ABSTRACT
There have been moves in a number of European and other advanced capitalist societies in recent years to devolve government functions in addition to or as an alternative to increasing citizen participation in public affairs. Many of those initiatives have been underpinned by the aims of managers in the public sector to maximize community support for the policies they ultimately implement and to improve the standard of services provided. In other words, initiatives have been promoted by the instrumental aims of managers and not by a desire to increase popular power, as an end in itself. As outlined in Chapter 1, introducing market or market-type mechanisms into the provision of public services has also been followed in a number of countries. Over the years, theorists have produced models of participation. Some have tried to explain why people do or do not take part in various participation initiatives. Others have tried to explain how different participation exercises relate to goals of control, empowerment or democracy. Those theoretical considerations are particularly apposite, given the current agenda of public policy-makers across the World. In this chapter I will evaluate some of the more well-known theories which try to explain how participation exercises relate to goals of control, empowerment or democracy. I am concerned with trying to develop a model (or matrix) which helps to explain whether different methods of public participation contribute to the development of democracy and collective, or individual empowerment. (The development of this matrix was first considered at the ECPR seminar on innovative systems for political dialogue between governments and citizens, held in Oslo during 1996.)
