice, which is as

difficult to sustain as it is crucial for thriving and robust public encounters in participatory

democracy.

This theoretical framework is the end result rather than the starting point of my PhD

research. At the outset, there were no particular theories or hypotheses to be tested, only a

fairly broad research question: what happens when public professionals and citizens

encounter each other in community participation? For my PhD research, I studied community

participation projects in Glasgow (UK), Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Bologna (Italy) and,

using grounded theory analysis, gradually abstracted the analytical findings into theoretical

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explanations. Interestingly enough, my research of public encounters in these widely

divergent socio-political contexts revealed that the differences in their dynamics and

outcomes were different empirical manifestations of the same underlying mechanism: the

communicative capacity. This paper attempts to turn the inductive research process on its

head and concisely probe the resulting theoretical framework. It is not a detailed report of the

empirical journey through which I arrived at this framework, but rather a coherent statement

of how we can meaningfully look back (as well as forward) with what I have learned.

The paper is a theoretical expose and does not discuss in any detail the empirical

findings in which it is grounded. In the first section, I provide a brief overview of the

development of participatory democracy from radical alternative to contingent conundrum,

and explain how my research seeks to contribute to the debate by resolving the problems of

practical feasibility. The second section sets out the epistemological foundations and criteria

for the type of theory needed to do so by introducing generative mechanisms as an ideal

typical construct with dichotomous conceptual boundaries and three intermediate (sub-)

mechanisms. The next sections define how the communicative capacity takes shape between

the conceptual boundaries of Community and Planning, and through the mechanisms of

transitory complexity, collective intelligence, and facilitative leadership. In the final section,

conclude that there is a bit of a chicken and egg dilemma as to how public professionals and

citizens might change their habitual patterns of communication, and discuss how researchers

might break this cycle by acting as interpretative mediator.

PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY: THE PRACTICAL FEASBILITY

CONUNDRUM

Initially, proponents of participatory democracy were primarily preoccupied with establishing

a viable substitute for liberal representative (“thin”) democracy (Barber, 1984). Debates on

democracy became increasingly characterized by the argument that decision making about

public, or collective, affairs can only be truly legitimate if it is the outcome of the rational

exchange of ideas, information, and arguments among all those affected in free and equal

debate (Bohman, 1998). Traditional democratic institutions were deemed insufficient for such

deliberation and, therefore, unfit for solving the problems of our modern globalized,

fragmented, and complex societies. Participatory arenas, in contrast, offer new deliberative

spaces in which stakeholders can be brought together and effectively address their common

concerns. As critical mass accumulated for participatory democracy as a normative ideal,

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attention was increasingly put on “the problem of how this ideal would be approximated in

societies characterized by deep disagreements, social problems of enormous complexity and

the blunt instruments of available institutions” (Bohman, 1998 p. 401).

The study of the practical feasibility of participatory democracy has turned into a

conundrum which, up to now, has not been resolved. After two decades of research, we now

have at our disposal a burgeoning empirical literature from which a great deal has become

clear about the conditions under which participatory democracy is introduced, through which

institutions, attitudes, and practices it actually operates, and what factors contribute to the

success or failure of projects. At the same time, case studies are usually far from conclusive,

typically reporting “a story of struggles with mixed results” (Spiegel & Perlman, 1983, p.

125). Several comprehensive reviews of the empirical literature come to the conclusion that

the practical feasibility of participatory democracy is highly contingent on case-specific

conditions (Delli Carpini et al., 2004; Ansell & Gash, 2008). These predicaments of practical

applicability and academic variability have sharpened the knives of theoretical critiques and

normative challenges.

The absence of conclusive answers has fed into the critique that participatory

democracy offers, at best, a partial remedy to the ills it seeks to cure (Young, 1996; Sanders,

1997; Rosenberg, 2007). Other than the often echoed „Arnstein argument‟ that officials do

not climb the „ladder of participation‟ towards the point of actually sharing power with

citizens (Arnstein, 1969), the „partial remedy‟ criticism, at a much more fundamental level,

holds that deliberation is a too narrow concept for changing traditional forms of public

communication and therefore insufficient for truly rekindling democracy. As the ability to

articulate logical, rational, and reasonable arguments is unequally distributed, by privileging

deliberation as mode of communication, we sustain social inequality and exclusion of

marginalized groups. The alternative that is posed is that participatory democracy should not

hinge on the quality of just reason-giving, but on the quality of all forms of communication,

including personal experiences, emotions, non-verbal cues, imagination, identities, etc. As a

result, an increasing amount of research is turning to the concept of dialogue, with which we

could better apprehend and alter the quality of public communication (see e.g., Schein, 2003;

Anderson et al., 2004; Escobar, 2010).

Deliberation is a mode of communication for rational exchange of arguments to agree

on a resolution for common concerns. Grounded on the notion of communicative rationality

(Habermas, 1996), the conventional focus on deliberation has unduly narrowed down the

meaning of communication to the “back-and-forth exchange of reasons” (Bohman, 1996, p.

