Citizen Participation in Rulemaking: Past, Present, and Future

Administrative law scholars and governmental reformers argue that advances in information technology will greatly expand public participation in regulatory policymaking. They claim that e-rulemaking, or the application of new technology to administrative rulemaking, promises to transform a previously insulated process into one in which ordinary citizens regularly provide input. With the federal government having implemented several e-rulemaking initiatives in recent years, we can now begin to assess whether such a transformation is in the works-or even on the horizon. This paper compares empirical observations on citizen participation in the past, before e-rulemaking, with more recent data on citizen participation after the introduction of various types of technological innovations. Contrary to prevailing predictions, empirical research shows that e-rulemaking makes little difference: citizen input remains typically sparse, notwithstanding the relative ease with which individuals can now learn about and comment on regulatory proposals. These findings indicate that the more significant barriers to citizen participation are cognitive and motivational. Even with e-rulemaking, it takes a high level of technical sophistication to understand and comment on regulatory proceedings. Moreover, even though information technology lowers the absolute cost of submitting comments to regulatory agencies, it also dramatically decreases the costs of a wide variety of entertainment and commercial activities that are much more appealing to most citizens. Given persistent opportunity costs and other barriers to citizen participation, even future e-rulemaking efforts appear unlikely to lead to a participatory revolution, but instead can be expected generally to deliver much the same level of citizen involvement in the regulatory process

Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice

Can new technology enhance purpose-driven, democratic dialogue in groups, governments, and societies? Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice is the first book that attempts to sample the full range of work on online deliberation, forging new connections between academic research, technology designers, and practitioners. Since some of the most exciting innovations have occurred outside of traditional institutions, and those involved have often worked in relative isolation from each other, work in this growing field has often failed to reflect the full set of perspectives on online deliberation. This volume is aimed at those working at the crossroads of information/communication technology and social science, and documents early findings in, and perspectives on, this new field by many of its pioneers. CONTENTS: Introduction: The Blossoming Field of Online Deliberation (Todd Davies, pp. 1-19) Part I - Prospects for Online Civic Engagement Chapter 1: Virtual Public Consultation: Prospects for Internet Deliberative Democracy (James S. Fishkin, pp. 23-35) Chapter 2: Citizens Deliberating Online: Theory and Some Evidence (Vincent Price, pp. 37-58) Chapter 3: Can Online Deliberation Improve Politics? Scientific Foundations for Success (Arthur Lupia, pp. 59-69) Chapter 4: Deliberative Democracy, Online Discussion, and Project PICOLA (Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly) (Robert Cavalier with Miso Kim and Zachary Sam Zaiss, pp. 71-79) Part II - Online Dialogue in the Wild Chapter 5: Friends, Foes, and Fringe: Norms and Structure in Political Discussion Networks (John Kelly, Danyel Fisher, and Marc Smith, pp. 83-93) Chapter 6: Searching the Net for Differences of Opinion (Warren Sack, John Kelly, and Michael Dale, pp. 95-104) Chapter 7: Happy Accidents: Deliberation and Online Exposure to Opposing Views (Azi Lev-On and Bernard Manin, pp. 105-122) Chapter 8: Rethinking Local Conversations on the Web (Sameer Ahuja, Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, and Andrea Kavanaugh, pp. 123-129) Part III - Online Public Consultation Chapter 9: Deliberation in E-Rulemaking? The Problem of Mass Participation (David Schlosberg, Steve Zavestoski, and Stuart Shulman, pp. 133-148) Chapter 10: Turning GOLD into EPG: Lessons from Low-Tech Democratic Experimentalism for Electronic Rulemaking and Other Ventures in Cyberdemocracy (Peter M. Shane, pp. 149-162) Chapter 11: Baudrillard and the Virtual Cow: Simulation Games and Citizen Participation (Hélène Michel and Dominique Kreziak, pp. 163-166) Chapter 12: Using Web-Based Group Support Systems to Enhance Procedural Fairness in Administrative Decision Making in South Africa (Hossana Twinomurinzi and Jackie Phahlamohlaka, pp. 167-169) Chapter 13: Citizen Participation Is Critical: An Example from Sweden (Tomas Ohlin, pp. 171-173) Part IV - Online Deliberation in Organizations Chapter 14: Online Deliberation in the Government of Canada: Organizing the Back Office (Elisabeth Richard, pp. 177-191) Chapter 15: Political Action and Organization Building: An Internet-Based Engagement Model (Mark Cooper, pp. 193-202) Chapter 16: Wiki Collaboration Within Political Parties: Benefits and Challenges (Kate Raynes-Goldie and David Fono, pp. 203-205) Chapter 17: Debian’s Democracy (Gunnar Ristroph, pp. 207-211) Chapter 18: Software Support for Face-to-Face Parliamentary Procedure (Dana Dahlstrom and Bayle Shanks, pp. 213-220) Part V - Online Facilitation Chapter 19: Deliberation on the Net: Lessons from a Field Experiment (June Woong Rhee and Eun-mee Kim, pp. 223-232) Chapter 20: The Role of the Moderator: Problems and Possibilities for Government-Run Online Discussion Forums (Scott Wright, pp. 233-242) Chapter 21: Silencing the Clatter: Removing Anonymity from a Corporate Online Community (Gilly Leshed, pp. 243-251) Chapter 22: Facilitation and Inclusive Deliberation (Matthias Trénel, pp. 253-257) Chapter 23: Rethinking the ‘Informed’ Participant: Precautions and Recommendations for the Design of Online Deliberation (Kevin S. Ramsey and Matthew W. Wilson, pp. 259-267) Chapter 24: PerlNomic: Rule Making and Enforcement in Digital Shared Spaces (Mark E. Phair and Adam Bliss, pp. 269-271) Part VI - Design of Deliberation Tools Chapter 25: An Online Environment for Democratic Deliberation: Motivations, Principles, and Design (Todd Davies, Brendan O’Connor, Alex Cochran, Jonathan J. Effrat, Andrew Parker, Benjamin Newman, and Aaron Tam, pp. 275-292) Chapter 26: Online Civic Deliberation with E-Liberate (Douglas Schuler, pp. 293-302) Chapter 27: Parliament: A Module for Parliamentary Procedure Software (Bayle Shanks and Dana Dahlstrom, pp. 303-307) Chapter 28: Decision Structure: A New Approach to Three Problems in Deliberation (Raymond J. Pingree, pp. 309-316) Chapter 29: Design Requirements of Argument Mapping Software for Teaching Deliberation (Matthew W. Easterday, Jordan S. Kanarek, and Maralee Harrell, pp. 317-323) Chapter 30: Email-Embedded Voting with eVote/Clerk (Marilyn Davis, pp. 325-327) Epilogue: Understanding Diversity in the Field of Online Deliberation (Seeta Peña Gangadharan, pp. 329-358). For individual chapter downloads, go to odbook.stanford.edu

