Chapter 8
Using Public Participation to Enhance Citizen Voice and Promote Accountability
Tina Nabatchi, Jack Alexander Becker, and Matt Leighninger
Theorists of and commentators on American public life are concerned that the foundations of citizenship and democracy are crumbling (for a discussion, see Nabatchi, 2010). Some point to a growing “citizenship deficit,” which refers to the erosion of civil society and civic engagement, and to declines in the civic skills and dispositions (such as political efficacy, voter turnout, and trust in government) of the general public. Others describe a growing “democratic deficit,” which refers to the divide between citizen opinions and preferences and political decisions and policies. As evidence, they point to growing numbers of disenfranchised voters, highly polarized policy debates, the inability of elected leaders to agree on seemingly commonsense measures, and the massive influence of moneyed interests in politics.
These forces are often apparent in official public meetings, where incivility and hyperpartisanship have become common. The town hall meetings on health care reform held in summer 2009 are the most notable national example. At these events, many members of Congress felt that they were “ambushed” by organized interests and groups of “angry citizens” (Jacobs & Skocpol, 2012) and expressed dismay at these “public displays of shouting, insults, guns, fist fights, fear mongering, ideological extremism, and bald-faced irrationality” (Pincock, 2012, p. 135). These experiences, and similar ones in other conventional public meetings, have branded public participation as an unproductive and potentially scarring endeavor.
In response to these negative attitudes and encounters, some public officials, citizen activists, and other leaders have developed more robust democratic practices. Many of these innovators and advocates assert that new public participation processes, and particularly deliberative processes, can help bridge the divide between citizens and government and begin to ameliorate problems in our political system. As people turn away from the conventional opportunities for engagement and find new ways to express themselves politically and as public administrators pioneer new approaches for responding to that citizen energy, the options for promoting and enhancing accountability have become more numerous and more complex.
We discuss the grounds for that claim in this chapter. First, we briefly examine the concept of accountability and describe three accountability categories: financial, fairness, and performance. Second, we describe public participation and explain its three main forms: conventional, thin, and thick. Given the uniqueness and relative rarity of thick participation, we also include brief descriptions of three notable processes and cases. We conclude with a discussion about the ways in which participation can influence accountability. Specifically, we identify five design choices that public managers and others can use to enhance citizen voice and promote accountability through public participation.
Understanding Accountability
Accountability, a fundamental principle of democracy, holds that government officials are responsible and answerable to the citizenry for their decisions and actions. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide a full overview of its history, it is helpful to understand the roots of accountability before applying it to public participation processes.
According to Melvin Dubnick (2002), the origins of accountability can be traced to the reign of King William I of England, who required all property holders in his realm to “render a count” of what they possessed in terms set forth by the king's agents. Thus, in its original connotation, accountability was closely bound to accounting or bookkeeping (Bovens, 2007; Dubnick, 2002). Over time, the concept transformed and became associated with “a form of governance activity that depends on the dynamic social interactions and mechanisms” within a political community (Dubnick, 2002, p. 7). Two specific and important changes are worth noting. First, there was a reversal in the accounting relationship. Whereas once the subject was accountable to the sovereign, today government is accountable to its citizens (Bovens, 2007). Second, the term has come to mean more than just financial answerability. It is now a fundamental precept connected to notions of good governance and embraces numerous public values such as transparency, equity, efficiency, responsiveness, responsibility, and integrity, among others (Behn, 2001; Bovens, 2007; Dubnick, 2002).
Given the breadth of values encompassed by or associated with the term, accountability frameworks have proliferated, as have debates about authority, control, and effectiveness in the public sector. For purposes of clarity and brevity, we do not describe and compare accountability frameworks; rather, we focus on one framework that applies well to an analysis of public participation. Specifically, we use Robert Behn's (2001) framework, which differentiates three categories of accountability: accountability for finances, for fairness, and for performance.
