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International Online Training Program On Intractable
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Conflict Research Consortium, University
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Public Participation Mechanisms
Glossary | Menu Shortcut Page
In the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, the public became much more concerned
about and involved in governmental decision making processes than they had been before.
Pressures for increasing the level of public participation in government decision making
at the local, state, and federal levels has led to a wide variety of processes that are
utilized to enable the public to learn about and have input into governmental decisions.
While this has increased the confidence that the public has in its governmental decision
making process, it has also slowed that process down, and at some times, almost brought it
to a halt, as different public interest groups clash over the most desirable option to
pursue.
The most common (but often least effective) form of public participation is the public
hearing. Here a panel of government agency representatives gives a presentation on a
proposed decision, and then the public is asked to stand up and give short (1-3 minute)
speeches indicating their thoughts on the proposed action. Typically, only the people who
are opposed to the decision come to such hearings. Although the government agency can get
a feel for the extent and nature of the opposition, public hearings rarely give a good
indication of overall public opinion, nor do they yield good information about why people
feel the way they do. Thus, they do not contribute effectively to problem solving or
mutual cooperation.
Other forms of public participation may yield more helpful information, but they are
all slower and/or more expensive. Advisory committees made up of citizens can be better
measures of public interests, though they require a level of commitment from the members
that few people are willing and able to provide. Also, citizen members often have
different values than expert committee members. These value differences often lead to
continuous conflicts within the advisory committees, which may detract from the
committees effectiveness.
Ballot initiatives are another form of public participation which has greatly increased
in popularity in the United States over the last decade. Ballot initiatives are laws or
constitutional amendments that are proposed and voted upon by the public, not by a
legislative body. While the ability to act as a legislature gives the public much more
power over public decisions, as the number of initiatives increases, more and more people
are voting on things they do not really understand. This leads to the charge that laws are
passed in error, not because the public support for them is actually strong. In addition,
ballot initiatives often oversimplify problems and solutions. For that reason, they often
do not yield effective remedies to problems, despite their popular support.
Examples of the Use of Public Participation in Conflict Management
- Harold Saunders -- Prenegotiation and
Circum-negotiation: Arenas of the Peace Process
- This essay discusses four phases of peacebuilding. Although the first phase is
official negotiations between diplomats, successive stages involve larger and larger
constituency groups, including the public as a whole in stage four.
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- John Forester --Citizen Involvement in
Transportation Planning
- This is an example of a failed public involvement process.
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- Heidi Burgess--School
Board Decision Making
- This is another example of a failed public participation process.
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- Gennady I. Chufrin and Harold H. Saunders -- A
Public Peace Process
- This is a detailed description of a very intense public-involvement process in track two
diplomacy between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.
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- W. Barnett Pearce and Stephen Littlejohn --
Public Dialogue Consortium
- This article describes a public dialogue process designed to engage public participants
in dialogues on moral issues.
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- Susan Carpenter and W.J.D. Kennedy --
Constituencies and Public Information
- This article discusses the importance of building constituency support and informing the
public to the successful management of public disputes.
- Barbara Gray--Developing a Process for Siting
Hazardous Waste Facilities in Canada - The Swan Hills Case
- In this case the public was involved in a mapping process to determine the best place to
site a hazardous waste facility.
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- Penelope
Canan - When Are Not-in-My-Backyard-Conflicts the Desirable Result of
Community Empowerment
- This paper looks at the positive aspects of conflicts over the appropriate siting of
undesirable facilities-often called NIMBY conflicts for "not in my backyard!"
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- Janine
Wilson - Improving Toxic Materials Conflict through Improved Public Participation
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- This article describes the public participation process used to
address public fears about toxic waste issues.
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- Peter M. Sandman--Explaining Environmental
Risk
- Public involvement is critical to explaining environmental risks and environmental risk
decision making.
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Links to Outside Sources of Information and Case Studies
Note: many of the outside links are to the Public
Involvement Network's library. When you try to connect, it will ask for a name and a
password, but if you then click cancel, the document appears anyway (at least as of July
1998). So if you are interested, try it.
- Managing the Community
Impacts of Large Scale Development: A Participative Approach by Desmond M. Connor
- This paper summarizes the main elements of the participative social impact assessment
and management program commissioned by Howe Sound Pulp and Paper Limited for the greater
Gibsons, British Columbia community. Scoping was the first phase of this program.
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- Ten Lessons Learned in
22 Years of Public Participation by Desmond. M Connor
- This is a short paper which summarizes ten simple rules which will improve most public
participation programs.
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- Citizens' Advisory
Committees in Transportation Planning
- This paper discusses how citizens' advisory committees can facilitate interaction
between citizens and their government to improve transportation planning.
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- The Use of Focus Groups
for Gauging Public Opinion
- The use of focus groups to facilitate transportation planning is discussed here.
The approach can be used in any other public policy making process as well as
transportation planning, however.
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- The Use of Citizens'
Surveys as a Means for Gauging Public Opinion
- Another method of measuring citizen opinions is surveys. This approach is
described and compared to alternative approaches in this essay.
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- Collaborative Task Forces
- Collaborative task forces are another means of citizen participation that allow citizens
and government officials to work closely together to make public policy.
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- Innovations in Public
Involvement for Transportation Planning Public Meetings and Hearings
- This paper describes how public meetings and hearings can be used to obtain information
from and to give information to the public concerning public issues.
Links to Related Approaches
Majority Rule Processes
Consensus Rule Processes
Public Information Strategy
Grassroots Process Design
Constituent Communication
Constituent
Involvement Strategies
Links to Related Problems
Failing to Identify All of the
Affected People or Groups.
Failing to Identify All of the Relevant
Issues/Assuming that everyone else defines the problem the same way
Constituent
Communication Problems
Meaningless Public Involvement
Copyright ©1998 Conflict Research Consortium -- Contact: crc@colorado.edu