Participation is a popular buzzword in contemporary urban studies. For some, it impliesa deepening of democratic deliberation; for others, it represents grassroots resistanceto powerful elites and neoliberalization. Rather than seeing participation as eitherconsensus-building or conflicts of interest, as either a top-down or bottom-up process,the evidence suggests that it can be all of these. By adopting a more dynamic, pragmatic,and empirically informed perspective, seemingly opposite normative conceptions ofdemocratic participation may be theorized as different ‘moments’ in the democraticprocess. Bottom-up mobilization may coincide with and complement top-downinitiatives, each dominating different political phases of policymaking, implementationand monitoring. Case studies from Belfast, Berlin, Durban, Philadelphia and São Pauloillustrate the approach and provide insight into the urban as a social laboratory in whichother scales of social life and multiple ways to perform democracy are constructed.
IntroductionParticipation is a popular buzzword in contemporary urban studies, cropping up across thepolitical spectrum.1 The direct involvement of ordinary citizens in the initiation,formulation, implementation and monitoring of public policy is increasing throughout theworld. Many international organizations and social scientists present ‘democratization’orinclusionary participation as an unalloyed good, countering concern about decliningsocial capital, heavy-handed bureaucracy, government inefficiency and social exclusion.Yet their conceptions of democracy often diverge, giving rise to debate about the idealform of citizen participation in self-government. Traditional representative democracy, inwhich elections aggregate preferences, interests and votes, has fallen into disfavour.As thecontributions that follow illustrate, this is associated with a renaissance of direct citizenparticipation in politics and governance at the local level. In contrast to the technocraticand output-oriented notion of ‘good governance’, many see participatory, direct ordeliberative democracy as an attractive and less elitist basis for political legitimationsitting alongside traditional democratic representation.
1 Leal (2007) points out that, as ‘participation’ became a buzzword, it suffered ‘political decapitation’and now needs to be linked once again to counter-hegemonic grassroots resistance, struggle andtransformation.
Volume 34.3 September 2010 453–77 International Journal of Urban and Regional ResearchDOI:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010.00963.x
This symposium examines empirical cases of inclusionary participation of ‘ordinary’residents from cities throughout the world.2 This introduction presents the cases fromthe perspective of scholarly disputes over participatory democracy. Several keycontroversies dominate the field. The most prominent debate is normative, and concernsthe ideal form of participatory democracy. As the following section argues, there ispolarization between those seeking consensus through deliberation, decision making andcollective action for the public good, and those who maintain that democracy is aboutpolitical contestation, clashes of interest and control over governance itself. Related tothe debate over democratic participation is the extent to which urban governance is‘neoliberal’ in the sense of serving to reduce the public sphere and initiating citizenparticipation from the top down or controlling it, if it emerges from the bottom up. Thecritical literature on neoliberal governance expresses concern that government or eliteefforts to elicit citizen participation are thinly veiled attempts at securing legitimacy forand cooperation with policies already adopted that favour capitalist growth. Consultationco-opts potential opposition and drives a wedge between grassroots leaders and theirconstituents. In contrast, bottom-up initiatives are considered more authentic expressionsof citizen sentiment, claims and demands and forms of resistance to neoliberal goals.However, insurgent citizens claiming their formal rights to the city may ultimately meetorganized violence and exclusion from local participatory arenas (Holston, 2007; Baudand Nainan, 2008).
We argue that these distinctions between consensus and conflict, top down and bottomup, do not constitute mutually exclusive categories. They might even overlap and can toa degree be reconciled by adopting a more dynamic, pragmatic and empirically informedperspective. Rather than propose a compromise or ‘hybrid’ type of democracy (e.g.‘radicalized communicative rationality’ in Beaumont and Loopmans, 2008; ‘radicalpluralism’ in Purcell, 2008) or simply view contestation and consensus as mutuallyexclusive alternatives, we see opposing normative conceptions of democracy as different‘moments’ in the democratic process. Bottom-up mobilization may coincide with andcomplement top-down initiatives, each dominating different political phases (Briggs,2008), and different conceptions of participatory democracy may apply to varyingdegrees at distinct stages of the political process. At the policy initiation stage, politics,conflict and ‘agonism’ (Mouffe, 1996) may dominate, as local grassroots groups makedemands, or elites propose policies for which they seek legitimacy and compliance. Atthe stage of decision making, when antagonistic contests move towards resolution,deliberation, consensus seeking or compromise may be more prominent. At thegovernance or implementation stage, when problem solving and practical results matter,participation in executing or monitoring a policy may be more-or-less inclusive andtransparent. This notion of a ‘cycle of contestation and consensus’ complements thefamiliar notion of ‘social movement cycles’ (e.g. Tarrow, 1994). While the ‘agonistic’conception of democracy rejects the idea that political conflicts between unequals areever voluntarily suspended, one in fact observes compliant periods in democracies whenpeople stop fighting and try to achieve goals. In brief, empirically, democratic practice inthe same context with the same actors may look different in different moments. At somepoint, the conflicts can become institutionalized and come to look more like ‘normalpolitics’.
It is important to renounce another faulty assumption common in the participationliterature, namely that grassroots involvement is always progressive. While it is true thatin some instances citizens demand more inclusive, responsive and efficient governmentthat equitably redistributes resources, in other cases, such as NIMBY conflicts, people
2 The articles in this symposium were first presented as papers in the joint sessions chaired by thesymposium editors on ‘Urban Inclusion and Citizen Participation’ and ‘Urban Participation and UrbanGovernance’ at the ISA RC21 conference on ‘Urban Justice and Sustainability’ held in Vancouver on22–25 August 2007.
selectively get involved to protest majority decisions, civic action or the public interest.This was a blind spot in the social capital literature (Portes and Landolt, 1996) thatthreatens to pervade the direct democracy literature too. Indeed, one reason thatmodern states have traditionally resisted decentralization and local self-government isthat small jurisdictions can abuse their power, pursue narrow interests, excludeoutsiders, express parochial identities and impose externalities on their neighbourscontrary to the greater good (Frug, 1999; Magnusson, 2005). Grassroots participationof ‘ordinary’ citizens is not necessarily inclusive, empowering or egalitarian. First,public–private partnerships, community consultation and other forms of citizenparticipation encouraged from above typically include only selected organizations orinterests. The representativeness and accountability of civil society associations whoclaim to mediate access of excluded and poor populations to the state is rarelycontested (Houtzager and Gurza Lavalle, 2009). States use participatory forums tooffload public responsibilities, defuse protest, co-opt opponents, impose social controland mobilize communities behind a neoliberal agenda. Often, citizen participation isnot directed toward social justice at all, but rather ratifies and even carries outdecisions that favour capital. It is a mode of ‘governmentality’ reproducing state powerin new spaces, but also allowing active subjects to influence government (Dean 1999;Morison, 2000). Second, participation is not synonymous with empowerment. Voicingone’s point of view does not mean that one will carry the day. Power inequalitiesbetween participants remain. Third, the results of inclusive, empowered citizenparticipation are not necessarily egalitarian. Some evidence suggests that ‘the squeakywheel gets the grease’, that is, those actively involved in local politics win moreresources than do passive, demobilized communities. Bachrach’s and Baratz’s (1975:903) old observation that ‘those who most need to participate in the political processare the nonparticipants’ applies to experiments in participatory democracy just assurely as it does to more conventional political processes. Under some circumstances,increased participation can reinforce rather than reduce inequalities between socialgroups. Self-selection in voluntary participation results in homogeneous groups‘skewed toward the upper range of education and socioeconomic status’ and excludesthe disadvantaged through practical barriers of time, money, culture and information(Perrin and McFarland, 2008: 1234). Conflict is precluded and deliberation facilitatedin less diverse settings, but issues of distributive justice may never be discussed inthem.
This symposium concentrates on the participation of ‘ordinary’ and excluded citizensin what are more-or-less distributive conflicts over resources. The contributions assesslocal participation, both conflictual and cooperative, from a dynamic perspective andfrom the vantage points of inclusiveness, empowerment and social justice at the urbanlevel. The articles show that participation of ordinary citizens, or ‘direct democracy’, hasthe potential to provide at least three benefits. First, it can promote social inclusion. Theissue here is access: who participates? Democracy is supposed to be open to all citizens,but in fact many participatory structures are exclusive or selective in some way.In neo-corporatist bargaining, for example, organized representatives of selected‘stakeholders’ are the only parties to the negotiation. People without an immediate stakebut who may be indirectly affected have no say. Stakeholders bargain to reachcompromises between opposing interests, rather than give reasons to reach the publicgood. Representatives have organized constituents to whom they must answer, even asthey collaborate with others. Should not disinterested and excluded members of thepublic participate in decisions too?