Financial accountability specifies “expectations for how public officials will handle our money” (Behn, 2001, p. 7), and accountability for fairness specifies “expectations for how public officials will treat citizens” (p. 8). These two forms of accountability focus on how government does its work and are intended to “constrain the behavior of public officials, to limit their discretion, [and] to prevent them from abusing their power” (p. 9). Behn (2001) suggests that ensuring accountability for finances and fairness is somewhat straightforward: we (1) “specify the values we want government to uphold”; (2) “create rules, procedures, and standards to establish what the organization should and should not do”; (3) “require the organization and its managers to keep a lot of records” about its activities; (4) “audit these records” to ensure compliance; and (5) punish noncompliance (pp. 7, 8).
In contrast, accountability for performance reflects concerns about “what government does” (Behn, 2001). The shift from how to what means that assessing accountability for performance is “qualitatively different” from assessing accountability for finances and fairness. Since we cannot rely on rules, procedures, and standards, holding public agencies accountable for performance requires establishing “expectations for the outcomes that the agency will achieve, the consequences that it will create, or the impact that it will have” (p. 10). In turn, this means that citizens need opportunities to express their expectations and specify the results they hope to see. Accordingly, this category of accountability is most reliant on and most susceptible to public participation. Despite this obvious connection, the current and potential role of citizens is seldom examined in discussions about accountability. This is problematic because it helps perpetuate inadequate or counterproductive forms of participation.
Although administrators sometimes voluntarily initiate public participation processes, more often than not, they are required to do so by law. For example, in the United States, the Administrative Procedure Act, Freedom of Information Act, Government in the Sunshine Act, and several other federal and state laws instruct bureaucrats to provide information to the public and engage citizens in decision making (Bingham, 2010; Bingham, Nabatchi, & O'Leary, 2005; Nabatchi & Amsler, 2014; Working Group on Legal Frameworks for Public Participation, 2013). Similar public participation laws are found in nations around the world (McGee, 2003). Notable examples include the Gram Sabha reforms empowering village councils in India, the ward committee system in South Africa, and the practice of participatory budgeting, which began in Brazil and has now been institutionalized in cities on five continents (Spink, Hossain, & Best, 2009; Pateman, 2012).
Laws by themselves, do not guarantee productive citizen engagement. For example, in the United States the phrase public participation is rarely defined in laws and regulations, leading to a lack of clarity on why and how managers might engage citizens (Bingham, 2010; Nabatchi & Amsler, 2014). Even when administrators want to “do more” with participation, they are often legally confined. For example, “provisions in sunshine laws that require advance notice and confine public meetings to topics on a specific agenda may limit the capacity of elected officials to respond to public comment outside the scope of the agenda” (Nabatchi & Amsler, 2014, p. 6). Moreover, administrators are further constrained by a lack of knowledge and skills for using more robust forms of participation (Barnes & Mann, 2010).
This means that administrators and public officials quickly fall back on conventional participation processes, which exacerbate tensions and frustrations, increase citizens' distrust of government, and fail to meet citizens' standards and expectations for accountability. Mathews (2011, p. ix) hypothesizes a misalignment in views on accountability, with bureaucrats and officeholders approaching accountability in informational terms and citizens approaching accountability in relational terms. This difference is made clear in the next section.
Understanding Public Participation
Public participation is an umbrella term for a wide variety of processes by which people's concerns, needs, interests, and values are incorporated into decision making about public matters and issues. Some distinguish between participation (as a legal term of art) and engagement (as a more general term for public involvement) (Bingham, 2010; Nabatchi & Amsler, 2014); however, for purposes of clarity and simplicity, we use the term public participation in its vernacular sense in this chapter. A primary purpose of public participation, particularly as it is enshrined in legislation and governmental regulations, is to uphold democratic values such as accountability, transparency, and accessibility. In general, public participation can be classified into two overarching forms: indirect and direct participation.
