Participatory processes for whom? A critical look at Portugal in times of austerity

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Citizen participation during the COVID-19 pandemic: Insights from local practices in European cities

The outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic is the perfect storm that corroborates the magnitude of upcoming challenges for the future of democracy, cities, and citizen participationinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Administrative Discretion in Participatory Processes

Administrative discretion in participatory processes refers to the degrees of power exerted by public officials at the margins of formal roles. As participatory processes in policymaking require public officials to intermediate between political representatives and social agents, administrative discretion is a key feature for the (re)configuration of public officials’ roles in public administration.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Frontline Bureaucrat

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Da Democratização das Formas de Governação na Política à Partilha de Autoridade no Campo dos Museus e do Património

O texto analisa o percurso da participação no contexto do aprimoramento dos instrumentos políticos de governação, de onde se destacam mais recentemente os chamados “orçamentos participativos”, cruzando depois com a trajectória da participação no campo dos museus e do património. O texto mostra não só a transversalidade que a participação dos cidadãos suscita em muitas áreas da sociedade contemporânea, como também esclarece que esta não é uma questão recente. No campo dos museus, por exemplo, o lastro recua pelo menos à década de 1970.Acesso Cultura, UID/HIS/00057/2013 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007702) – FCT, COMPETE, FEDER, Portugal 202

Homeland as a multi-scalar community: (Dis)continuities in the US security/safety discourse and practice

This article takes steps from the birth and consolidation of “homeland” as the central discursive engine of the US national security enterprise; and takes issue with the dominant scholarly interpretation of the geographical and spatial implications of its emergence in terms of the “dissolution of the inside/outside spatialization of security policy” (Bialiasiewicz et al., 2007: 416). We adopt a multi-scalar approach to exploring security discourse/practice, comparing the performativity of national and global security with the local practice/discourse of public safety—with empirical focus on the case of Memphis (TN). Our main arguments are that the homeland builds on the same performative elements of the emergence and consolidation of a certain conception of “community”, as it has become dominant in public safety policymaking at the local scale; and that the homeland/community performativity is the expression of a never-ending movement of production of multi-scalar geographies of the “good” and “evil”, made of the coexistence of centrifugal (pushing problems away) and centripetal (incorporating any given outside) dimensions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Co-production and Voice in Policymaking: Participatory Processes in the European Periphery

Co-production is now the gold standard in policymaking, characterised by national and international actors with different types of knowledge working together to contribute to a collaborative decision-making process. The benefits of co-production in policymaking can include improved knowledge generation that merges practice-centred, political and technical knowledge and incorporates local knowledges to provide complementary information and increase ownership over policymaking processes. Nevertheless, it can also present pitfalls such as multiple and diverging interests, incomplete and asymmetric information, and resource asymmetries and elite capture as highlighted by Bender in (Eur J Dev Res, 2022). By reviewing a case in the European periphery, we document and illustrate situations of collaboration and conflict, benefits and pitfalls resulting from policymaking co-production, throughout recent Portuguese history and in present-day participatory budget initiatives. From competing national actors to influences from the Global North and Global South, the f inal outcome reflects a learning process in collaboration but also underlying power strugglesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Memorandum: Urban Centers

This Memorandum is a policy-oriented research document conducted by the ICS-ULisboa team of the Horizon 2020 project ROCK. It seeks to organise some of the most up-to-date knowledge around Urban Centers and highlight important discussion topics, requiring further attention. In addition to academic literature review, the Memorandum relies on contributions from the international conference “Urban Centers: Acting upon or with cities?” organised by the ICS-ULisboa on the 19th October 2018 (https://rockproject.eu/event-details/41). The Conference took place in the Centre for Urban Information of Lisbon with the participation of representatives from the following Urban Centers: Centro de Informação Urbana de Lisboa (Lisbon); Fondazione Innovazione Urbana (Bologna); Urban Center of Torino; Pavillon de L’Arsenal (Paris); Centro de Cultura Contemporània Barcelona; and casa della Città / Case del Municipio (Rome). The participating Urban Centers were selected from the list provided by the international laboratory on Urban Centers (http://www.urban-center.org/en/), on the basis of their different working contexts, management models and activity. Representatives were invited to share knowledge and experience about the role, the challenges and potential of Urban Centers today and the different forms of action and participation they may have in the development of their cities.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The cost of participation: An analysis of the financial dimensions of participatory budgets in Portugal

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic innovation that allows citizens to deliberate about a share of the public budget. Portugal was one of the most influent countries in this field in the last decade, as PB was implemented at multiple levels. However, few studies have made in-depth research on the financial dimensions of PB, which raises interest as to whether and how citizens' voice has had a significant impact on policy-making. To fill in this gap, this article considers the financial asset of local, regional, and national PBs in Portugal up to the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our methodological approach relies on both quantitative data analyzed through Geographical Information Systems and descriptive statistics, and qualitative data retrieved from document analysis. Findings are discussed through four different stages of dissemination in the country, and show that despite significant advancements in this field, impacts in the financial dimensions lay behind expectations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Tackling urban disparities through participatory culture-led urban regeneration. Insights from Lisbon

In the last few decades, the diffusion of culture-led urban regeneration schemes has intercepted the growth of participatory approaches across a wide range of policy domains. Partnerships between private and public agencies have sought, accordingly, the engagement of citizens and stakeholders to push forward context-specific interventions. From the participatory action research developed in Lisbon, one of the cities funded under the EU-funded project ROCK, we analyse the ways in which this project has tackled spatial divides and socioeconomic inequalities in the project demonstration area. Our main argument is that operational decisions and substantive mismatches have given rise to opportunities and bottlenecks throughout the implementation of the project. While the public investment has been directed to regenerate a deprived area, it has fallen short of promoting greater connections within the area and with the surrounding neighbourhoods. ROCK’s actions have only partially met local community expectations regarding the project’s objectives for the optimisation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, with impacts over degrees of citizen engagement in the local Living Lab.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio