3. Public Participation
> 5 key aspects of Governance
This page has been written based on a research work on Governance conducted by IAAC team within the CENTRINNO EU research project.
“Public participation is a procedural tool which allows policymakers to include new actors (i.e. citizens) in a policy network and entrust them with some design-related tasks” (Bobbio, 2019).
This definition could be applied to any actor or organisation that wants to distribute any share of power to make a decision. It would then be key to understand:
→ The amount of power the organisation or the Fab City Hub has
→ The share of power that can be distributed to make a decision
Participation process play a role in a wide time frame of the decision to be made.
There are several tools and frameworks to support choosing a participatory approach and objective.
Find some below:
→ Participation ladder (Arnstein, 1969): Traditional framework that classifies participation, from manipulation to citizen control and power.
→ Participation cube (Fung, 2006): Three dimensional approach to assess the interrelations between power, communication & participation.
→ Participant-driven collaboration process guide (Sigurdson Barry Stuart and Jessica Bratty, 2011): Guidebook originally intended for fisheries (see p. 10-21), which includes a clear set of principles that advocates for collaboration against compromise.
Why participation in FCHs?
“There are three kinds of motivations (...) toward participation: empowerment, legitimacy and learning: participation can serve to empower people and thus to put in practice democratic ideals, to acquire consensus or to gain inputs from citizens knowledge when facing complex or badly understood problems.” (Hisschemöller & Cuppen, 2015)
Fab City Hubs constantly involve actors and communities that are external to the core team. Opening some decisions to the external community for participation, consultation, or co-design may legitimate its actions, allow learning about the external community, or empowering certain key actors.
Last updated
