Workshop
programme
Including
Full papers
Workshop 1. Participation and community involvement in planning and implementation of urban policy projects and programmes (Rob Atkinson, Alessandro Balducci, Bas Denters, Henry Bäck)
Themes and perspectives
Fifteen papers were presented in the workshop reporting research from different cities, different national contexts and different disciplinary perspectives. Summarising and systematising could accordingly be done in a lot of different ways, and whichever perspective that is chosen there will be some papers that do not fit in.
One such perspective that I would like to stress is the distinction between representative democratic government and different forms of participatory deliberative democracy. This distinction was important in at least two thirds of the papers, even if the authors do not themselves always formulate the question at hand in these terms.
A decline in the legitimacy of representative institutions is observed indicated by declining popular participation as well as by output failure. Participatory methods are often seen as the alternative. Representative and participatory institutions however must co-exist. Representative institutions perform functions (accountability, representativeness, the provision of leadership and of mechanisms for handling conflicts of interest) that democracy cannot do without. So, the question is, how can different kinds of democratic institutions co-exist and what problems do arise when there is too much of the one or the other? Another discussion pertains to the motives for introducing participatory mechanisms, motives that range from empowerment via the supply of knowledge and experiences to the policy process to legitimising the regime. In many cases the supposedly empowered have reason to suspect that they are taken hostage.
The form of the workshop
The workshop became somewhat overloaded to the detriment of discussions. The number of papers to be presented allowed only ten minutes for discussion after each presentation. In spite of efforts by the workshop chairs to follow this very strict schedule it sometimes was not possible to restrict paper-givers to 20 minutes of presentation, thereby further reducing the available time for discussion. The relative heterogeneity of the topics discussed of course is coupled with the quantitative aspect, but was still within acceptable limits. A certain degree of heterogeneity always must be accepted in order not to make a workshop too exclusive.
To summarise
In spite of the strict time schedule I feel that the workshop was successful and that important problems, both from a theoretical and from a policy perspective, came under scrutiny.
Göteborg May 22nd
Henry Bäck
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Workshop 1 |