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THE MINISTRY OF PUBLIC INPUT: INTEGRATING CITIZEN VIEWS INTO POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12230
Date01 March 2016
AuthorCarola van Eijk
Published date01 March 2016
280 REVIEWS
THE MINISTRY OF PUBLIC INPUT: INTEGRATING CITIZEN VIEWS INTO
POLITICAL LEADERSHIP
Jennifer Lees-Marshment
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, 279 pp., £68.00 (hb), ISBN: 978-1-137-01777-2
Within modern democratic systems, governments cannot function without citizens’ input.
Yet, in recent decades the nature, scale, and purpose of this input have been changing.
The mechanisms through which citizens become involved in policy-making are becom-
ing more diverse and extensive (p. 1). Citizens have a voice not only during elections;
they also bring in their ideas during specic policy processes, interact with policy-makers
in decision-making processes, and share responsibility for the implementation of policies
and the delivery of specic public services. As such, citizen engagement has become the
norm in many (Western) democracies, at all government levels and during all phases of
the policy cycle.
This trend has not gone unnoticed by academics. From the early changes of both
the role and input mechanisms for citizens, many scholars of different disciplines have
studied emerging empirical puzzles. Jennifer Lees-Marshment identies three such
puzzles in her book The Ministry of Public Input, namely how citizens can provide useful
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 1, 2016 (276–284)
© 2015 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.

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