Competing perspectives on participatory arrangements: Explaining the attitudes of elected representatives
| Published date | 01 November 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/01925121221092600 |
| Author | Jan Erling Klausen,Signy Irene Vabo,Marte Winsvold |
| Date | 01 November 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Original Research Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121221092600
International Political Science Review
2023, Vol. 44(5) 694 –709
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/01925121221092600
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Competing perspectives on
participatory arrangements:
Explaining the attitudes of elected
representatives
Jan Erling Klausen
University of Oslo, Norway
Signy Irene Vabo
University of Oslo, Norway
Marte Winsvold
Institute for Social Research, Norway
Abstract
In this article, we investigate elected representatives’ attitudes to citizen participation and the design
of participatory arrangements. We distinguish between citizenship-oriented and governance-oriented
attitudes. Whereas citizenship-oriented attitudes imply designing participatory arrangements to safeguard
the democratic values of equality, transparency and inclusion, governance-oriented attitudes imply designing
participatory arrangements to support elected representatives in their roles. Based on unique data from a
web-based survey sent to all local councillors in Norway, we found that although Norwegian local councillors
tend towards citizenship-oriented rather than governance-oriented attitudes to citizen participation, there
is great variation between councillors in this respect. Analysing strategic and ideological explanations, we
found that right-wing politicians tend to hold more governance-oriented attitudes than left-wing politicians
do. Strategic considerations seem to have no effect on councillors in power in this regard.
Keywords
Citizen participation, local democracy, democratic innovations, participatory democracy, participatory
arrangements
Corresponding author:
Jan Erling Klausen, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, PO Box 1097, Blindern, Oslo, 0317, Norway.
Email: j.e.klausen@stv.uio.no
1092600IPS0010.1177/01925121221092600International Political Science ReviewKlausen et al.
research-article2022
Original Research Article
Klausen et al. 695
Introduction
An increasingly common narrative about democracy is one of crisis – a state of affairs marked by
widespread voter apathy, erosion of public confidence and waning support for politicians, political
parties and political institutions (Mair, 2013). A growing interest in ‘putting the public back into
governance’ (Fung, 2015: 513), via introducing new arrangements for facilitating citizen participa-
tion and engagement in politics, indicates widely held beliefs in democratic – or participatory –
innovation as a viable strategy for countering the crisis (Geissel and Newton, 2012; Goodin, 2008).
Therefore, many countries are actively trying out a wide variety of participatory arrangements,
such as citizens’ juries (Font and Blanco, 2007), deliberative mini-publics (Grönlund et al., 2014)
and a plethora of other schemes (Smith, 2005). However, different participatory arrangements
entail various value-based design choices. For example, is it admissible to ‘cherry-pick’ certain
ideas and inputs (Font et al., 2018), or must all opinions be given equal weight? Is it acceptable to
solicit input just to see if a political idea will ‘sell’ (Goodin, 2008: 4), similar to market-testing, or
should participants expect a certain degree of agenda control? Is the fairness of procedures for
selecting participants a cause for concern (Smith, 2009: 21), or can politicians select participants
freely? Value-laden design choices such as these pose more fundamental questions about participa-
tory arrangements: should participatory arrangements first and foremost be oriented towards citi-
zens and citizenship, by giving primacy to protecting and developing inclusive and meaningful
participation, the quality of deliberation and citizens’ enlightenment (Geissel, 2013: 15)? Or should
participatory arrangements primarily be governance-oriented, in the sense that the key priority is
to improve policy outcomes by conveying information about citizens’ wants and needs to political
leaders? In this article, we introduce a theoretical distinction between ‘citizenship-oriented’ and
‘governance-oriented’ attitudes to inclusion and discuss the implications of these orientations for
the design of participatory arrangements. Based on a selection of ‘democratic goods’ (Smith, 2009)
commonly used as evaluative criteria for participatory arrangements, we examine how real elected
representatives actually relate to citizenship-oriented and governance-oriented inclusion. To
explain why the balance between these orientations tends to differ amongst elected representatives,
we then consider whether the representatives’ views on democratic values are influenced mostly by
strategy or ideology – in other words, whether the representatives’ orientations are dictated by their
positions in the political system or by their party affiliations.
In this article, we focus specifically on the role that councillors play in relation to citizens’ par-
ticipation, as councillors are particularly important catalysts for political participation (Copus,
2003). As gatekeepers, councillors decide on the participatory arrangements that are available to
citizens and, thereby, what opportunities citizens are given to affect policy development. Much is
known about politicians’ appreciation of citizen participation and the relative success of various
participatory efforts (Hertting and Kugelberg, 2018). However, with a few notable exceptions (e.g.
Hendriks and Lees-Marshment, 2019), there is a knowledge gap regarding the kinds of public
involvement that politicians value, and how they think participatory arrangements should be
designed. We aimed to close this gap by analysing unique data from a web-based survey with more
than 3000 Norwegian local councillors. The specific features of Norway’s local government sys-
tem suggest that these informants may offer interesting insights of general relevance. In the
European context, Norwegian local governments are relatively autonomous, and decisions by local
councils carry substantial weight (Ladner et al., 2016). Furthermore, Norway’s long-standing tradi-
tion of local self-rule and its highly decentralised social-democratic welfare state mean that local
governments are highly capable. While we believe that value judgements involved in designing
participatory arrangements are equally relevant to all democratic governments, the need for mak-
ing such judgements may be more acutely felt – and thus may be more readily observable – in
Norway than in countries in which local decision-making processes are less consequential.
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