In indirect participation, individual members of the public express their opinions through representatives, agents, or other intermediaries, most commonly through voting. Indirect participation also happens when individuals donate money to advocacy and other groups that lobby and promote various causes through legislative, electoral, and other channels. One of the assumptions behind indirect participation is that citizens will promote accountability with their votes and their donations; that is, they will neither (re)elect representatives nor donate money to organizations they believe are ineffective or irresponsible.
Despite the logic of this argument, indirect participation is rather limited in its ability to promote and ensure accountability. First, citizens are increasingly disconnected from government and their representatives. Measures of political activity, such as voter turnout and campaigning, have been falling for decades. Thus, fewer and fewer people are selecting their political leaders. Second, when voting, citizens must select from a limited number of candidates, all of whom espouse complicated platforms of policy commitments, and citizens have few opportunities between elections to give direct input and feedback to lawmakers on specific issues. Third, “that a candidate is elected does not necessarily mean that most citizens prefer all or even most of that official's policies” (Wildavsky, 1979, p. 252). Citizens may vote for the candidate they think will govern best, without endorsing the entirety of that candidate's platform. Finally, there is debate about whether organizations and advocacy groups are as representative or participatory as they once were. In Diminished Democracy, Theda Skocpol (2003) describes these groups as “associations without members” that focus on fundraising and lobbying. These issues call into question the effectiveness of indirect participation for promoting accountability in government.
To strengthen accountability, among other reasons, civic advocates, reformers, and scholars call for direct public participation whereby individual members of the public are personally involved and actively engaged in providing input and making decisions. Specifically, direct public participation can be defined as “in-person and online processes that allow members of the public (i.e., those not holding office or administrative positions in government) . . . to personally and actively exercise voice such that their ideas, concerns, needs, interests, and values are incorporated into governmental decision making” (Nabatchi & Amsler, 2014, p. 3; for related definitions, see Nabatchi, 2012; Roberts, 2008).
Direct participation varies widely. It occurs in many contexts and settings, is initiated by a wide assortment of sponsors (those who fund all or part of a direct engagement process) and conveners (those who plan and lead a direct engagement process), and differs among many salient design choices (for a discussion, see Nabatchi & Amsler, 2014; see also Nabatchi, 2012). To unpack these and other variations, we identify three forms of direct public participation: conventional, thin, and thick.
Conventional Participation
Conventional participation is the most common form of public participation. Used by public bodies such as school boards, zoning commissions, city councils, congressional representatives, state and federal agencies, and other government entities, it relies on a format for public meetings that is easily recognizable to most Americans. There is an audience-style room setup, with decision makers behind a table (often on a dais) at the front of the room and citizens in chairs laid out in rows; a strictly followed agenda that identifies and defines the specific topics for discussion; and time allotted for citizens to address their elected officials for two to three minutes at an open microphone. Sometimes citizens must sign up in advance to speak at such meetings or wait in line for their turn.
Conventional participation has a clear and direct connection to the policymaking process in that public officials are typically present at these meetings. However, it is less clear how public input in conventional processes is integrated into official decision making. At best, decision makers use what they hear as a way to “gauge public support” for particular policy options (Williamson & Fung, 2004, p. 9). The downsides of conventional participation are more obvious: citizens, public officials, and public employees all report frustration with public meetings, noting that such processes produce high levels of tension, amplify the most extreme voices, and provoke feelings of mistrust for all involved (Leighninger, 2013). A survey of California public managers found that most officials believed public participation degraded the quality of decision making and policy implementation (Pearce & Pearce, 2010).
As a result, conventional participation processes are generally unsuccessful in upholding and promoting accountability. First, officials are not obliged to act on public comments and sometimes are not allowed by law to respond to them (Williamson & Fung, 2004). Second, conventional processes are focused on presenting information and recording individual opinions. The structure of these meetings rarely allows for deliberation, where citizens can talk with each other and understand diverse perspectives (Leighninger, 2013). This concern is exacerbated by a third issue: conventional processes suffer from self-selection bias. In general, public meetings are not very representative: the most interested, organized, and invested people typically attend.
