two - Public encounters in participatory democracy: towards communicative capacity

Summary

[R]eality is in the relating, in the activity-between … (Mary Follett, 1924, p 54)

This chapter reviews the theoretical debate on participatory democracy and develops a focus on public encounters. This leads to an explanation of the theory and practice of communicative capacity and how this framework is used to analyse the case studies. A review of the theoretical debate reveals that public encounters did not feature in the work of the first advocates of participatory democracy, but evolved over time as an important medium for putting it into practice. However, public encounters have mainly been considered within a framework of democratic political theory, either in critique of representative and direct democracy or in normative theories of participatory democracy, primarily within the deliberative democracy literature. Although many excellent studies have already explored the communicative practices of public professionals and citizens, this particular literature is of limited help in appreciating and understanding how participatory encounters generate new types of practice which challenge established political institutions and theoretical categories. The work of Mary Follett provides a framework for understanding public encounters on their own terms: the communicative process should generate new ideas, identities and outcomes which everyone considers better than those they started out with. Such integrative encounters will not necessarily happen organically; citizens and public professionals need to communicatively enact the quality of their encounters in a shared, evolving practice. The theory of communicative capacity provides a theoretical and practical framework for doing so.

Participatory democracy: from democratic political theory to practice

Participatory democracy can be defined as the institutions and practices involved with the direct participation of (semi) public agencies, nongovernmental organisations, civic associations and citizens in decision making about and implementation of public policies that affect them (Fung and Wright, 2003). While encounters between public professionals and citizens are integral to participatory democracy in this definition, they have not always been considered as such. Following Elstub's (2010) distinction between three generations of debate, this section reviews the political theoretical framework from which participatory democracy emerged as well as the idea that public encounters were necessary for putting participatory ideals into practice.