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58). Instead, as the goal of participatory democracy is for people to (learn to) communicate

with each other, the key concern lies not with argumentation and agreement but more

fundamentally with relationship-building (Dewey, 1927; Healey, 1997). Dialogue is a mode

of communication that advances relationship-building through raising awareness of

underlying assumptions, interdependencies, and patterns of interaction. While deliberation

requires the rational and cognitive capacities to articulate, criticize, and justify options,

dialogue asks for empathic and reflective capacities to engage in open-ended inquiry into

deeply held belief systems and developing open and respectful relationships (Kelshaw, 2007;

Kim & Kim, 2008).

Deliberation and dialogue can each fulfill distinct, essential, and supplementary roles

in participatory democracy. Figure 1 visualizes how we can use both concepts to assess the

quality of communication in particular situations. The main goal is to examine whether actors

are able to break down habitual patterns of communication or, instead, resort to „ritualized

opposition‟ (Isaacs, 1999; Tannen, 1999). While communicating differences through

confrontation of adversarial positions (top level) is the form of argumentation we are most

used to, it is actually ill-suited to establishing the common ground to resolve a shared

problem. Deliberation (middle level) can partly overcome adversarial mind frames through

collective debate of the merits of different standpoints and exploration of the possibilities for

compromise. This requires all actors to express the reasons for their individual positions and

collectively work towards claims acceptable to all. Dialogue (bottom level), in contrast, seeks

to stimulate inquiry into personal experiences, tacit understandings, and emotional attitudes.

It is not oriented towards reaching consensus, but is aimed at creating a setting in which

actors feel psychologically safe to speak their minds and listen openly to each other (Schein,

2003; Pearce & Pearce, 2004).

Figure 1. Three layers of communication1

1 Amended from Pound (2003). Although the „Positions-Interests-Needs‟ model is one of the classical ideas in

conflict resolution (see Ramsbotham et al., 2005, pp. 18-19), the inclusion of the dark blue common ground in

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Along these lines, research on participatory democracy has started to explore how

dialogue works, how it differs from, and supplements, deliberation, and when both are

possible. Once again, the „practical feasibility conundrum‟ presents itself: under what actual

conditions can the quality of communication be enhanced in the public sphere? As there are

up to now only a handful of studies that have documented how participatory projects have

overcome practical barriers to constructive communication (Spano, 2001; Roberts, 2002;

Innes & Booher, 2003), there continues to be a strong need for grounding theoretical accounts

of participatory democracy in the practices it comes down to (Fung, 2003). We are still

looking for the “pragmatic equilibrium” (Fung, 2007) between normative ideals and

empirical grounding through which we can better comprehend how contextual conditions

generate variety in the nature and quality of participatory democracy. This is the research

agenda of the (current) “third generation” of participatory democracy research (Elstub, 2010).

My research addresses this agenda by offering a way out of the practical feasibility

conundrum. The fieldwork consisted of an inductive analysis of community participation

projects in three European cities, Glasgow (UK), Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Bologna

(Italy). The cases were selected based on their strikingly similar policies for making citizens

a structural part of local governance processes, and their highly divergent socio-political

contexts. What surfaced from the research was that, despite their differences, the structures

local public professionals and citizens are working with, the problems that concern them, and

the type of conflicts they had, all were different empirical manifestations of the same

underlying mechanism: the communicative capacity. This finding has led to the formulation

of a theory of public encounters, which provides a framework for identifying patterns of, and

barriers to, communication in participatory democracy. This framework makes it possible to

understand the context-specific opportunities and constraints to the communicative capacity

of local public professionals and citizens.

Before setting out the contents of this theory of public encounters, the next section

first explains the epistemological nature of this theory. It is proposed that the research agenda

above asks for a type of knowledge that explains variety between and within cases and that

such knowledge can be produced by specifying generative mechanisms. The paper then

proceeds by explaining how my theory of public encounters constitutes a generative

mechanism, and how this overcomes the practical feasibility conundrum.

the version of Diana Pound constitutes an important innovation. I am indebted to Oliver Escobar for providing

me the model in its current format, which I only slightly amended in the terminology to fit the current

discussion.

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GENERATIVE MECHANISMS: THE UNDERLYING SOURCE OF VARIATION

Since the „interpretative turn‟ in the social sciences (see Rabinow & Sullivan, 1987), it has

become an accepted epistemological stance that theories of modern governance should

illuminate the variety of meanings inherent to socio-political contexts in terms of the concrete

organization of social and political life (Hajer & Wagenaar, 2003). By interpreting the

everyday practices of policy actors, we can reconstruct what they are actually conveying

when they communicate, and formulate theories that put this conduct into perspective

(Yanow, 2000). Although the interpretative turn has not turned everybody into interpretivists,

there does seem to be a growing consensus for the position that (neo)positivist research can

identify broad causal patterns and relationships while interpretative research can explain

these in detail (Lin, 1998; Fischer, 2003, pp. 158-159). However, a fundamental

epistemological difference remains about how to deal with the indeterminacy of the social

sciences that results from the variability of the social world.

On one side, neo-positivists strive for making causal inferences from empirical

evidence to determine under which conditions A invariably causes B (King et al., 1994;

George & Bennet, 2004; Gerring, 2007). This approach considers interpretative analyses

useful to the extent that these follow the logic of quantitative and experimental analysis (e.g.