A second potential benefit of participation is empowerment. Getting to the table is notenough. Members of marginal groups need equal capacities to participate. Even whenforums are open to the public and traditionally excluded groups have access todeliberation and decision making, their voices may not be influential. They lack time,resources and cultural capital. Evidence suggests that community participants have muchgreater voice than nonparticipants, but not much more power (Taylor, 2007). More
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educated or powerful groups may dismiss them because of their styles of expression.This is a danger of deliberative democracy that Young, Mouffe, Fraser and other radicaldemocrats warn of. Several contributions to this symposium show how vulnerablesegments of the population or once-ignored environmental groups win power andrecognition through civic participation.
Third, participation is often assumed to result in redistribution or social justice. Thisis perhaps the most neglected or naïve aspect of the participation literature. The focus onprocess neglects consequences. What is citizen participation for? Who benefits from it?Advocates of deliberative democracy claim that the best arguments, not the largestnumber, should win the day, encouraging a consensus over the public interest. Incontrast, electoral democracy appeals to the principle of majority rule, which poses aproblem for permanently outvoted poor and excluded minorities. Although citizenparticipation is not always about zero-sum conflicts, as in the struggle for a betterenvironment and other public goods from which all can benefit, ‘politics is who getswhat, when, and how’, to use Harold Lasswell’s famous definition. Some of the casesexamined here, such as São Paulo’s participatory budgets discussed by Hernández-Medina (2010, this issue), show that redistributive outcomes can be achieved.
Finally, the symposium raises the question of where participation takes place. Twoaspects of this are relevant: spatial scale and specific context. Some of the cases herereport on participation at the level of an entire city or metropolitan region (Aylett, 2010,this issue; McAlister, 2010, this issue), but most discuss the connection betweenparticipation at the city and neighbourhood levels. That the contributions to thissymposium have an urban focus is not coincidental. The city has long been viewed insocial theory as the locus of free association (e.g. Simmel, 1950 [1903]). New Englandtown meetings, like the Greek polis, are the prototypes of direct democracy. Morerecently, Paul Hirst (2005: 11) has asserted that ‘developed governance has always beenurban’ and that cities were the ‘anchor point of a relatively autonomous “civil society” ’(ibid.: 10) before there were nation-states. On this view, the quality of democracy at thenational level is in no small part dependent upon the quality of democracy at the urbanlevel. If this is correct, then the revival of political participation at the urban level is to bewelcomed.
The synergistic benefits of local participation may again transform the urban contextinto a social laboratory within which increased freedom for the grassroots to experimentencourages social innovation in complex and diversified societies. Of course, scale playsan important role from another point of view. Cities themselves are situated withinglobal, regional and national contexts that constrain local government action, but are alsothe contexts within which people engage in multi-level governance and politics(Kazepov, 2010; Piattoni, 2010). National and transnational processes are localized incities (Magnusson, 2005). Neighbourhood participants can join forces with others atmuch higher geographical levels. Thus, the varying scale of action providesdifferentiated room for manoeuvre available to the different type of actors. As Aylett’scontribution illustrates, local environmentalists interact with transnational NGOs andmay engage The Hague and other international human rights bodies.
The specific context in which participation takes place also shapes the democraticprocess. In this symposium are cases from the global South — São Paulo, Brazil andDurban, South Africa — and the global North — Belfast, Northern Ireland, Berlin,Germany and Philadelphia, USA. Some of these cities were historically divided —sometimes by concrete walls — along sectarian, racial and political lines or by extremeincome inequality. These boundaries make deliberation and consensus building difficult.Some cities have a longstanding tradition of citizen participation, while in others peoplewere predominantly passive and withdrawn. Some cities benefit from relatively generouswelfare states, while others struggle. Depending on the specific historical andinstitutional context, local participation and civic engagement can break down socialdifferences or reinforce them. The cases from middle-income democratizing countries inthis symposium provide grounds for optimism, while more sceptical positions are taken
with respect to the two post-industrial cities in the US and Germany, with NorthernIreland in-between.3
Participatory democracy: an overview of the literatureIn contemporary urban studies, it is difficult to avoid the ubiquitous subject ofparticipation. This journal alone published symposia edited by Melo and Baiocchi (2006)on ‘Deliberative Democracy and Local Governance’, Beaumont and Nicholls (2008) on‘Plural Governance, Participation and Democracy’, and Guarneros-Meza and Geddes(2010) on ‘Local Governance and Participation under Neoliberalism’.4 In thesediscussions there is a common critique of liberal pluralist democracy based uponmultiple interest groups, individual rational choice and periodic voting. However,echoing the earlier distinction between pragmatic and political approaches to popularparticipation (Schonwalder, 1997), the critics themselves differ between those seekingefficient problem solving through deliberation, reasoning, partnership and consensusover the public good, and those who maintain that democracy is about politicalcontestation, inevitable inequalities, clashes of interest and bargaining to reachcompromises.5
These debates have often been framed in terms of a — perhaps over-simplified —opposition between two major thinkers: Jürgen Habermas and Michel Foucault. Thesenames serve as shorthand for a set of oppositions. ‘Habermas’ stands for consensus,rational deliberation and the bracketing-off of power in the name of attaining a discursiveformation of the collective will. ‘Foucault’ stands for the ubiquity of conflict, powerinequalities and their constitutive, indeed creative, nature. The opposition — betweenrational and emotional, outcome driven and process driven, inclusive vs. exclusive anddirect vs. mediated political practice — has been central to the social scientific literature(Perrin and McFarland, 2008). Much subsequent analysis — including some within thissymposium — comes down on one or other side of the ‘Habermas–Foucault divide’.Since several excellent summaries of this theoretical controversy exist (e.g. Flyvberg,1998; Purcell, 2008), we highlight only those differences relevant to the study of citizenparticipation. We shall focus on just two aspects: consensus vs. conflict and procedure vs.process.
Firstly, consensus vs. conflict. Habermas is fully aware that economic power andstate power are the major factual means of social coordination in modern societies.Indeed, that was a key point of his magnum opus, The Theory of CommunicativeAction (Habermas, 1984 and 1987). Nevertheless, he gives prominence to a more
3 The purpose of the symposium is not to offer causal generalizations, such as the universal impactof neoliberalism (McMichael, 1990; Guarneros-Meza and Geddes, 2010), or to conduct systematiccomparative analysis (Pickvance, 2001). Rather, we aim to identify some important analyticdistinctions among the cases while avoiding ‘comparative anecdotalism’ in which case studies drawnfrom different contexts are integrated into a single explanation (Houtzager and Gurza Lavalle,2009).
4 In addition, Politics & Society published a special issue on Fung and Wright’s (2001) ‘empowereddeliberative democracy’, while Boston Review published numerous commentaries on Sabel et al.’s(1999) proposal of a ‘rolling-rule regime’ to govern citizen participation in environmental regulation.
5 This twofold distinction between consensus seeking (via discussion and deliberation) and ‘agonistic’approaches (emphasising conflict) is a simplification that elides significant differences within thesepositions. For example, deliberative democracy involving deliberative polls among randomlyselected members of a population (Fishkin, 1995) is quite different from spontaneous forms ofparticipatory democracy existing ‘on the ground’. Furthermore, some theorizations of participatorydemocracy — for example, Paul Hirst’s ‘associative democracy’ or the neo-republicanism of Skinnerand Pettit — straddle this divide between conflict and consensus. Nevertheless, we are using thissimplification because it frames much of the discussion of democracy at the urban level, which is defacto concerned with various forms of grassroots initiatives and face-to-face politics.
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normative claim, namely that, as Penski (2001: 50) puts it, ‘processes of reachingunderstanding and collective will-formation constituted a vital if fragile third mode ofsocial coordination’. His work on discourse ethics (Habermas, 1992) and on law(Habermas, 1996) undergirds the hope of realizing the normative claims implicit inspeech and in law through deliberation, provided it is free of strategic considerationsand the exercise of power. From this perspective, deliberation plus law and due processconstitute resources for the marginalized and powerless. For Foucault, by contrast,power is generative of social relations. Nor is it conceptualized as a source ofinterference or ‘systematic distortion’ in social relations. The latter are inconceivablewithout the exercise of power. Power is not an externality that can be bracketed out,but is intrinsic to and constitutive of discursive and other social practices (Flyvberg,1998: 227). Foucault’s paradoxical notion of ‘governmentality’ suggests that localdemocratic participation liberates and controls citizens simultaneously. Civil libertiesenable people to govern and impose rules upon themselves, reducing the need forstrategic, coercive or punitive state governance (Magnusson, 2005). While power isfrequently presented as a zero-sum game in political science and political sociologyliterature, the governmentality literature emphasizes expanding capability. To be sure,participation may be an instrument to manage the disadvantaged, but even limitedopportunities for involvement by the powerless may be an improvement on the statusquo (Blakeley, 2010). Although most evidence suggests that disadvantagedcommunities remain on the margins of partnerships and new participatoryopportunities, they still allow ‘active subjects’ to influence these new arenas. Thecontestation of power — the ever-present possibility of resistance — is potentiallyempowering (Morison, 2000; Taylor, 2007).