These and other issues mean that conventional participation is unlikely to ameliorate concerns about citizenship and democratic deficits. While these participation formats may have (minimal) impact on financial accountability (to the extent that attendees become nominally more aware of budgets and expenditures), they do not strengthen notions of fairness in decision making or clarify performance expectations about what is to be accomplished and by whom. In short, conventional participation processes have limited ability to help officials meet standards and expectations for financial, fairness, and performance accountability.
Thin Participation
Thin participation can be defined as opportunities that are fast, convenient, and (largely because of the Internet) have the capacity to go viral. Not all thin participation occurs online, and not all online participation is thin. Older forms of thin participation include surveys and petition drives. While these opportunities are not necessarily educational or deliberative, each of them takes only a few minutes or seconds of a person's time, and they may have an impact on public decision making, particularly when very large numbers of people participate.
The proliferation of online communication has produced many new varieties of thin participation. According to a recent Pew Research Center (2014) report, “87% of American adults now use the Internet, with near-saturation usage among those living in households earning $75,000 or more (99%), young adults ages 18–29 (97%), and those with college degrees (97%).” Large numbers of Americans have used the Internet as a vehicle for political expression, donating money to campaigns and organizations, “liking” candidates or causes on Facebook, and tweeting about public issues. These easy, simple actions can sometimes produce significant effects. Two important examples include the public response to the Trayvon Martin case and the campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act. In both, social activists were able to launch effective online campaigns that mobilized huge numbers of people and affected public decision making (Fung & Shkabatur, 2013).
Given broader social trends toward increased access to high-quality Internet and open source software, as well as a growing appetite among citizens and government for online tools, thin forms of online direct participation provide promise for engaging large groups in diverse or concentrated geographic locations and connecting those voices to the policy process (Bittle, Haller, & Kadlec, 2009; Black, 2011).
While thin forms of online participation may contribute to accountability in some ways, there are also some significant complications. First, the anonymity that is possible in some online environments, such as newspaper comment threads, allows people to contribute misinformation or offensive statements without being held accountable to one another. This is a complicated issue. According to Todd Davies and Reid Chandler (2012), anonymity, or what they refer to more broadly as the challenge of identifiability, may also encourage people to air legitimate concerns that might otherwise not be heard in the public square. Research shows some instances where anonymously posted comments encouraged broader, higher-quality participation but other instances where participants acted irresponsibly and reported feeling less satisfied (Davies & Chandler, 2012). Second, the challenge of participant recruitment and selection, which is formidable in almost any participation context, is even more complicated online, given that digital divides still exist, particularly along the lines of income and education levels. Even when a majority of people have Internet access, as is increasingly true in the United States, they use the Internet for different reasons and with different hardware, and they congregate in different online “places” (Leighninger, 2011). Finally, there is little evidence to suggest policymakers have integrated online direct engagement into the policymaking process (for a discussion, see Nabatchi & Amsler, 2014).
Some observers hope that the Obama administration's Open Government Initiative will produce new and better forms of thin, online participation that ultimately strengthen government accountability. However, according to a recent report submitted by the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, the initiative has not reached its full potential.
Given these limitations, the use of thin participation has had only scattered and inconsistent effects on accountability for finances, fairness, and performance. There are, however, emerging expectations that thin participation may have even greater potential when combined or allied with thick forms of participation. For example, in a report for the IBM Center for the Business of Government, Leighninger (2013) organizes online engagement into three main methodologies of practice: (1) collaboration to develop documents, create shared work space, facilitate large-scale deliberation, and generate interest, understanding, and input; (2) surveys to understand public attitudes and aggregate opinions; and (3) option prioritization to gather and rank ideas and solutions and work with the public to identify and prioritize issues, visualize geographic data, or balance budget and revenue options. A variety of proprietary and free online platforms are available for accomplishing these tasks, including Wikis, budget games, online town hall software, Google Maps, CitizenScape, SurveyMonkey, and Ning (Leighninger 2013).
