The Interactive State: Democratisation from Above?

AuthorTjitske Akkerman,Maarten Hajer,John Grin
DOI10.1111/j.1467-9248.2004.00465.x
Published date01 March 2004
Date01 March 2004
Subject MatterArticle
The Interactive State: Democratisation
from Above?
Tjitske Akkerman, Maarten Hajer and John Grin
University of Amsterdam
The work of Robert Putnam has provoked a lively debate on the democratic importance of a robust
civil society. Criticism of his work concentrates on the fact that his concept of social capital con-
ceives of the relationship between civil society and government predominantly as a one-way affair
– a strong civil society is good for politics. Taking up this line of argument, an appreciation of
political factors is promoted to explain varying patterns of civic engagement. Now that Western
governments increasingly initiate and stimulate citizens’ participation in policy-making, it is
becoming even more important to assess the role of the state. Drawing on recent empirical research
on local practices in the Netherlands, we examine a Dutch variant of such top-down participatory
arrangements – so-called ‘interactive policy-making’. We ask whether, and under what conditions,
democratic advances can be expected from top-down state initiatives. And we develop a theoret-
ical framework for assessing the democratic effects of top-down participatory initiatives. Squaring
the main theoretical criteria with the empirical reality of interactive policy-making, we conclude
that an active state does not necessarily corrode civil society.
There is a lively debate on the relationship between representative democracy and
civil society. A new agenda has emerged, converging in the idea that the issue of
civic engagement is the key to the problems affecting Western democracies
(Skocpol and Fiorina, 1999, p. 3). In his inf‌luential analysis, Robert Putnam (1995,
2001) observed a sharp decline in civic engagement in the US. His work is now
often used as a benchmark for the problems affecting Western democracies more
generally. However, the empirical accuracy and the conceptual presumptions of
this thesis are much debated. The critical response to his work has centred on his
concept of social capital as a one-way relationship between civil society and gov-
ernment (Maloney et al., 2000; Lowndes and Wilson, 2001). Civic engagement
appears to be mainly a bottom-up phenomenon in Putnam’s early work (1993,
1995). As Sidney Tarrow argued, there is one explanation for the correlations
between civic vitality and policy performance that Putnam never considered in
Making Democracy Work – the effect of the pattern of state-building on indigenous
civic capacity (1996, p. 394). Even though Putnam has acknowledged in his recent
work that governments can have a positive role in shaping social capital, the rela-
tionship between the state and civil society still needs to be considered more fully
in order to assess the empirical trends in contemporary democracies (Pharr and
Putnam, 2000). Patterns of civic engagement have changed for social reasons, but
governments also inf‌luence civic engagement in varying ways. Assessing the role
of governments in shaping civic engagement has become even more important
now that governments, for a variety of reasons, are actively seeking to involve
citizens in the process of policy-making.
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2004 VOL 52, 82–95
© Political Studies Association, 2004.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

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