Secondly, procedure vs. process. For Habermas, the requirements for a state governedby the rule of law (a Rechtsstaat), such as the (theoretical) inclusion of any party affectedby a discussion and citizens’ status as authors and not merely as subjects of the law, arekey empowering aspects of democracy. Such procedures partially embody enlightenedreason and anticipate an ideal speech situation in which pre-existing inequalities ofpower are neutralized, participants have equal opportunity to present and criticize claims,and a discursive formation of the collective will is possible. In contrast, a Foucauldianperspective views the struggle itself as the empowering moment. Empowerment has aninternal relation to the struggle with and against technologies of power. Formalprocedures cannot fix or guarantee such ‘empowerment’. While Foucault (1982) iscareful to avoid romanticizing resistance, those who look to his arguments emphasizecontestation, non-rational appeals and power rather than rational dispute and formalprocedure. They thus prescribe neither process nor outcome. There is here no equivalentto Habermas’ notion of agreement as the transcendental end of communicative action,and thus no moment of closure.
These contrasts between consensus and conflict, procedure and process, and differentconceptions of empowerment and power — power as barrier vs. power as generative —frame subsequent debates. Accordingly, this symposium contrasts two main forms oflocal participation: (1) deliberative and participatory democracy; and (2) radical pluralistdemocracy.
Deliberative and participatory democrats
Those who emphasize deliberation (e.g. Cohen, 1996; Gutmann and Thompson, 2004)suggest that by reasoning together, treating everyone with respect, giving everyone achance to speak and learning from different opinions, interest- or identity-based conflictcan give way to consensus. This implies that politics, in the sense of interest-basedantagonistic cooperation, is detrimental to attaining the common good. In JoshuaCohen’s (1996) conception of democracy, for example, free public deliberation is thebasis for the legitimate exercise of power. The ‘principle of deliberative inclusion’determines membership in a self-governing community, in that members consent to be
governed by collectively made decisions with which they may disagree. Members orcitizens with equal capacities to participate give reasons or justifications for theiropinions that can be acceptable to all, instead of pursuing naked interests. Deliberationconveys agreement that members are equal and deserving of respect. Since deliberationallows for value pluralism within the bounds of the principle of deliberative inclusion,Cohen argues that it transcends procedural or aggregative democracy. Given reasonablevalue pluralism, abridging rights to participation or rights of expression is unacceptablyexclusionary, because it denies equal standing and equal opportunities to influenceothers. Equal standing in deliberation ‘severs the fate of citizens from the differences ofsocial position, natural endowment, and good fortune’ (ibid.: 106). Furthermore,participation cultivates civic virtue and political skills.
Some supporters of participatory or associative democracy do not necessarily sharethe above consensualist assumptions and, following Durkheim’s (1957) cue, emphasizethe role of citizens’ organizations rather than direct democracy and participation ofindividual citizens (Cohen and Rogers, 1992; Hirst, 1994; Fung, 2003). They seevoluntary associations, social capital and a vibrant ‘civil society’ as beneficial todemocracy and liberty, countering state power and serving as schools of democracy.Civil society associations claim to represent politically excluded segments of thepopulation, providing access to new public decision-making institutions that mightotherwise be off limits (Houtzager and Gurza Lavalle, 2009). Although not all of thesemediating groups have active memberships, citizens who do participate in associationslearn to transcend self-interest, build social capital, seek the common good and revitalizeand re-legitimize the political process and democratic institutions.6 This is the ‘creative’side of deliberation in which social interaction — whether rational or emotional —‘distorts’ the outcome (Perrin and McFarland, 2008).
However, this deepening of democracy is not exclusively an end in itself.Participation, deliberation and consensus building solve practical problems and getthings done (Cohen, 1996; Sabel et al., 1999; Briggs, 2008). This more pragmaticargument supports the shift from government to ‘governance’. Once deliberationproduces a consensus about goals, citizen involvement in governance improvesgovernment efficiency and accountability for producing results. Participants, especiallythose with local experiential information, contribute to and monitor implementation ofconsensual goals, deepening participatory democracy and making it more efficient. Inturn, ‘citizen authors of public policy come to view government at all levels as a partnerto be recruited into a broadly collaborative effort, rather than as a master rule-maker orultimate arbiter’ (Sabel et al., 1999: 14).
Although they are hardly neoliberals, this group of scholars takes a pretty dim view ofcivil servants. They consider government to be an inferior and constrained serviceprovider. As Briggs (2008: 6) puts it, there are ‘limits on what government alone canaccomplish to solve important problems’. In contrast, civic capacity, social capital andcitizen participation help to make things better. Yet, there may be ‘a trade-off betweeninclusiveness and effectiveness’ (ibid.: 315).
Radical pluralist democracy
‘Radical pluralists’ (see Purcell, 2008) and other critics of these proponents of consensusbuilding call attention to the downsides of citizen involvement. They share Foucault’sview that conflict is inevitable, but creative. They say that power is always present, even
6 American scholars in particular have devoted much attention to the question of whether policy cancultivate social capital, deliberative democracy and civic participation, especially in poorneighbourhoods (Berry et al., 1993; Putnam, 2000; Chaskin et al., 2001; Saegert et al., 2001; Warren,2001; Orr, 2007). Policies to build ‘community capacity’ — to create spaces for meetings, provideinformation and expertise, and identify bottom-up goals controlled from below — are spreadingthroughout the OECD countries (Noya et al., 2009).
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in communication, so conflict is unavoidable. Social inequality pervades all of social lifethereby rendering all relations political. The radical critique of promoting participation indeliberative decision-making and governance is that it serves to hide inevitableinequalities, exclusion and conflict. As Chantal Mouffe (2000: 104) argues, consensus‘always entails some form of exclusion’.7 Vested interests may engage in ‘social closure’around a consensus just as they might around any other social resource. Only a thinconsensus about the values of equality and liberty underlies democracy. Democracy isdifference, pluralism, conflict.
Radical democrats reject deliberative democracy on several grounds. Pre-existinginequality of resources and status and omnipresent power relations bias public discourseand produce unequal influence in deliberation (Fraser, 1992). Deliberative speech aimsto persuade some people to change their minds and reach unity, consensus or thecommon good. Thus, it is competitive, assertive or antagonistic, as well as formal,general and dispassionate. Despite the pretence of neutrality, these hegemonic aspects ofdeliberative discourse — both in language and styles of speech — create a cultural biastowards those with the best skills at rational argument. They privilege calm ‘reasonable’speech. Deliberation devalues the usual styles of expression of women, minorities andthe working class or poor (Young, 1996) thereby marginalizing and excluding alternativevoices. In sum, consensus always implies ‘a silenced margin’ (Beaumont and Nicholls,2008).
In turn, consensus becomes hegemonic and exclusionary. Mouffe (1996: 246) rejectsthe Habermasian ‘objective of unanimity and homogeneity which is always revealed asfictitious and based on acts of exclusion’. The exclusion of multiple and contestingidentities and values is unfortunate as diversity and alterity are good for democracy. Ifparticipants were already calm and reasonable, there would not have been a disagreementin the first place (Allen, 2004). ‘The emphasis of deliberative theories on reachingsubstantive consensus means not facing up to the realities of value pluralism’ (Tsakatika,2007: 872). Ways of communicating besides critical reasoning — greeting, rhetoric,flattery, deference, storytelling — can establish trust and respect, level the playing fieldand confront the privileged with different perspectives and knowledge. Subalterncounter-publics expose the particular interests behind the apparent consensus andprovide counter-hegemonic resistance to a dominant culture that marginalizes minoritygroups (Fraser, 1996). Through conflict and relations of inequality, the weak areconstituted as political agents.
Difference, then, rather than consensus, is the basis of ‘agonist democracy,’ in whichgroups consciously and perpetually struggle to gain hegemony, but each recognizes theother’s right to exist as a legitimate enemy. Agonist democracy must engage difference,posing counter-hegemonic resistance to neoliberalism. Radical politics consist ofcontesting domination, questioning discourse and making power and exclusiontransparent. In these ways, conflict is productive and creative. These critics see value ina good fight.8
7 Following the post-structuralist logic of Lacan’s thesis that language is political and Derrida’s‘constitutive outside’ and the inevitability of ‘irreducible alterity’, Mouffe argues that social objectsare constituted through political acts of exclusion. Every identity is forged by difference, constitutedas much by what it is not (outside it) as what it is (inside it). There is always imposition of decisionson someone who had no say.
