Sarah Brown,
Journal Manager of Policy & Politics
Policy & Politics Autumn Highlights collection free to access from 1 August – 31 October 2019.
This quarter’s highlights collection focuses on some of our recent articles looking at public participation in the political process through a range of different lenses. Our first article, the Use and Abuse of Participatory Governance by Populist Governments challenge the notion prevalent in academic literature that participatory governance is a panacea for all ills in Western democracies. Based on a case study of Viktor Orban’s national consultations in Hungary, the authors use their case as evidence of how not to run a public consultation and why asking the public is not always such a great idea.
Staying with the theme of public participation, our second featured article is entitled When the People Speak and Decide: deliberation and direct democracy in the citizen assembly of Glarus, Switzerland. The article, which analyses deliberative democracy, asks if ordinary citizens are willing and able to deliberate, and if their participation in policy-making has the intended effect. It concludes that politicians tend to be more successful at deliberating and persuading than ordinary citizens, so concluding that the latter still need the former to represent them.
Our final featured article, Public Deliberation in an Era of Communicative Plenty, argues powerfully that in contemporary democracies, citizens have plenty of opportunities to express their views and opinions about anything that concerns them, but there is no guarantee and little likelihood that their views will be listened to, reflected on or taken up by decision-making bodies. Instead, amidst this contemporary ‘noise’ of participatory democracy which they term ‘communicative plenty’, they advocate more opportunities for listening and reflection, as opposed to one way political expression.
To read the original research, download the articles below which are free to access until 31 October 2019. Happy summer reading!
Click and download the full articles using the links below:
Batory, A., Svensson, S. (2019) ‘The use and abuse of participatory governance by populist governments‘ Policy & Politics, 47(2): 227-244. [Open Access]
Gerber, M., Mueller, S. (2017) ‘When the people speak – and decide: deliberation and direct democracy in the citizen assembly of Glarus, Switzerland‘ Policy & Politics, 46(3): 371-390.
Ercan, S. A., Hendriks, C. M., Dryzek, J. S. (2018) ‘Public deliberation in an era of communicative plenty‘ Policy & Politics, 47(1): 19-36.
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