Mill‟s Methods). Conversely, post-empiricists contend that invariable causality can never be

conclusively demonstrated because of what Bohman (1991, p. 13) calls “the protean

character of reflective, social agency”: “if agents become aware of and change the conditions

under which they act, no factor or set of factors can fully or determinately explain a social

event or action” (see also Fay, 1975). In this view, recognizing the indeterminacy and open-

endedness of social phenomena does not mean abandoning the analytical rigor that (neo-

)positivism proposes, but rather asks for a reconsideration of the scientific standards and

procedures through which we can convincingly account for the variability inherent to the

ways in which social contexts generate diverse expressions of meaning.

During my research, I discovered that we can provide such accounts by specifying the

underlying mechanism that generates the variety in outcomes across different places and

points in time. A generative mechanism holds that there is always a potential for variety and

clarifies what generates this. It is a middle-range theory that

“is not concerned with the historical generalization that a degree of social order or

conflict prevails in society but with the analytical problem of identifying the social

mechanisms which produce a greater degree of order or less conflict than would

obtain if these mechanisms were not called into play” (Merton, 1968, p. 45).

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Middle range theories are traditionally formulated as causal mechanisms, explaining why a

certain causal relationship exists to a level of detail that a statistical correlation or macro-level

theory cannot (George & Bennet, 2004; Gerring, 2008; Hedström & Ylikoski, 2010). By

establishing the macro-level causality between A and B at a more fine-grained level of detail,

causal mechanisms are a useful model for providing „thick‟ and holistic understandings of

contextual conditions and processes. However, it does not allow “for the possibility that all

explanations might be unstable and impermanent at some future conjuncture” (Fischer, 2003,

p. 159). Rather than pinpointing all the nuts and bolts of a static causal chain, then, a

generative mechanism aims to capture the tensions, dilemmas, and ambiguities that generate

continuous change, systemic complexity, and differences in interpretation.

A generative mechanism is an analytical “representation of the meaning of a social

phenomenon [in which] [t]raits from empirical reality [are] brought together into a

meaningful unified construct” (Stout, 2010, p. 499). In this sense, is an ideal typical construct

of a particular social phenomenon, which in its conceptual purity cannot be found in

empirical reality but should instead be used to make sense of its empirical manifestations. A

generative mechanism is formulated

“by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of

a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete

individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized

viewpoints into a unified analytical construct” (Weber, 1949p. 90; emphases in

original).2

The act of one-sided emphasizing refers to a process of analytical abstraction away from the

details of social reality, but does not imply collapsing apparent similarities into a narrow

interpretation that unduly reconciles significant differences or reduces crucial details. Instead,

the goal is to point out how some differences are irreconcilable, as to reveal tensions and

inconsistencies in the nature of the social phenomenon at hand (Rutgers, 1993, 1998;

Raadschelders, 2003).

A generative mechanism (see p. 8) consists of three constitutive parts –the situational,

individual action, and transformational mechanisms– which generate variety in social

patterns and certain boundaries within which this happens. The first transition, the situational

mechanism, specifies how the institutional setting forms the beliefs and preferences of actors

and generates opportunities and constraints for action. The individual action mechanism,

secondly, details how individual preferences and beliefs within this setting lead to specific

2 Thanks to Margaret Stout (Stout, 2010, p. 499) for distilling this quote from Weber.

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actions. Finally, the transformational mechanism identifies how these individual actions

aggregate into collective level changes (Coleman, 1986, 1990; Hedström & Swedberg,

1996b, 1996a).

The conceptual boundaries of a generative mechanism have to be understood as a

dichotomy, which consists of two abstract, idealized extremes that provide a yardstick to

assess how and why particular phenomena deviate (Rutgers, 2001). By confronting reality

with the dichotomy, it becomes possible to interpret differences in meaning and to compare

between different cases. The two extremes do not exclude the existence of intermediate and

mixed forms and allows for grading these on a scale or continuum. That means that

something is never black or white, but that there are different shades of grey in between,

which can be assessed by using the black-white dichotomy as a yardstick. In between these

conceptual boundaries, the situational, individual action, and transformational mechanisms

generate variation within and between different socio-political contexts, or cases.

The following sections set out the theory of public encounters in participatory

democracy by specifying its conceptual boundaries (Community and Planning), situational

mechanism (transitory complexity), individual action mechanism (collective intelligence),

and transformational mechanism (facilitative leadership). Each part of the theory is discussed

according to the same structure: (1) abridged introduction, (2) development of the literature,

(3) contribution of my research. Taken together, it should become clear how the theory of

public encounters helps us to understand the variability of participatory democracy.

COMMUNICATIVE CAPACITY BETWEEN COMMUNITY AND PLANNING

Communicative capacity refers to the ability of actors to establish patterns of constructive

and productive communication. This does not mean that actors need to avoid contestation and

Figure 2. Generative mechanisms model (adapted from Coleman, 1990; Hedström & Swedberg, 1996a)

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conflicts and only strive for buoyant agreement-seeking. As recent normative and empirical

studies have asserted, real democracies consist of, and benefit from, convergent and

divergent thinking, deliberation and bargaining, recognition and antagonism (see De Souza-

Briggs, 2008, pp. 42-43). Accordingly, communicative capacity, and the institutional

architecture that sustains it, require “a language that reaches beyond the simple antithesis

between centralization and decentralization” (Fung, 2003, p. 140), representative democracy

and deliberative democracy, or state and society. My research supports recent attempts at

conceptualizing intermediary and integrative models of participatory democracy, such as

Fung & Wright‟s (2003) Empowered Participatory Governance, but at the same time stresses

the impossibility of an ultimate, invariable model. It demonstrates that Community and

Planning constitute contradictory poles which render change, complexity, and ambiguity

inevitable, and, therefore, the crucial role of the communicative capacity for dealing with the

resulting tensions and barriers.