8 Liberal pluralists are none too happy with the criticisms of either radical pluralists or deliberativedemocrats. They defend representative, aggregative, electoral democracy as efficient in largecomplex societies and object to the claims about a democratic deficit in governance. They acceptvalue pluralism, but relegate it to the private sphere or create checks and balances to reduce itspublic impact. All pluralists see conflict as the heart of politics, but liberal pluralists valuecompetition and issue-based coalition building among often unequal interest groups. For liberalpluralists, the outcome of democratic contests is compromise, not consensus. Both liberal andradical pluralists reject group essentialism.
Radical critiques of deliberative democracy frequently appear in urban studies ascritiques of ‘neoliberal governance’. Governance signals a shift from regulation by thestate alone to regulation based upon a consensus among multiple actors, ranging fromunion participation in corporatist arrangements to softer forms of collectivism.Decentralization, devolution and deregulation under the constraints of heightened globalcompetition and declining fiscal support force cities to compete for corporateinvestments (Brenner and Theodore, 2001: 342). When cities promote civic participationand public–private partnerships, they can more easily offload public responsibilities, cutexpenditure and legitimate the hegemonic status quo (Stoker, 1998; Brenner andTheodore, 2001; Stoecker, 2002; Harmes, 2007; Harvey, 2007). Neoliberal governancestresses outputs, performance and efficiency, enlisting citizens in measuring, auditingand monitoring, holding government accountable for results in a depoliticized technicalprocess that defuses conflicts and treats them as consumers (Hickey and Mohan, 2004;Taylor, 2007).
Other critical concerns
But it is not just theorists of radical democracy who doubt the claims made forparticipatory forms of governance. The emphasis by governance enthusiasts on‘horizontal’ rather than ‘vertical’ coordination and upon partnership and negotiation inplace of hierarchy and command has likewise been met with a degree of scepticism.There is a burgeoning literature critical of governance, some of which is potentiallyrelevant to issues of participatory and deliberative democracy. ‘Governance’ for example,is said to suffer from many of the same drawbacks as European neo-corporatism (Offeand Preuss, 2006). The selectivity of participants belies the rhetoric of inclusion,governance arrangements are often closed, lack transparency and have no clear means ofholding participants accountable or responsive to those they claim to represent (seeHoutzager and Gurza Lavalle, 2009; Palumbo, 2010). Governance by consensus is‘ruling without an opposition’ (Offe and Preuss, 2006: 181) and both manifests andreinforces weak legitimation. Others have argued that deliberation defuses protest.Partnerships co-opt opponents into the state and demobilize social movements(Schonwalder, 1997; Mayer, 2006) and thus contribute to further depoliticization (vanGunsternen, 2006). Bringing civic associations into governance changes their character,requiring them to fundraise, professionalize and seek legal, financial and other expertise.As Becher (2010, this issue) shows in her contribution to this symposium, participationof civic leaders in governance also subjects them to cross-pressures from theircollaborating partners and their constituents. Active protest against consensualgovernance partnerships may even benefit local democracy. Independent critics play thecrucial roles of holding the state accountable for results and monitoring partnershipcompliance with the law.
Opposition groups maintain their autonomy against usurpation of power, a particularthreat in clientelistic settings. Group representatives can stay loyal to their constituents,legitimizing civil society organizations. Civil society innovates from below and collectsnew information that the state may otherwise ignore. And by forming networks acrossspace, local groups can share information and learn. As Briggs (2008: 309) puts it:‘Productive conflict and pressure politics can play important roles, such as mobilizingparticipation, clarifying stakes and getting more options for action considered’. Aylett’s(this issue) contribution to this symposium likewise identifies positive functions ofconflict.
Summary
In all the enthusiasm for citizen participation, its downsides have been neglected. Firstly,the relationship between participation and trust does not hold everywhere (Clark andCarreira da Silva, 2009). In some settings, civic groups are closed, particularistic and
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clientelistic, hardly encouraging democracy. The same strong ties of solidarity that helpmembers of a group accomplish goals often enable it to exclude outsiders and dissenters(Portes and Landolt, 1996). Secondly, in most societies, there is class bias in citizenparticipation. Elites try to keep decision making private and out of public view; in thewords of Schattschneider (1975: 34–5), ‘the flaw in the pluralist heaven is that theheavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent. Probably about 90% ofthe people cannot get into the pressure system’. Insiders and organized interests haveadvantages in information, resources, access to expertise and so on. A large proportion ofparticipants in participatory institutions are not ordinary citizens, but rather leaders ofcivil organizations who speak for particular groups, values or identities without anyformal responsibility to them (Houtzager and Gurza Lavalle, 2009). The educated middleclasses are more likely to get involved in voluntary associations than the poor, men andolder people more than women and youth. Elite capture of local politics also increasesthe opacity of the policymaking process, exacerbating accountability problems. Thirdly,when the upper and middle classes do get involved locally, they often defend theirprivileges. Until recently, local environmentalism was largely reactive, with residentsprotecting themselves from what they perceived as threats. Protests against undesirableland uses, toxic waste or air and water pollution can quickly degenerate into NIMBY(not-in-my-backyard) movements or erecting ‘gates’ that exclude undesirableneighbours. Although low-income groups may also mobilize around NIMBY issues,these are often accompanied by more general environmental or social justice demands.
The joint effect of these downsides is to undermine territorial solidarity betweenplaces where citizens participate and places where they do not. Well-organizedmunicipalities that form a consensus to exclude some land uses or particular people forcethese into other communities less able to resist them. Only government of a larger scalecan constrain such externalities.
Content, context, scale and process
So far, we have presented the controversies between those seeking consensus throughdeliberation, decision making and collective action for the public good and those whomaintain that democracy is about political contestation, clashes of interest and controlover governance itself. This debate over democratic participation is also related towhether citizen participation is initiated from the top down or emerges from the bottomup. There are several additional issues about citizen participation that are underplayed inthese disputes that pertain to content, context, scale and process.
The debate in political theory over citizen participation is often waged in universalterms with abstract models that could apply anywhere, and even those radical democratswho challenge this universalism have a broad-brush view of oppositional politics. Inother words, much of the debate, from either side, lacks an empirical referent. There islittle interest in language, culture, or the social, spatial and physical contexts in whichdeliberation takes place. While it is possible to conduct experiments in deliberativedemocracy, these have the character of ‘controlled experiments’ at one remove fromnormal political contestation. In contrast, the focus of the contributions in thissymposium is on actual experiences of citizen participation. They acknowledge thatpeople participate in real places with distinctive histories, legal and policy frameworksand institutions. Some settings, from Durban in South Africa to Kreuzberg in Berlin,have long traditions of civic activism, while in others — such as Northern Ireland —democracy was long suppressed. In brief, context shapes civic participation.
One consequence of this lack of empirical referent is that the debate betweendeliberative and radical democracy is more concerned with procedure than substance.How gets more attention than what. Objectives are almost interchangeable. Thesescholars care more about efficiency in attaining goals than the goals of deliberation,decision making and governance themselves. There is some discussion of the nature ofgoals. Deliberation should be oriented to practical goals. Local citizen participation
should address ‘a specific area of public problems’, such as land use, open space, publicservices, education, policing, or environment (Fung and Wright, 2001). But the ultimatepurpose of democratic participation is taken for granted.
There are three key issues here: First, the protagonists ignore the transversal nature ofconflicts. In participatory budgeting, for example, the decisions are about priorities.Usually there are zero-sum tradeoffs, not an overall common good or a single consensualgoal. Second, they skirt the issue of who benefits from participation. One should ask notonly ‘does participation lead to more efficient outcomes?’ but also ‘does it produce fairerones?’ Are the goals redistributive? Do they promote social justice? Just because thedeliberative process is inclusive does not mean that the poor will have equal influenceor win the day. Increasing citizen participation does not guarantee progressiveconsequences, but what else are the poor and excluded struggling for? While both sidesof the debate address the problems of exclusion and inequality, strangely they have littleto say about the possibility of changing them. A third issue related to context is scale.What is the most appropriate scale for citizen participation? The classic justification fordecentralization and devolution is that deliberation works best in small face-to-faceforums where everyone has a chance to speak and where solutions to problems aretailored to local conditions. Neoliberal governance rejects the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approachto policy. Yet without some way of connecting localities, communities can becomeinward looking, parochial and restricted to their own local resources, potentiallyexacerbating spatial differentiation, competition and conflict.
