Problematizing participatory policymaking: Tensions and potential.
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 439
ISBN-13: 9780494220474
Description: Social policies that meet the needs of marginalized groups are required today given growing social and economic inequities. The contemporary policy project prioritizes participation and offers appealing promises that community involvement will lead to responsive policies. Although this is theoretically possible, the process is often experienced as a site of control, manipulation, and powerlessness, leading to little, if any, policy change. To advance the participatory project and its capacity to promote responsive policies, it is pivotal to critically examine state-initiated participation, both its discourses and practice. It is especially essential to explore empirical cases of participation and identify factors that contribute to authentic engagement.Using a collective case study design, this research problematized participatory policymaking as conceptualized and implemented by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. Through documentary analysis and non-participant observation, this investigation captured and analyzed the state's official discourses of participation, including that prescribing to public servants how the participatory policy project is to be implemented. Further, in-depth interviews with public servants involved in participatory policy analysis revealed their constructions of the process, including its significance and challenges.Additionally, this study mapped and explored four cases of participation, namely, a citizens' advisory council on social development, a community-government committee overseeing a provincial violence prevention strategy, a community-government working group concerning welfare services to victims of violence, and a traditional consultation process used to reform welfare legislation. Through documentary analysis and in-depth interviews with members of community organizations and public servants involved in these initiatives, the strengths and challenges of each participatory site and the factors that contributed to its efficacy in bringing the voices of outsiders into the policy process were identified. To promote the effective practice of participation in the future, the key qualities and conditions necessary to facilitate authentic participation were delineated. These apply to public administrators, the design of participatory processes and the conditions needed within them, and participation's process outcomes. Central to authentic engagement is bureaucratic will and support, which is connected to relational aspects of participation. Clearly, subjective factors are instrumental in ensuring participation is meaningful.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-01, Section: A, page: 0351.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

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