Public encounters can be broadly conceived as the meeting of state and society

(Goodsell, 1981). Their study thus unleashes a long-standing debate the “two opposed

philosophies of man as member of the human community; state and society … appear as two

terms of a deep-lying antithesis of modern political consciousness” (Berki, 1979, p. 2). Up to

present day, the debate remains divided between advocates and opponents of „strong societies

and weak states‟ (Migdal, 1988; compare e.g., Scott, 1998). Simultaneously, from several

different angles, it has been recognized that their normative principles, institutional formats,

and practical behaviors need to be integrated in constantly renegotiated and evolving systems

(Ostrom, 1990; Mouffe, 1992; Fung & Wright, 2003). This intermediate perspective is based

on recognition of the constitutive nature of difference, inequality, and antagonism for the

everyday practice of modern democratic governance, as well as the need for pragmatically

dealing with the inevitably resulting tensions, misunderstandings, and conflicts (Mouffe,

2000; Pløger, 2004; De Souza-Briggs, 2008).

Thus, it has become more common to concentrate on intermediate models which

incorporate the impossibility of final reconciliation between state and society, as is for

example reflected in somewhat paradoxical concepts such as “accountable autonomy” (Fung,

2004) or “metis-friendly institutions” (Scott, 1998). However, up to now, the underlying

mechanism that generates these opposing forces has been insufficiently articulated. My

research has captured this mechanism in the dichotomy of Community – Planning, in which

Planning implies adherence to schematic plans and official procedures as to ensure reliable,

accountable, and equitable change, while Community refers to the emergence of spontaneous,

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creative, and diverse practices in the absence of a system in which plans, rules, structures,

and roles strictly specified. In practice, participatory institutions are subject to the centripetal

pressures of these two analytical extremes, while actors find themselves in need of making

practical judgments between two contradictory lines of action which are more or less equally

possible, necessary, and justifiable.

Institutional reform can change the way this problem manifests itself, but cannot

alleviate the underlying mechanism. There is an inevitable waterbed effect: when pushing a

bump on one place, another bump will appear elsewhere. While my research all but

discourages institutional reform, it advocates that proper changes can only be determined

after the collective capacity to communicate has been addressed. This means that, rather than

continuing to chase bumps and push them down, more innovative and sustainable solutions

can be discovered if all actors are aware of what bumps might be coming up when they press

others down. In other words, actors need to enhance their communicative capacity: the ability

to leverage the right kind of skills, knowledge, and resources for dealing with everyday

frustrations and mistakes; recognizing opportunities and constraints for change; and

nourishing active and genuine speaking and listening.

The communicative capacity is an ideal typical norm and a variable practice. That

means that there is no one-best-way or stable equilibrium. Rather, through their everyday

encounters, actors constantly modify their communicative capacity, either consciously or

unconsciously. In order to nurture constructive and productive communication, they need to

recurrently cultivate their ability for (1) grasping how transitory complexity affects who has

to say what, when, how, and to whom, (2) building collective intelligence from the existing

diversity of views, beliefs, and knowledge, and (3) exerting facilitative leadership to enable

respectful, trusting, and adaptive relationships. The next sections explain why these three

elements of communicative capacity are as difficult to sustain as they are crucial for thriving

and robust public encounters in participatory democracy.

TRANSITORY COMPLEXITY: EMPOWERMENT AS WORK IN PROGRESS

Transitory complexity indicates that participatory practice is intrinsically complicated,

ambiguous, and changing, making it hard for actors to get a grip on social reality and grasp

what might be sensible ways of acting. That is not to say that everyone sits still out of pure

perplexity; quite the opposite, as it are the continuous activities of actors and the changes

these bring about that are constitutive of participatory practice (cf. Wagenaar, 2004).

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Transitory complexity, then, debunks the conventional belief that the introduction of

participatory institutions unambiguously leads to empowerment and collaboration. My

research concurs with existing studies which assert that actors constantly need to determine

what are sensible and practical ways to distribute power (Huxham et al., 2000), but stresses

that doing so is highly problematic because of deep communicative barriers to agreeing on

structures, policies, meanings, goals, roles, etc. It demonstrates that power is a work in

progress: an ongoing and indeterminate process of short and long term changes in which

actors seek to couple participatory institutions to complex and intractable problems.

One of the most fundamental premises of participatory democracy is that participatory

institutions need to „bracket‟ power differentials so that citizens can truly share power with

public professionals (Arnstein, 1969; Habermas, 1996; Roberts, 2004). Traditional political

and bureaucratic structures have to be reformed because they inhibit empowerment.