While the contributions here seek to redress all these shortcomings, the issue of scaleturns out to be particularly important. Critics of direct democracy take the position thatgrassroots participation must scale up. As Briggs (2008) notes, John Dewey expectedface-to-face communication in the local community in the early twentieth century to giveway to the ‘Great Community’ in which the public conversation took place through themass media. Bonding social capital that glues communities and neighbourhoodstogether, Briggs maintains, should be complemented with bridging social capitalthrough ‘intermediaries’ connecting them to other actors and places.9 For example,neighbourhood assemblies in participatory budgeting elect representatives to city-widecouncils where local and urban priorities must mesh. The two levels interact. A moreabstract procedure for articulating scales or levels of participation is Sabel et al.’s (1999)‘rolling-rule regime’. Experts and citizens, national centres and localities, andconventionally antagonistic interests engage in direct practical deliberation, collaborateand are mutually accountable. At the grassroots, citizen participation mobilizes localknowledge and provides on-the-ground monitoring to ensure compliance with collectivedecisions. Local participants feed information back up to a centralized level to permitlearning, diffusing good practices to others and reinforcing the monitoring process. Thisvision of democracy entails continuous cycles of feedback and adaptation across levelsto improve performance.
9 Whether those intermediaries are self-selected, appointed or elected seems to matter less to Briggs.Indeed, he is suspicious of ‘tyranny from below’, believing there are tradeoffs between ‘too muchparticipation’ and getting things done, between democracy and efficiency. If he is sceptical about‘experts’ and ‘top-down, exclusionary planning and decision making’, he does not seem to mind theinvolvement of the ‘ “grasstops” — not political or economic elites in the traditional sense’ but civicintermediaries ‘well-positioned to influence others and mobilize resources’ and willing to lead(Briggs, 2008: 308–9). This neglects the question of whether those intermediaries are legitimate,accountable and responsive to those they claim to represent. Too often civic associations resort to‘assumed representation’ based upon an isomorphism with the social structure or ‘a natural (orauthentic) extension of the social or life world’ (Houtzager and Gurza Lavalle, 2009). It should benoted that Briggs explicitly excludes Europe from his analysis because unlike the US it is a‘state-centred’ place. Many European states unproblematically recognize mediating institutionsempowered to bargain for social constituencies.
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The ‘rolling-rule regime’ provides an example of how to think about citizenparticipation more as a process than as a model. A similar dynamic description of howcitizens get things done is found in Briggs (2008: 308–9, original italics), whodistinguishes between ‘who initiates action and who participates in other ways overtime’, and advocates for ‘savvy iterations of learning and bargaining’. Episodes ofbargaining — which connotes ‘adversary’ democracy — and social learning —including insight into counterparts’ interests and values — ‘need to be sequenced’(ibid.: 304). In the same way, democratic politics consist of repeated iterations ofconflict and consensus as, in specific contexts and at different scales, citizens demandinclusion, deliberate or bargain over goals, carry out decisions and demandaccountability for results.
Others have sought to resolve the debate between deliberative and radical democracyby abstracting seemingly desirable principles from real cases to build hybrid modelscombining consensus and conflict — e.g. ‘empowered participatory governance’ (Fungand Wright, 2001; Fung, 2004), ‘radicalized communicative rationality’ (Beaumont andLoopmans, 2008) and ‘radical pluralism’ (Purcell, 2008). However, we argue that thisapproach dilutes the empirical reality of conflict or cooperation observed at any giventime. A dynamic perspective on participation reveals both conflict and consensus.Variations on participatory budgeting can be found in three of the cities in thissymposium: Berlin (citizens’ budgets as part of the Soziale Stadt programme), Durban(under the Integrated Development Plan, local communities have a voice in determininghow budgets are spent in their communities) and São Paulo (where socially vulnerablesegments are specifically included and empowered). Social learning occurs over time.Participatory budgeting appears to work best where there are timely results, so peoplecan see that it works. It also helps to have popular pressure to adopt it and prevent specialinterests from capturing the process.
The weaknesses of participatory budgeting should not be neglected. With respect toinclusion, public meetings may be open to all, but illiteracy, language barriers, fear ofretaliation for criticism and other obstacles lower attendance. Outreach campaigns,quotas and targeting disadvantaged groups for inclusion can overcome uneven turnout(Fishkin, 1995; Shah, 2007: 10). Selective incentives may be needed to overcome suchcollective action problems. Empowerment remains a challenge. As elsewhere in theworld, more educated, articulate and organized interests usually dominate deliberation.10
As the process progresses, elected district representatives or appointed stakeholdersbargain over local priorities at a more central level. Budgets may favour someorganizations over others, promoting their relative growth and rendering them morepowerful in future meetings. There is a danger that, by participating, ordinary ordisadvantaged citizens may unwittingly legitimate decisions that they did not prefer,such as private over public solutions, but in terms of the ‘principle of deliberativeinclusion’, their participation signals consent to be governed by such collective decisionswith which they may disagree. Finally, participatory budgeting should not be glorified.Redistributive effects, while important, are modest. Typically, only a small share of thecity’s total budget, usually for public works, is involved in participatory budgeting, so ‘itdoes not dramatically reduce poverty (especially in terms of income) on its own . . . Evenin the relatively small number of municipalities that succeeded in improving local serviceprovision with participatory budgeting, low incomes and joblessness remain seriousproblems’ (Shah, 2007: 6).
10 ‘Even in the case of participatory budgeting in Brazil, which is considered a model for direct citizenparticipation, leaders of civil organizations make up a large share of delegates and becomedominant in successive rounds of the process. In the PB of the cities of Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte,Recife, Santo André, and São Paulo . . . over half the delegates elected during the first round of thePB were leaders of civil organizations’ (Houtzager and Gurza Lavalle, 2009: 10).
Democratic participation is a process. At different stages, there are different practices,benefits and drawbacks. The initiative for participation may come from above or below.Later, actors may deliberate to set goals, weigh priorities and make decisions, includingover the extent of redistribution. During implementation and execution of thesedecisions, there may be grassroots participation in governance. As results becomevisible, citizens may monitor outcomes, evaluate costs and benefits, learn lessons that areconveyed beyond the immediate context and hold decision makers accountable. Centralgovernment coordinates among parts, collects feedback, assembles knowledge learnedand encourages adaptation. In sum, the debate between advocates of consensus andconflict in civic participation might be resolved by thinking dynamically. When studiesclassify cases as deliberation or dissension, consensus or conflict, they are usuallyreferring to a given phase or moment in a longer democratic political process.
To discover agonist democracy at the beginning of a policy process does not mean thatconflict and protest are perpetual. At some point, decisions are made throughcompromise or consensus and citizen participation may take a new form. Thus, ordinarycitizens themselves, or their elected or appointed representatives or spokespeople, maylater deliberate with erstwhile opponents to solve problems, identify goals and setpriorities. At least temporarily, it may appear that a consensus is reached. Decisionsmove on to the implementation stage, and citizens may participate in executing a policy.During this ‘back-end’ phase — or institutionalization — participation might come toresemble ‘governance’. If citizens do not participate in carrying out decisions, they maystill monitor results and hold those who do realize policy accountable for theirperformance, setting off more conflict within new forms of localism (Stoker, 2004).
The contributions to this symposiumThe neoliberal era is not the first time that grassroots participation has been in vogue.During the 1960s, the slogan ‘Power to the People’ encapsulated the New Left’sdemocratic goals. In the United States, the War on Poverty called for ‘maximum feasibleparticipation’ of the local population in community action programmes. In Germany, asRosol (2010, this issue) recalls here, squatters and other alternative groups sought controlof their neighbourhoods, opposed urban renewal programmes and launchedBürgerinitiativen (citizens’ action committees). In South Africa, Aylett’s contributiondescribes Fossil Fools Day and other symbolic actions by Durban’s buddingenvironmental movement that presaged today’s citizen involvement in governance(Aylett, this issue). There is also a long history of direct participation in parts of Brazil(Nylen, 2003).
In the historically informed contributions to this symposium, the extent and quality ofcitizen participation ranges from minimal — consultation of the public by planners inBelfast and Philadelphia — to more extensive — residents’ budgetary decision-makingin São Paulo, policy implementation in Berlin and grassroots mobilization holdinggovernment accountable in Durban. While the government initiated citizen participationin São Paulo and Belfast, as well as one of the four community gardens in Berlin, thegrassroots were the origins of participation in Durban and in most of the Berlin gardens;government and citizen groups simultaneously developed an interest in participation inPhiladelphia. In the five cases in this symposium, the state supported citizenparticipation, but in one (Philadelphia), state support came early in the policymakingprocess and was later withdrawn. In a second case (Berlin), state support wasforthcoming only after assertive citizen initiatives became entrenched. In Durban andBerlin, there was more protest against and demands on government; citizens’ symbolicprotest strategies like environmental bucket brigades, squatting and planting gardenscaptured government and public attention. The Philadelphia Empowerment Zone shows
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that partnerships with government break down and lead to conflict over time if theparticipatory element withers during policy implementation and, without necessarygrassroots feedback, government may injure community interests.
