ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the ways in which citizen participation has developed in the United States (U. S.), how the citizen has been regarded in the developing scholarship of public administration, and some of the most common responses that governments have developed to fill the "citizen gap." The chapter utilizes the recurring tensions to examine participation from the perspective of government administration in the U. S across time. Citizen participation occurs in the middle of the tension between politics and administration. If politics is completely separate from administration, and administration implies neutral expertise, the legitimate role of citizens might normatively be confined to the political process. Those centralized and professional bureaucracies that are highly independent from political functions may also be distant from the public. The advisory committee is a classic method of public participation. The chapter discusses some extrarepresentational techniques for citizen participation that are typically responses to statutes or other authorities that cause them to be put into use.