(Denhardt & Denhardt, 2003; Fung & Wright, 2003; Hill & Hupe, 2007). New institutional

settings can facilitate „multi-way interactions‟ in which collaborative decision making,

common meanings, shared solutions, and vertical accountability can emerge (Innes &

Booher, 2004, p. 429). However, at the same time, empirical research has demonstrated that

the conventional belief that participatory institutions constitute unambiguous „windows of

opportunity‟ for desirable change belies the actual nature of participatory practice (Huxham

et al., 2000; Fung, 2006; Ansell & Gash, 2008). Whether actors are actually able to create

“collaborative advantage” depends on contingent conditions such as disposition of resources,

mandate of participating actors, pre-existing antagonism, diverging organizational decision

making cycles, and tacit cultural differences.

While my research supports this wide recognition of the importance of contingent

conditions, it finds it inadequate to understand contextual complexity as a mere practical

deviation from the theoretical ideal that needs to be set straight through more accurate

institutional design or collaborative management. Instead, my research suggests that

transitory complexity is an inevitable source of mystification for actors to communicate

constructively. The actual conditions under which participation takes place are not only

highly complex because of the great amount of actors, rules, organizational structures,

policies, problems, etc., but also because all these factors change in form, meaning, and

importance over time – i.e. the complexity is transitory. It is difficult for actors to determine

what a workable division of power is, because participatory practice is a work in progress: it

is never stable and straightforward enough for actors to get a firm grip on what is going on

and what should be done. Rather than just searching for (more) optimal power distributions,

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then, the primary goal for actors is to keep on reflecting on how transitory complexity affects

who has to say what, when, and to whom.

Appreciating transitory complexity implies seeing participatory institutions as

opportunity structures: socio-political systems that embody opportunities and constraints

which encourage or discourage particular actors to use their resources, mobilize collective

action, and frame discourses (cf. Cohen et al., 1979; Tarrow, 1994). Participatory policies, on

the one hand, introduce formal arrangements that seek to enhance central legibility, control,

and monitoring (cf. Scott, 1998) as well as shared ideas, norms, and vocabulary, but, on the

other hand, always imply a reshuffling of existing practices, relationships, resources, agendas,

and power distributions. Rather than completely leveling power inequalities, there will

continue to be differences in the distribution of power to set agendas, allocate resources, and

make final decisions. Collaboration is a process of “muddling through” these differences (cf.

Lindblom, 1959): none of the actors have the authoritative power to unilaterally steer others

in particular directions but, instead, are interdependent on how others respond to their actions,

and need to bargain for mutual adjustment (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1973/1984; Kickert et

al., 1997).

Ideally, participatory institutions facilitate actors to pragmatically adapt their views

and practices to each other in order to more effectively harness their shared problems (Innes

& Booher, 2003). Transitory complexity, however, implies that many different factors and

actors interact in unforeseeable ways, rendering (parts of) participatory practice

incomprehensible for a critical period of time (cf. Perrow, 1999). It is therefore not sufficient

to portray participatory practice in terms of adaptiveness, i.e. whether actors manage to

overcome the discrepancies between their views and practices that result from the presence of

wicked problems which have multiple competing definitions and no final resolution (Rittel &

Webber, 1973). Rather, it is more adequate to use the concept of seemingly small problems:

actors stumble upon problematical situations that at first sight seem to be fairly easy to define

and straightforward to solve, but quickly appear to be extremely complicated and difficult to

change. As actors get further drawn into the conflicts between multiple problem analyses, the

need for detailed knowledge and know-how, and the interdependence of different actors for

doing something, their frustration over the lack of concrete results grows and their ability to

constructively communicate about the problems decreases.

Transitory complexity, in sum, means that actors are unlikely to find a “steady state”

of power (re)distribution, as participatory institutions can impose a too rigid straightjacket

which excessively constrains collaboration as well as be too flexible and sketchy, offering

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insufficient guidance and coherence. Being predestined for continuous confrontation with

complexity, ambiguity, and change, their primary concern should be with cultivating their

capacity to communicate about what has changed, what appears to be affecting what, and

what might be the most sensible way of going forward.

COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: EXPERTISE AS STRUGGLING

Collective intelligence refers to the concrete connections that are made between the total

range of available views, beliefs, ideas, knowledge, and experiences. That does not mean

simply connecting the dots in order to create the proverbial whole that is bigger than the sum

of its parts; rather, it involves a continuous struggling with socio-cultural definitions of what

constitutes legitimate expertise and the ways in which the relationships between actors affects

their ability to communicate their different forms of expertise. Collective intelligence rebuffs

a rational-instrumental model of knowledge transfer between senders and receivers that

automatically leads to learning and improvement, and instead proposes a communicative-

iterative model of negotiation between situated, local, ordinary, or practical knowledge and

know-how (cf. Freeman, 1998). My research is in agreement with recent contributions which

emphasize the need for the translation and integration of different forms of expertise (Weber

& Khademian, 2008), but asserts that there are inevitable communicative barriers to

widespread acceptance of the existence of multiple truths and supplementary worldviews. It

shows that collective intelligence is an ongoing practical process of struggling with engrained

beliefs and cognitive boundaries.