eParticipation in the institutional domain: a review of research: analytical report on eParticipation research from an administration and political perspective in six European countries

This deliverable of DEMO-net Project provides an analysis of existing research about eParticipation in the institutional domain. It includes a review of the empirical research about eParticipation in six European countries (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden) and in the international research. This report also provides a comparative picture of national and international research, and outlines overall research findings and research gaps

Understanding Continuous Citizen Participation on a Green Commuting Platform: The Roles of Public Value and Private Value

Citizen participation in IT-enabled social activity is an exchange between creating public value for others and gaining private value offered by public sectors in the perspective of social exchange theory. Prior literatures mostly focused on offline social activities and examined only the effects of participation antecedents on final participation outcomes, not investigating the potential participation mechanism in particular of the roles of public and private values. Thus, this study develops a theoretical model based on theories and incentives of citizen participation to examine what and how antecedents affect continuous citizen participation through public value creation and private value acquisition. With analyzing the survey data in the case of a Green Commuting platform, we identify the effective antecedents and find that private value acquisition has much greater effect on participation than public value creation and two values significantly mediate the effects of antecedents on participation

Interdependent policy instrument preferences: a two-mode network approach

In policymaking, actors are likely to take the preferences of others into account when strategically positioning themselves. However, there is a lack of research that conceives of policy preferences as an interdependent system. In order to analyse interdependencies, we link actors to their policy preferences in water protection, which results in an actor-instrument network. As actors exhibit multiple preferences, a complex two-mode network between actors and policies emerges. We analyse whether actors exhibit interdependent preference profiles given shared policy objectives or social interactions among them. By fitting an exponential random graph model to the actor-instrument network, we find considerable clustering, meaning that actors tend to exhibit preferences for multiple policy instruments in common. Actors tend to exhibit interdependent policy preferences when they are interconnected, that is, they collaborate with each other. By contrast, actors are less likely to share policy preferences when a conflict line divides them

Can the Power of Platforms be Harnessed for Governance?