In ‘Putting the “Community” into Community Planning’, Ruth McAlister (this issue)offers a detailed assessment of plans for increasing community inclusion in NorthernIreland. In a context of historical exclusion, the new access to the democratic process,however limited, has much appeal. For academic proponents of participatory orempowered deliberative democracy, and particularly for ‘radical democrats’ like Fung,the broadening of participation is both a worthy end in itself and a way of buildingcommunity capacity. For policymakers and planners who come to view participation asan instrument for improving the quality of public provision, smoothing the way for theimplementation of policy and increasing political legitimacy, participative proposalshave additional appeal. Clearly the rhetoric of participation enjoys broad support, butwhat of the experience of planning to put it into practice in Northern Ireland?
McAlister’s case is the Review of Public Administration (RPA), an initiativeintroduced after a 30-year period of violent conflict, the euphemistically named‘Troubles’. The RPA both exemplifies the emphasis on policy delivery that has been socentral to the New Labour project in the UK generally, and part of an administrativereform of local government in Northern Ireland in particular. In a broader context, it is,as she notes, part of the much-heralded shift from government to governance, anothercornerstone in the language of New Labour, but also part of an international trend. In linewith the arguments of this introduction, McAlister contrasts the broad consensualapproval of participatory governance with the bewildering complexity of the diverseproposals in the literature and policy practices on the ground. Most agree thatparticipation is ‘a good thing’, but confusion arises when one tries to determine what ‘it’exactly is.
In the case of the RPA, ‘it’ is a series of modest proposals for more consultation inplanning processes. This is a long way from the more radical world of participatorybudgeting discussed by Hernández-Medina (this issue), but nonetheless a democraticimprovement over the fear and passivity of an earlier era. McAlister is analyzing a casein which the challenge is to create a participatory community more-or-less from scratch.The problem is further compounded when we consider who constitutes the ‘community’that is to be addressed and included. This is a problem that is particularly acute in theNorthern Ireland context where sectarianism is a recent memory and an ever-presentdanger. One of McAlister’s key findings is that underlying sectarian tensions couldpotentially undermine inclusive participation in decision making. Here again, the contextsensitivity of the case-study approach adopted in this symposium — in contrast, or as asupplement, to more normative/universalistic approaches — demonstrates its value.
Public consultation in Belfast may offer inclusion, but it falls short of empowerment.If there is a spectrum of the degree of strength of various forms of participation anddeliberation, then ‘consulting’ must surely constitute the weakest end of the spectrum.McAlister’s analysis emphasizes the contrasting perspectives and mutual suspicion ofthe key actors: policymakers, planners and the state on the one hand, and citizens on theother. The former are frustrated by the latter’s ‘apathy’; they assume there is ahomogeneous community made up of ‘Joe Public’ in a setting where there are selectiveincentives for participation by the paramilitary or those who expect to make a buck.Ordinary citizens suspect the planners of ‘tokenism’, paternalism and manipulation. Thecomplicated and opaque process is disempowering, producing the feeling that citizensare consulted simply to ratify elite decisions. McAlister concludes that the ability ofordinary people to influence decisions in Belfast has been ‘less than marginal’.
To its critics, consultation is a way of including citizens while keeping the actualdecisions firmly in the hands of the politicians and elites, of ensuring ‘the maximum levelof minimum participation’ (Crouch, 2004: 112). While her own evidence supports theview that participation in this consultative form has had few inclusive, empowering orredistributive effects, McAlister resists drawing the clear-cut, simple and perhaps
pessimistic conclusion that participative governance is a failure. Rather, she views thesedifficulties as potentially addressable (if not resolvable) governance challenges. Thisapproach is shared with some of her interviewees on both sides of the planner–citizendivide and with some of the academic literature (e.g. Fung and Wright, 2001). Forexample, simplifying institutional governmental structures could lessen confusion aboutwhat is decided and by whom. A clearer identification of the power and capacities of the‘community’ relative to the state could make the issue of ‘who is the community?’ lesscontroversial.
McAlister thus walks a fine line between the heady optimism of some of the earlygovernance literature and the pessimism of more diagnostic accounts of democraticdecline or neoliberalization. For the radical democrat, there is still scope to challenge thedominant rules of the game. Her pragmatic approach comes close to Sabel et al.’s (1999)similarly pragmatic notion of the ‘rolling-rule regime’. The rules of the game, and thusits outcomes, are not set in stone; the plans of elite political actors can be disrupted, andnot merely under the exceptional circumstances of a ‘fugitive democracy’ (Wolin, 1994).The process has both to be guided by a general and universalizable principle — forMcAlister, Habermas’ discourse theory of ethics can provide such a loadstar — and‘properly constituted’. In a context of potential sectarianism, the problems are all thegreater, but so too the need and the urgency.
Of the cases here assembled, Belfast comes closest to the neoliberal model ofgovernance and partnership; it has the lowest level of citizen participation. Initiated fromthe top down in a context of historic mistrust and low civic involvement, bringing the‘community’ into planning remains a formidable but desirable challenge. How differentfrom the case of participatory budgeting in São Paulo! In another difficult context, oneof extreme income inequality where the middle and upper classes live in gatedcommunities and the poor in squalid favellas, Esther Hernández-Medina (this issue)presents an optimistic scenario of inclusion, empowerment and redistribution.
As in Belfast, citizen participation in São Paulo was initiated from the top down, butin an attempt to break with the patronage and clientelism, rather than passivity, of pastlocal politics. Moreover, this Brazilian Workers’ Party’s (PT) initiative wascomplemented by grassroots involvement in decision making at several levels, electionof representatives, implementation and monitoring the outcomes of policy decisions. Thecase clearly demonstrates how, in different ‘moments’, participation may entail conflictof interest and claims making as well as deliberation and collaboration. What sets SãoPaulo’s participatory budgeting apart from the Porto Alegre ideal type, in addition totaking place in a larger, more segregated and more unequal city, is its deliberate‘affirmative action’ to include traditionally excluded groups.
São Paulo introduced an institutional arrangement to involve socially vulnerablesegments, as well as territorial and thematic representatives, in local decision making.The participation of these nine target groups — Afro Brazilians, senior citizens, childrenand adolescents, youth, the GLBT community, women, indigenous groups, the homelessand people with disabilities — offered these non-income-based ‘subaltern counter-publics’ (Fraser, 1992; Nylen, 2003) some much-sought-after visibility, recognition andpride. Where the movements behind them were strong, the segments were especiallyinfluential, producing a redistributive impact on resource allocation. Inclusion of thesegments in participatory budgeting in São Paulo introduced new ideas and proposals,and the participants reported feeling greater dignity, respect, tolerance and equaltreatment.
This combination of ‘contest’ in the form of identity politics and ‘deliberation’ — bothHabermasian communication for the common good and Fung and Wright’s (2001)empowered participatory governance — produced greater social cohesion and moreequality in this fragmented metropolis. Furthermore, most of the proposals and decisionsmade in the socially inclusive participatory budget forums and council meetings were infact implemented, giving these segments a sense of empowerment as well as dignity, andincreasing the effectiveness of governance. The inclusionary aspects of São Paulo’s
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participatory budgeting contribute to the empowerment of vulnerable groups and theirsubsequent ability to gain resources from the political process.
However, Hernández-Medina does not present participatory budgeting in São Pauloas uniformly successful. She identifies particular contextual and institutionalconditions that affect the outcomes of budgetary deliberations, especially related to thephases of contest and implementation. For one thing, as in Berlin, decentralization ofdecision making to smaller localities can impede city-wide coalition building. Thelevel or scale of participation matters. Civil society organizations must be strong andautonomous from the state initiators of participatory budgeting. Where local politicianscontrol the process and prevent transparency, decentralized budgeting can revert topatronage, rather than result in good governance. Much as in Belfast, capture of theparticipatory process by special interests demoralizes citizens and especially membersof the vulnerable segments who feel exceptionally unheard. The São Paulo casedemonstrates the need for institutions that safeguard against this. These includemechanisms for independent monitoring of implementation and results.11 With thesecaveats, São Paulo’s participatory budgeting appears to offer all three benefits ofcitizen participation that democratic advocates seek: inclusion, empowerment andredistribution.
In contrast to the cases just presented, in which the authors are cautiously optimisticabout the potential benefits of citizen participation, the next three cases are more critical.Perhaps this is because all three sites have a tradition of community activism aimed at thelocal state, giving rise to suspicion of government. Political conflict or contestation playsa larger role in these case studies, but nonetheless at times gives way to compromise andeven collaboration in governance.
