ABSTRACT
The transnational standardization of public engagement models is a recent phenomenon that emerged in the mid-2000s. It refers to the increasing proliferation of ready-made formats of citizen involvement across diverse localities. In this chapter, I argue that such standardization involves a struggle between designs that create globalized homogenization and the diversities of local practice, due to heterogeneous culture, resources and political situations. I investigate the empirical case of the WWViews on Biodiversity. This event encompassed a standardized citizen participation format implemented in a synchronized manner at multiple sites in 2012, which assembled citizens’ views on global biodiversity and related policy options. Initiated by a network of civil society organizations, it addressed the COP 11 of the CBD. Using this case, I elaborate on the tensions that emerge from a global ready-made design for public engagement and its multiple applications in heterogeneous local contexts. The global design for public engagement aims to coordinate across multiple sites, thus creating tension at mini-publics in diverse contexts in various countries. This tension arises from the push for these locales to become ‘the same’ public by aggregating ‘worldwide views’ – in spite of different local conditions such as cultural conditions (for instance in Islamic cultures where the participation of women is only allowed when they are accompanied by men), or organizational capacities (for instance when local organizers have to work under limited financial resources) and preferences for public participation (for instance when organizers’ visions range from empowerment of disadvantaged persons to demonstrating pluralistic views within society). The constraints of standardization and the framework design de facto shape the structure for interaction and the roles of different actors involved in the international setting. However, it turns out that the different localities – in the chapter presented with the implementation sites in the US and in Germany – do not become ‘the same’. Rather, a pre-formulated design is implemented and translated on a local level by adapting, rejecting or modifying the design rules in situated practice.