The platform concept examines how strategic leadership and institutional and technological resources enable multiple distributed activities to innovate, adapt, and change. The central question addressed in this paper is: Can this potentially powerful organizing logic be harnessed for public purposes? Since governance platforms are still largely experimental, we cannot fully settle this question at present. However, we can begin to address the issue to help scholars and practitioners explore the potential of platforms. We start with a general statement about what governance platforms might offer to the public sector, before probing the concept more deeply. We then investigate the institutional mechanisms that purportedly make platforms powerful and propose a typology of governance platforms. Finally, we investigate the challenges and successes they have encountered

A typology of stakeholders and guidelines for engagement in transdisciplinary, participatory processes

© 2016 Newton and Elliott. This paper fulfils a gap in environmental management by producing a typology of stakeholders for effective participatory processes and co-design of solutions to complex social–environmental issues and then uses this typology for a stepwise roadmap methodology for balanced and productive stakeholder engagement. Definitions are given of terminology that is frequently used interchangeably such as “stakeholders,” “social actors,” and “interested parties.” Whilst this analysis comes from a marine perspective, it is relevant to all environments and the means of tackling environmental problems. Eleven research questions about participative processes are addressed, based on more than 30 years of experience in water, estuarine, coastal, and marine management. A stepwise roadmap, supported by illustrative tables based on case-studies, shows how a balanced stakeholder selection and real engagement may be achieved. The paper brings these together in the context of several up-to-date concepts such as complex, nested governance, the 10 tenets for integrated, successful, and sustainable marine management, the System Approach Framework and the evolution of DPSIR into DAPSI(W)R(M) framework. Examples given are based on the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, the Water Framework Directive, the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive, the Framework Directive for Maritime Spatial Planning, as well as for Regional Sea Conventions. The paper also shows how tools that have been developed in recent projects can be put to use to implement policy and maximize the effectiveness of stakeholder participation

Deliberative water governance : theory and practice in the Mekong region

This thesis explores the research question: How can water governance be fairer and more effective in Mekong Region and beyond? In doing so, it examines the theory and practice of deliberative water governance, informed and illustrated in a region that comprises Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and China's Yunnan Province. Water governance can be understood along a spectrum, from a means to achieve pre{u00AD}determined objectives to a social process of dialogue, negotiation and decision-making. This thesis is most interested in the latter conception, in the context of 'the Mekong', where choices are being made about using and sharing transboundary waters. These choices might produce more energy; both increase and decrease food production; sustain or threaten livelihoods; and, maintain or degrade vital ecosystems and their services, upon which societies depend. An introductory chapter (Part A, Chapter 1) contextualises and explains the logic of the research. I next explore contested waterscapes (Part B, Chapters 2-5) focusing on the complex tapestry of Mekong regionalisms and governance, hydropower expansion, and a marginalised Mekong River Commission. The analysis confirmed that significant scope exists for improving water governance, and that deliberation - debate and discussion aimed at producing reasonable, well-informed opinions - has been in short supply. Deliberation deficits observed and reported in Part B provoked exploration of deliberative processes (Part C, Chapters 6-11) as a potential pathway to improving water governance. I examine firstly international practice, including still-topical issues from the World Commission on Dams, and the potential of multi-stakeholder platforms. I then examine Mekong practice and the efficacy of multi-stakeholder platforms as a governance tool; and the politics of deliberation, scales and levels. The final chapter of this section introduces a framework for analysing transboundary water governance complexes and distils suggestions for making water governance more deliberative and as a consequence, fairer and more effective. Part C analyses a range of governance challenges, and provides evidence that deliberative processes, where inserted into political arenas, are making water governance fairer and more effective, by reducing power imbalances among stakeholders and assisting negotiations to be more transparent and informed. In the final section and chapter (Part D, Chapter 12), I summarise and reflect on my practice and exploration of the topics. Drawing together the lessons from my research, I present my aspirational vision of Deliberative Water Governance - a new frontier in the field of deliberative governance: Constructive engagement that enables fairer and more effective water governance through inclusive, deliberative processes that emphasise different perspectives, learning, analysis and institution-building. The vision is inspired by promising examples, from the Mekong Region and elsewhere, examined in the thesis chapters, which demonstrate the need for and added-value provided by deliberation when it is information-rich, flexibly facilitated and actively promotes analysis of different views. In conclusion, I contend that, via its action research and publishing orientation, this thesis has contributed uniquely to both the theory and practice of Deliberative Water Governance in the dynamic Mekong Region and more widely

Improving Mekong water resources investment and allocation choices

The CPWF Project PN67 “Improving Mekong Water Allocation” was a key, collaborative activity of the Mekong Program on Water, Environment and Resilience (M-POWER). The goal of contributing to water allocation policy and practice which results in a more optimal and equitable use of water by society has been pursued by research across the Mekong Region and active engagement with policymakers. The project team have examined the use of a wide range of decision-support tools, in many decision-making arenas. In doing so, they have sought to understand decision contexts and drivers