Participation

Participation in governance involves the range of formal and informal ways in which members of a political community make their values, interests, and policy [Page 660]preferences known. The concept of popular participation is primarily a concern for democratic systems, although there is growing recognition that it is a key element in facilitating policy acceptance in other nondemocratic schemes. The concept of participation implies involvement in public decisions, as distinguished from other forms of community involvement. Public decisions are those in which the entire community has a stake in the outcome. Different democratic traditions organize participation in distinct ways in an effort to emphasize certain elements over others. For example, a republican form of government filters citizen participation through representatives, while dialogic democracy relies more heavily on direct involvement. At its core participation is the means by which the vox de popularis, or the voice of the people is heard. New forms of governance reinforce the need to examine the underlying assumptions about the roles, expectations, and outcomes of participation in public decisions.

How varied traditions view participation is explained by the tensions between competing values of legitimacy and competency. These components are reflected in the ways and extent to which participation does or does not guide policy formulation and implementation. Although each tradition defines legitimacy and competency in dissimilar ways, there is common agreement that both are important. A government without any form of participation is not valid. Similarly, a government without the capacity to perform its core functions is pointless. To further illustrate these differences of emphasis, it is useful to compare the liberal and participatory traditions to two broad streams of thought in which participation is organized differently.