Participatory democracy is founded on the claim that public professionals often do not

possess the right kind of expertise to make decisions that will effectively solve complex

problems (Fischer, 1993b, 2009). In order to counterbalance the “high-handed technocratic

style of policy making” (Wagenaar, 2007, p. 22) of traditional government, professionals

have to assist citizens in becoming a part of decision making about problems that affect their

lives. Decisions should be grounded in the concrete lived experience of citizens, because they

often possess crucial knowledge and know-how essential to understanding the nitty-gritty of

intractable problems. Participatory democracy can establish better connections between the

“life world” –in which citizens experience the daily routines and problems of their direct

living environment– and the “system world” –in which professionals are concerned with

technical details, legal norms, and large scale planning– (Habermas, 1996) by considering a

wide range of worldviews, beliefs, values, and feelings as valid expertise (Hummel & Stivers,

14

1998; Kelly, 2004). However, both „worlds‟ have different embedded logics between which

deep-seated barriers continue to exist which are difficult, yet not impossible, to overcome

(Hartman & Tops, 2005).

My research findings support the idea that a great deal can be won from integrating

rational-technical knowledge and emotional-lived experience, but also demonstrate that the

opposition between technocratic professionals and experienced citizens is overly simplistic.

In practice, the boundaries between system and life world are vague, as public professionals

usually have personal experiences with everyday life and problems, and citizens have

technical knowledge of laws, budgets, and plans. Moreover, the wide variety of personal

backgrounds of people involved in participatory projects problematizes the labels

„professional‟ and „citizen‟. Refocusing expertise, therefore, goes well beyond advocating a

moral imperative for self-interested and autocratic public professionals to accommodate well-

intending and neglected citizens. Instead, expertise needs to be seen as a continuous

struggling with deciding which parts of the multiplicity of available information, views, and

experiences are relevant for solving particular problems. Actors can be quite open to a lot of

different considerations, but simultaneously have particular ingrained beliefs that restrict their

perception, collection, and treatment of information.

From the perspective of collective intelligence, then, knowledge and know-how are

seen as social expertise, a collective knowing and acting developed and through (inter)action

in specific contexts (Yanow, 2004, p. S10) where recognition of knowledge as legitimate and

valuable hinges on the specific context and relationships between actors. Each actor has a

bounded rationality, cognitive limits formed by individual experiences and social influence

from their organization or community (Simon, 1945/1997), which are permeable and can be

changed through “learning by doing” (Schön, 1983). However, such boundary crossing is not

a mere matter of transfer of knowledge, but rather of the translation of meaning; i.e. it

involves (conscious or unconscious) struggling with rendering particular forms of expertise

meaningful across cognitive boundaries (Yanow, 2004). Accordingly, each actor has a certain

communicative capacity for taking aboard unknown rational knowledge about rules,

structures, and plans, as well as empathically imagining others‟ underlying feelings, motives,

and experiences.

Public encounters in participatory democracy ideally stimulate each actor to recognize

the legitimacy and value of a broad diversity of perspectives as well as their mutual

interdependence (Innes & Booher, 2003; Weber & Khademian, 2008). Collective

intelligence, however, does not emerge out of itself, as there can be incommensurable

15

differences between different knowledge or belief systems. While for some the “bird‟s eye

view” (Le Corbusier, 1967) is indispensable –as general data, technical knowledge, regulative

norms, and formal procedures can help to avoid unaccountable, arbitrary, or inequitable

decisions–, others find the “eyes on the street” (Jacobs, 1961) more compelling –as personal

experiences and feelings can offer accurate views on the moral, emotional, and contextual

nature of a problem. By confronting different types of knowledge and emotions with each

other, it is possible to lift the veils of tacit knowledge and trigger joint learning (Argyris &

Schön, 1976; Marcus et al., 2005; Verhoeven, 2009). In practice, however, this is likely be an

ongoing struggling because of “passive resistance” in the form of relatively small-scale, and

hidden, and seemingly erratic and idiosyncratic ways of intentional misinterpretation or

misunderstanding (cf. Scott, 1985), and the coordination problems that arise from the “two

level games” that actors have to play as representatives of their organization/community in

the participatory project and as representatives of the participatory project in their

organization/community (cf. Putnam, 1988; Klijn & Teisman, 1997).

Collective intelligence, in conclusion, means that actors are unlikely to arrive at a

single and final definition of what constitutes legitimate expertise for solving local problems,

as their cognitive and social boundaries are not permeable enough to deal with the great

variety of relevant information, views, beliefs, and experiences. As struggling with different

forms of expertise is inevitable, actors should primarily be concerned with cultivating their

capacity to communicate about how multiple truths can pragmatically supplement each other

and be connected to enhance the intelligence of the collective.

FACILITATIVE LEADERSHIP: RELATIONSHIPS AS MAKING CONNECTIONS

Facilitative leadership denotes the variation in styles of managing the relationships between

actors in participatory democracy. Rather than advocating leadership by either citizens, civil

servants, or politicians per se, facilitative leadership means that anyone can be a leader,

depending on the role (s)he fulfils in connecting people to each other and the project they are

a part of. Facilitative leadership rejects traditional authority or adversarial power as adequate

bases for stable and productive collaboration, and poses the ability to rekindle a collaborative

mind-set among interdependent actors as the most viable alternative (cf. Fung & Wright,

2003). My research is in line with the recent emphasis given to facilitative leadership as a

crucial factor for sustaining collaborative commitment (e.g., Ansell & Gash, 2007), but

underlines the communicative barriers to maintaining open, trusting, and durable

16

relationships. It demonstrates that there is a permanent need for making connections between

different people, problems, and policies.