Marit Rosol’s (this issue) study of four community gardens in Berlin, ‘Participation inPost-Fordist Urban Green Space Governance’, is set in yet another distinctive context.The city historically enjoyed large subsidies from the former West Germany that werewithdrawn with reunification, leaving the city with a huge fiscal hole. At the same time,partly because of its earlier anti-war alternative scene, the city had a history of radicalcitizen participation and even a squatting movement, much of which was devoted tofighting the local redevelopment of low-income neighbourhoods. While Berlin is aunique context, a similar history of militancy and protest characterized the earlycommunity gardens in other cities (Schmelzkopf, 1995). Tracing the political process bywhich Berlin activists and residents established local community gardens on public orprivate land reveals that the earlier grassroots experience provided a foundation for theself-organization of most of the garden groups.
Although the initiative came mainly from the bottom up, over time the state ended itsopposition and decided to work with these civil society groups, even encouraging localengagement in community gardening. Rosol’s fourth garden case study shows howneoliberal governance can usurp such voluntary activities. In a period of spendingcutbacks, the residents provided free labour to create and maintain open space andgreenery on unsightly empty land that had little ground rent value. Yet there is nothingsecure about the group’s hold on the local gardens they created, maintain and enjoy sincethe government retains the right to develop the land in the future. Ultimately, Rosolargues, neoliberal governance institutions shaped local citizen participation byoffloading or outsourcing formerly public responsibilities without providing sufficientresources. Public–private collaboration acted to depoliticize, discipline, co-opt and evenforced community opponents to compete for limited state funding. However, she points
11 Self-selected spokespersons for the excluded may also police themselves. Leaders of 229 civilsociety organizations in São Paulo that actively work with (or on behalf of) the urban poor declaredtheir commitment to mediate the voices and express the interests of their constituents. Althoughthey themselves were members of the middle class or elite, this was their single most-often citedclaim to legitimacy, although geographical proximity, group identity and other justifications forserving as representatives were also offered.
to a contradictory outcome of this governance project, in that communities can empowerthemselves by it. Offering self-determined free space enjoyed by the residents, thegardens have become a social meeting place for raising political awareness and buildingopposition to uses the state may one day propose for them. To summarize the process,local participation was more contestatory in the early stages of initiating the gardens, butlater was absorbed into the boroughs’ and city’s larger neoliberal project. Yet conflictremains a distinct possibility again.
Rosol’s contribution presents some evidence that, despite grassroots attempts at socialinclusion, especially of immigrant and ethnic neighbours, middle-class Germans livingin these low-income areas controlled the gardens, casting doubt on their inclusionaryeffects. This is true in other Berlin neighbourhood programmes too. The Red–Greengovernment (1998 to 2005) launched the Socially Integrative City (Soziale Stadt) andNeighbourhood Management (QM) programmes to encourage citizen participation in‘Districts with Special Development Needs’ (DIFU, 2003). Municipal governmentofficials unanimously praised the participation programme for improving relations withand among citizens (IfS, 2004). For example, more than half of all districts established‘contingency funds’ to allow residents and groups to accomplish small projects of theirchoice. While cutting other urban programmes, the Land of Berlin allocated resourcesfrom its own budget to set up an Empowerment Fund in the programme areas (500,000euros for 2 years), and committees of local residents decided on the use of theseresources. Thus, Berlin has a modest form of participatory budgeting. Although anygiven project was endowed with few resources (often around 10,000 euros), residents’committees spent the funds very scrupulously and efficiently, mostly on the livingenvironment and public space.
Yet these ‘citizens’ budgets’ and other neighbourhood participatory programmes areas controversial among urban scholars as the community gardens are for Rosol (Silver,2006). Token sums to effect superficial changes and cosmetic improvements can defuseopposition and offload public responsibilities. Encouraging participation solely at theneighbourhood level distracts and undermines city-level coalitions that can have a moresignificant impact. Although the Soziale Stadt programme granted considerablediscretion for local experimentation, the extent of bottom-up involvement varied betweenareas. Community meetings tended to attract only middle-class residents or organizedinterests. The formal communication style excluded less educated groups, whilemigrants and their families, the long-term unemployed, senior citizens and others whohad special needs were hardly involved. To reach ‘ordinary’ people, the juries that decideon the uses of the contingency Empowerment Funds consist of randomly selectedresidents, perhaps making participants more statistically representative, but bypassingthe self-organized residents that formally represent the neighbourhood and speak forminorities like migrants. As one city official observed, ‘everyone is there, not workingtogether’ (Bockmeyer, 2006). In sum, inclusion, empowerment and redistribution weremodest compared to São Paulo.
Alex Aylett’s ‘Conflict, Collaboration, and Climate Change’ (this issue) offers afocused case study of environmental activism in the South Durban Basin, South Africa.In common with some other contributors to the symposium, he provides an analysis ofgovernance on the urban, or rather, metropolitan scale. An industrial area, Durban has ahistory of active and vocal citizens’ groups, stretching well back into the apartheid era.This experience, closely associated with the local struggle against apartheid, continues tobe formative. In this context, as in Philadelphia and Berlin, protest is not the alternativeto or opposite of participation, but its twin. The political process is animated by thealternation between the two. This contribution explicitly illustrates the value of thinkingabout democratic participation dynamically, with moments of conflict and cooperation.
At a theoretical level, Aylett’s analysis of environmental struggles in Durban adoptsthe ‘agonistic’ model of democracy which, in the work of Foucault, Derrida and Mouffe,views power and conflict as constructive and generative. As Simmel (1955 [1908]) andCoser (1956) noted, conflict has positive functions. Protest leads to the collection and
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diffusion of new information and promotes learning. Conflicts make for strangebedfellows such as between grassroots, policymaking and scientific communities,countering the power of industry. After conflicts in which opposing views are expressedand heard, policy has greater legitimacy. It is more difficult to enforce accountability forresults and compliance with environmental rules with friends than with adversaries.Conversely, consensus has downsides, such as complacency. Even if there is agreementabout the benefits of a better climate, partnerships in governance can marginalize anddisempower citizen groups, or alternatively encourage government to abdicateresponsibilities.
This is a context in which the ‘consensus or bust’ bias — a perspective shared by theInternational Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Habermasian discourse ethics and muchof the environmental policy literature on ‘good governance’ — is more hindrance thanhelp. Aylett seeks to reorient the debate away from the polarization of consensus vs.conflict and from the associated negative evaluation of confrontation. He argues thatconfrontation must be considered unproductive in a setting where participation issupposed to produce consensus. What is unproductive for Aylett is this assumption itself.Governance and consensus are not adequate to address pressing contemporaryenvironmental problems. He calls instead for a balance of protest and participation,because conflict is an aspect of actual participation. Urban conflicts, Aylett notes, havegenerally been absent in climate and environmental debates and policies, notably thoseof the IPCC. While the IPCC has gradually broadened its initial natural–scientific andmodel-based approach to include socio-economic factors, only now, notably in theAssessment Report (AR4), is it beginning to consider the inclusion and support ofcitizens in policy implementation. However, the institutional bias of even these effortslimits the scope of the IPCC’s response. Climate policymakers are not yet fully preparedfor confrontation with grassroots participants outside formal state institutions. Aylettseeks to open this conversation.
To make the argument, he focuses on government policymaking when confrontedwith the protest and participatory activities of the South Durban CommunityEnvironmental Alliance (SDCEA). This vocal and established civil society actor defiedthe norms of the consensus-oriented good governance model. It used protest, often withallies outside Durban, to destabilize the rules of the game and make demands ongovernment. It hooked up with transnational NGOs to join its concerns with similarenvironmental struggles elsewhere. It held a Fossil Fools Day to reach the broad public,while deploying its expertise to engage government, translating concrete localenvironmental justice problems into complex technical demands. Involving thegrassroots in governance is far edgier, less predictable and less controllable than anythingpolicymakers might imagine under the slogan of ‘participation’. Yet, these conflicts,challenges and pressures from civil society ultimately prove beneficial. They strengthengovernment’s ability to regulate industry and to direct collaborative networks. Theoutcome — a public good — inhibits private industry from reaping benefits at publicexpense.
In sum, Aylett broadens the notion of ‘participation’ beyond consultation, partnershipand deliberation to include protest and confrontation. Inclusion and cooperation may bethe objectives of the policymaker, but the empowered civil society actor aims to checkand occasionally disrupt the aims and projects of more powerful actors, whether states,industry or international institutions. Thus, there are two variants of political praxis: theformer emphasizing consensus, while not ignoring the inevitability and value of conflict,and the latter emphasizing agonistic democracy, while not excluding its contribution tosolving shared problems. The ‘rolling-rule regime’ provides both a smooth and a bumpyride. Conflict and cooperation, Aylett concludes, are both legitimate and mutuallyreinforcing forms of participation.
