ABSTRACT
Since the late 1960s in the Western world, waves of interest-focused citizen activism have been represented through formal processes of public participation in planning, such as making written submissions or attending public meetings, through advocative processes such as lobbying (Hillier, 2000), or through intimidatory processes (Smith et al., 1997) such as civil disobedience. As Smith et al. (1997: Fig. 1; 141) illustrate, convergence towards a form of interest representation which facilitates participation, in the interests of accountability and empowerment, and generally what are regarded as more efficient processes (such as environmental dispute resolution), has gradually overcome bureaucratic constraints such as reluctance to share power and technocratic inertia.