In contrast to the bureaucratic norm of acting „without regard for the person‟,

proponents of participatory democracy assert that “the key to effective participation lies in

human relationships” (King & Stivers, 1998, p. xii). Structural, social, and psychological

barriers between actors need to be broken down in order to cultivate respectful and

constructive relationships and, hence, „authentic participation‟ (Hummel, 1994; King et al.,

1998; Innes & Booher, 2004). Empirical research has established that the degree to which this

happens depends greatly on the style of leadership that is exercised (Neaera Abers, 2003;

Ansell & Gash, 2007). Building trust and consensus between a variety of actors is a delicate

process, especially in already antagonized situations, which can be perceived as having no

immediate, tangible results. Facilitative leaders are those actors who bring others together,

promote mutual understanding and adjustment, build a sense of mutual interdependence and

commitment, and create operational way for them to translate their relationships into concrete

results (Agranoff & McGuire, 2003; De Souza-Briggs, 2008; Morse, 2008). Even though this

“serving rather than steering” (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2003) has demonstrable added value,

exercising leadership from the background rather than the top faces fundamental barriers to

getting beyond defensive routines.

My research shows that there are many styles of facilitative leadership, which each

contribute in particular ways to the collaboration between actors, but also that the position of

facilitative leader is hard-won and practically limited. It is complicated to determine who and

what to connect and how, as of the wide range of actors and factors that could be connected

there are only a limited amount of actual possibilities for making connections. It requires a

certain „knack‟ for the situation to recognize and effectively act upon an such opportunities,

while making an adequate decision about whether to enhance empathy through face-to-face

dialogue, certainty through clarifying goals, rules, and roles, or leeway through political

bargaining. To establish durable connections, leaders need to keep relationships emotionally

profound as well as functionally encompassing; i.e. facilitating concrete, visible changes in

the sense of plans being amended, services are being improved, and problems being solved,

as well as enabling people to know how to contact and address one another.

Thus, if facilitative leadership is to make a durable difference, at least one local actor,

but usually several of them, need to be able to act as “everyday fixers” (Hendriks & Tops,

2005) who get things done as well as “consensus builders” (Susskind et al., 1999) who

mediate relationships and conflicts. As everyday fixer, a facilitative leader fulfils the role of a

17

proactive and pragmatic „doer‟ who forges relationships between key stakeholders, bargains

for political will, and gets out there to pick up the broom, hammer, or megaphone himself/

herself. As consensus builder, a facilitative leader fulfils the role of a neutral and yet

empathic mediator who (re)frames problematical situations in a creative and novel way,

creates common ground, and foregrounds communicational patterns. Taken together,

facilitative leaders know their way through the political-administrative system and know how

to deal with people, i.e. when to show empathy, courage, patience, etc. As such, they are

crucial for turning situations characterized by antagonism, deadlock, and/or traditional power

relations around by (re)kindling a collaborative mindset among all involved actors. However,

facilitative leaders can only emerge and flourish under particular circumstances (Spano,

2001; Hendriks & Tops, 2005; De Souza-Briggs, 2008; Van Hulst et al., 2010).

Each participatory project ideally has a (number of) talented facilitative leader(s)

skilled in making connections between people, problems, and policies on both a functional

and emotional level (Innes & Booher, 2003; Neaera Abers, 2003). While in each project it

might be possible to identify actors who (could) qualify as facilitative leaders, their history,

training, and personal traits are likely to be different, leading to subtle, but often crucial,

differences in emphases and outcomes. Making connections is a delicate and fragile

undertaking, as facilitative leaders have to stimulate a wide variety of actors to sustain a

“communicative etiquette” (Wagenaar, 2007), i.e. giving others the feeling that they are being

taken seriously, talking and listening openly, patiently, and respectfully, keeping promises

and appointments, taking the time to understand others, making a sincere effort to solve the

problem, and being empathic. Constant change, complexity, and ambiguity make mistakes,

misunderstandings, and conflicts inevitable, so that there is a permanent need for making

connections in order to maintain productive and durable relationships.

Facilitative leadership, all in all, is not a steady and straightforward undertaking, as

actors are unlikely to sustain stable and robust connections between all relevant people,

problems, and policies in the face of the emotional and functional needs that complex,

changing, and ambiguous problems stir up. Being faced with an ongoing need for adapting

relationships to newly emerged situations, actors should give primacy to cultivating their

capacity to communicate in respectful, trusting, and open ways.