Debbie Becher’s (this issue) case study of American Street in Philadelphia is alsosituated in a specific historical and national context. The Empowerment Zone (EZ)programme she examines was the urban revitalization programme of the Clinton
Administration. In 1994, six distressed cities were federally designated as EZs andreceived targeting funding and tax incentives to help revitalize these low-incomeminority areas. The programme combined supply-side aspects of the neoliberalenterprise zone programme under Reagan and Bush, Sr., with the Model CitiesProgramme and the liberal Democratic War on Poverty of the 1960s with its call for‘maximum feasible participation’. Yet, despite the federal mandate to includeconsultation of disadvantaged residents, as in Belfast, the EZ programme was largelyinitiated from the top down. Evaluations found that traditional economic developmentprogrammes, which received greatest emphasis, did little to improve socio-economicoutcomes in the zones, while ‘community building and involvement initiatives receivedthe least amount of funding’ (Oakley and Tsao, 2006).
The national EZ programme largely left it up to local governments to designmechanisms for citizen participation. In the Philadelphia neighbourhood studied byBecher, low-income Puerto Rican residents and small businesses had organized in the1980s to reclaim their neighbourhood, invited the EZ programme in and helped designthe application. For a while, elected community representatives served on the governingboard of the EZ, but the Mayor made the ultimate decisions. The EZ entailed some‘deliberation’ in the Habermasian sense, but community organizations also competedand fought among themselves. During the implementation stage, as residents had to berelocated to allow for construction, the community lost voice. Elections to the board werejettisoned and citizens’ concerns ignored. Elites pressured representatives to conformto government positions. As the work became bureaucratic and complex, residentparticipation fell off. One dissident forced off the EZ board mobilized a citywideanti-government campaign against the policy of eminent domain that had fed distrust,forcing the EZ and City Council to respond to the protest.
Becher asserts that it makes more sense to speak of ‘intermediation’ than‘cooperation’ between the community and government. Rather than only top-down orbottom-up communication, intermediaries ‘represent citizens to government, andgovernment to citizens’. Rather than reach consensus, participants reached a‘compromise’. As government began to use eminent domain to take residents’ propertyfor the redevelopment plan, community representatives needed to remain independent ofgovernment if they were going to change the policy. Their freedom to exit made it easierto agitate against government and pursue citizens’ social justice aims. Like the SouthDurban Community Environmental Alliance, the Philadelphia leaders ‘expanded thescope of conflict’ (Schattschneider, 1975) beyond the neighbourhood, this time to builda city-wide coalition opposing the Mayor’s redevelopment agenda.
Thus, the Philadelphia case study confirms once again the benefit of tracking civicparticipation over time. Debbie Becher shows how meaningful deliberative participationin the early stages of the EZ is not the end of the story. At the ‘back end’ of the process,after decisions are made and are being implemented, citizens need to hold governmentaccountable for results, if not through continued participation in partnerships thenthrough outside pressure. Her analysis of intermediation in the political processconcludes that citizens participate in multiple institutions, and both direct andrepresentative democracy. Cooperation in public–private partnerships at one momentmay be reconciled with conflict and external civil society pressure at another.
ConclusionsNormative theory — in particular the Habermas–Foucault ‘debate’ — set the researchagenda and framed the questions of this symposium. In turn, the empirical case studiescontribute to the broader debate by highlighting the need for: (1) sensitivity to context;(2) emphasis on scale and spatial aspects of deliberation and participation; and (3) focusupon substantive distributive outcomes — Who gains? Who loses? — rather than
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exclusively on process or procedure. More generally, the authors suggest that thetheoretical debates are driven by overly simple binary oppositions: consensus or conflict;procedure or process. Some of these polarizations obscure more than they reveal and thedangers of idealizing or romanticizing conflict are no less than those of idealizing orromanticizing consensus.
Firstly, the case studies in this symposium can act as a check or corrective to thesepolarizing, and potentially idealizing, tendencies of theoretical discourse. Moreconcretely, they have shown that both conflict and consensus are present in differentplaces and at different times. This is why, from a pragmatic and empirically informedperspective, it makes more sense to see conflict and consensus as moments in thepolitical process than as stark alternatives. Furthermore, the academic debate and theempirical practices are not taking place in different, hermetically sealed, worlds. Notionssuch as ‘participation’ and ‘deliberation’ have entered both policy debates (where theycan even act as ‘policy drivers’) and popular discourse. As the case studies show,different actors participate in a variety of ways and with a variety of ends. Elites can usesuch notions to support neoliberal governance, but equally claims makers can deploythem to enhance their power resources. The common tendency to argue that participationis either neoliberal governance or an empowering, inclusionary, progressive implementcan and should be confronted with a battery of questions: Where? When? By whom? Forwhat purposes? To what effect? In their variety, the studies here illustrate the diversityof intention and practice, not to mention outcome, that lies behind what are ostensibly‘the same’ concepts. ‘Participation’ means something quite different to policymakers inBelfast than it does to those demanding a say in participatory budgeting in São Paulo.The universalizing language of normative and general theory — whether consensus orconflict oriented — is inclined to gloss these decisive differences.
Secondly, the case studies point us to the practical and material conditions necessaryto foster participation and deepen democracy (whether conceptualized as consensus or asagonism). Social inclusion is surely a prerequisite for citizen participation. To geteveryone involved may require outreach, affirmative action or quotas (Fishkin, 1995;Cabannes, 2004; Avritzer, 2006; Sintomer et al., 2008). The process should be open,transparent and protect the rights of minorities. In a democracy, no one should lose outpermanently and systematically because they are denied a voice, directly or indirectly.The stakeholder approach, in which only interested parties are welcome, excludesdisinterested parties who may have a valuable independent perspective or may becomeinterested in the course of deliberation. In a context of inequality, every citizen must alsobe empowered to participate, and that entails treating them differently both because theirpower resources are unequal and because, without adopting a misplaced essentialism,they often have different needs. The process should provide resources and opportunitiesto engage at every stage and to put new issues on the agenda.
To go beyond inclusion to promoting empowerment, some things can be done toneutralize the unequal power of participants linked to differential access to information,expert knowledge and pre-existing class inequalities. Legal and regulatory reforms thatsystematically empower poor and marginalized groups can be legislated. These rangefrom simple things like setting convenient times and places for meetings to extendingand enforcing civil rights. Public funds can subsidize the operations of new organizationsof excluded groups to equalize collective resources, although this poses the danger ofdependency, loss of autonomy and capture. Advocates of ‘empowered participatorygovernance’ propose that professional facilitators should attend meetings to ensure thatall voices are heard and given equal respect (Susskind, 1999; Fung and Wright, 2001;Briggs, 2008). Whatever the method, however, there is the need to overcome biaseddeliberations in which some voices count more than others.
Ultimately, the rationale for studying the participation of ordinary people is the beliefthat their involvement will change the content of decisions and make policy moresocially just. Including newly empowered citizens in deliberation and making it easierfor them to protest the actions of elites should produce redistributive outcomes. There is
some evidence of this from cities in Brazil and elsewhere in the global South (Abers,2000; Nattrass and Seekings, 2001; Narayan et al., 2009). By mobilizing, someneighbourhoods may win more public services, victories which in turn encourage moreparticipation. Indeed, better local governance, and especially participatory democracy,may even help people move out of poverty.12
To conclude, consensus-seeking deliberation is touted because it is efficient; it helpsget things done. However, it can also be exclusionary and perpetuate inequality. Citizenparticipation is most democratic when it gives voice to everyone, includes and empowersthe weak, holds representatives, professionals and government accountable, andpromotes redistribution and social justice.
Hilary Silver ([email protected]), Department of Sociology, Brown University,Box 1916, Maxcy Hall, 112 George Street, Providence, RI 02912, USA, Alan Scott([email protected]), Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of NewEngland, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia, and Yuri Kazepov ([email protected]),DiSSPI, University of Urbino ‘Carlo Bo’, Via A. Saffi 15, 61029 Urbino, Italy.
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RésuméLa participation est un terme qui revient très souvent dans les études urbainescontemporaines. Pour certains, elle implique une réflexion démocratique approfondie,pour d’autres, une résistance des citoyens face à la puissance des élites et aunéolibéralisme. Si la participation peut être vue comme un moyen de bâtir des consensusou l’expression de conflits d’intérêts, ou comme un processus imposé par le haut ou bienpar la base, les faits suggèrent qu’elle peut être tout cela. En adoptant une perspectivepragmatique plus dynamique reposant sur des éléments empiriques, des conceptsnormatifs de la participation apparemment opposés sont susceptibles d’être formulés entant que ‘moments’ différents du processus démocratique. La mobilisation par la basepeut venir en coïncidence et complément d’initiatives imposées par le haut, chaqueforme dominant des phases politiques distinctes dans la prise de décision, la mise enœuvre et le suivi. Des études de cas portant sur Belfast, Berlin, Durban, Philadelphie etSão Paulo illustrent la démarche et font apparaître l’urbain comme un laboratoire oùs’élaborent d’autres dimensions de la vie sociale et de multiples modalités d’exercice dela démocratie.
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