ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1 I discussed how over the last two decades the public policy agenda across northern Europe has witnessed a significant coming together. As the financial imperatives of the post-oil-crisis era impacted upon Western economies, so governments increasingly came to accept the need for a common set of public management remedies. However, set alongside this has been a recognition that for a changed management agenda to be successful within the public sector, it must also seek to address apparent structural weaknesses within local democracy itself. The result has been simultaneous pressure to introduce more efficient forms of managerial problem solving and to produce policy outcomes which are built upon a broad degree of democratic legitimacy. These two factors have acted together within the public policy arena to produce complementary forms of participation (CFPs), as defined in Chapter 1.