18

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS: RESEARCHERS AS INTERPRETATIVE

MEDIATORS

The preceding sections have established communicative capacity, the ability of actors to

establish patterns of constructive and productive communication, as an ideal typical norm and

a variable practice. This suggests that rather than trying to close the gap between theoretical

ideal and contextual factors, participatory democracy is best served by better understanding

how actors cultivate their ability for (1) grasping how transitory complexity affects who has

to say what, when, how, and to whom, (2) building collective intelligence from the existing

diversity of views, beliefs, and knowledge, and (3) exerting facilitative leadership to enable

respectful, trusting, and adaptive relationships. For each of these elements, it has been

explained that there is no one-best-way or stable equilibrium, as participatory practices will

always be variable between the analytical extremes of Community and Planning. That is not

to conclude that it all depends, or that no changes or reforms will lead to improvements, but

rather that a lot can be learned about substantive issues by not putting emphasis on their

immediate resolution but first creating awareness of the nature and quality of communication.

In response to these conclusions one could, with some skepticism, reply that

proposing better quality communication is really begging the question as to where this

change of habitual communicational patterns should come from. Admitted, there certainly is

a bit of a chicken and egg dilemma here: if public professionals and citizens lack in

awareness, mandate, skills, and resources for nurturing their communicative capacity, how

can they all of a sudden know how to do it right? Here lies an important role for researchers

to ignite and facilitate improvements in the quality of communication. Researchers should try

to act as interpretative mediator (Fischer, 1993a) who

“improve policy argumentation by illuminating contentious questions, identifying the

strengths and limitations of supporting evidence, and elucidating the political

implications of contending positions. In the process, the task is to increase

communicative competencies, deliberative capacities, and social learning” (Fischer,

2003, pp. 201-202).

Research findings have to stimulate the formation of a „Community of Inquiry‟, i.e. an

institutional and intellectual context in which policy actors reconsider their viewpoints, assess

competing knowledge claims, and examine modes of communication (Lindblom, 1990;

Fischer, 1993a; Shields, 2003; Innes & Booher, 2010). The task of the researcher is to use

analytical findings to (1) bring policy actors together for guided reflection, (2) provide the

19

procedures and methods for doing so, and (3) to embed this collective inquiry in the social

and organizational context.

As the analysis of a broad variety of narratives affords the researcher with a deeper

understanding of the differences and tensions between different stories, (s)he has to facilitate

the policy actors in telling their stories to each other, understanding the origins and effects of

their differences, and identifying opportunities for learning and change. As interpretative

mediator, the researcher is committed to foregrounding communication, i.e. focusing the

attention away from the immediate issue at hand and raising awareness of the effects of the

mode of communication on the ability to resolve issues (Spano, 2001). This can be done

through a variety of participatory formats depending on the nature of the issue at hand, by, for

example, using citizens‟ juries, consensus conferences, or role playing to reframe a policy

controversy, engage in joint fact-finding, or develop a shared meta-narrative (Fischer, 1993a;

Hendriks, 2005; Hampton, 2009; Innes & Booher, 2010).

Although there might be cases in which a researcher is brought in as academic

consultant with unlimited discretion to collect data and mediate in the project or situation, I

found it challenging to become a legitimate member of the projects I studied. My research

was explicitly aimed at providing feedback to the respondents in order to make a contribution

to solving problems. To get access to community participation projects and make a durable

commitment, I approached contact persons (first at the central municipal level, then at the

neighborhood level) with a research proposal which outlined the main goals and procedures

of the research and highlighted its added value for the project. After the fieldwork, for each of

the cases I organized an interactive workshop and wrote a research report, both to give direct

feedback to those who participated in the research. While participants valued the workshops3

and a few respondents communicated that they found the report helpful, on the whole it is

highly questionable to which degree the research is making a difference. To be sure, besides

the difficulty of measuring the impact of this research (from a distance), the scope of my

research –a three year PhD track with three cases in different countries– and the concomitant

time and financial constraints also play a role.

At a time when the added value of professional mediators is only beginning to get

broader recognition, there seems to be latitude for, and benefit in, researchers acting as

interpretative mediator. Narrative analysis offers in particular several helpful heuristics to the

researcher for staying “neutral on the issues (…) [but] not neutral on the form or pattern of

3 Number of participants was 8 in Glasgow, 14 in Amsterdam, and 9 in Bologna.

20

communication used to define issues and make decisions” (Spano, 2001, p. 5). During the

data collection and analysis, each interview can be treated as a valid narrative that is part of

the broader meta-narrative of the case. While interviewing, for example, I always found

myself empathizing with the story of the respondent, understanding his/her particular point of

view, but at the same time remembering that there were many other different and yet equally

understandable narratives. When giving feedback in reports and workshops, it is exactly this

recognition of each individual narrative and understanding of the broader patterns and

tensions that an interpretative mediator can convey. Moreover, the reports and workshops

also serve as reliability checks, in the sense that the respondents can provide feedback on the

accuracy and helpfulness of the research results. Thus, by taking the role of interpretative

mediator, the researcher can strive for maintaining a neutral –i.e. non-partisan or skewed–

and yet proactive, democratic, and reflective position.

In conclusion, even though the position of interpretative mediator might be hard-won,

it has potential for producing usable knowledge. It can help to formulate more informed and

grounded academic conclusions about the empirical situation, as well as more acceptable or

innovative practical reasons for concrete action. As the role of interpretative mediator has, up

to now, received scarce theoretical conceptualization and practical guidance, my experiences

in this research provide a preliminary view that will need to be explored in future research.

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