Thick Participation
Thick participation processes are the least common and most time-consuming of the three forms, but they are also the most meaningful and powerful. These processes also have the greatest potential for enhancing accountability for finances, fairness, and performance. There are numerous thick participation processes; some of them are trademarked (e.g., 21st Century Town Meeting, National Issues Forums, Deliberative Polls, and Citizen's Juries); others are named methodologies (such as participatory budgeting and civic journalism); and still others are unnamed (Gastil & Levine, 2005; Nabatchi, Gastil, Weiksner, & Leighninger, 2012).
Thick processes are distinguishable from conventional and thin processes in many ways. The most discernible and important difference is their use of deliberation: participants engage in accessible, informed, and reasoned discussion about one or more issues. During deliberation, participants “reflect carefully on a matter, [weigh] the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions to a problem [and] aim to arrive at a decision or judgment based on not only facts and data but also values, emotions, and other less technical considerations” (Gastil, 2005, p. 164). Leighninger (2012, p. 20) outlines four additional important characteristics of these processes. First, they assemble a large and diverse “critical mass” of people (or in some cases, a smaller, demographically representative set of people intended to serve as a proxy for the larger population). Second, they involve participants in structured, facilitated small group discussions, punctuated by large forums for amplifying shared conclusions and moving from talk to action. These have traditionally been face-to-face meetings, but increasingly they are being held online, or online tools are being used to inform and complement face-to-face discussions. Third, they give participants the opportunity to compare values and experiences, and consider a range of policy options, relevant data, and related arguments. Finally, they aim to produce tangible actions and outcomes. Some efforts focus on applying citizen input to policy and planning decisions, whereas others seek change within organizations and institutions or in public attitudes and behaviors.
Although uncommon, the use of thick processes in distinct arenas such as community organizing, education, and community health has grown tremendously since the 1990s (Nabatchi et al., 2012). In part, this is because the best thick participation processes provide opportunities not found in conventional or thin processes. For example, thick processes enable officials to get a better sense of the “boundaries of public permission” needed for understanding the actions the public will support for a given issue and, more important, why the public supports (or does not) those actions (Yankelovich & Friedman, 2010). This can be used to help break political deadlock or quell public outrage on an issue (Nabatchi & Amsler, 2014). In turn, this allows officials to better foster individual and collective action on particular issues, including shared support for a new policy or initiative (Leighninger, 2006). Given these benefits, thick participation processes have the greatest likelihood of improving and ensuring accountability for finances, fairness, and performance.
To illustrate this argument, it is helpful to describe three notable examples of processes and cases (for more examples, see the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, www.ncdd.org, and Participedia, www.participedia.net; see also Leighninger, 2012). Each of the examples demonstrates the potential of thick participation to increase accountability for finances, fairness, and performance.
The 21st Century Town Meetings and the D.C. Summits
In 1995, AmericaSpeaks, under the leadership of Carolyn Lukensmeyer, pioneered the 21st Century Town Meeting as a deliberative method to engage communities in setting priorities on a host of issues (for more information, see Lukensmeyer, Goldman, & Brigham, 2005). Before agreeing to implement a 21st Century Town Meeting, AmericaSpeaks meets with relevant decision makers to get their buy-in and agreement to use the recommendations generated by the public. While 21st Century Town Meetings are open for anyone to attend, the method also relies on targeted demographic recruitment, with the goal of engaging a large, representative sample of the public. Although the process can accommodate thousands of participants at once, everyone sits at tables of eight to twelve people, enabling facilitated small group deliberation. Each table is equipped with a laptop, which the facilitator uses to take notes about the discussion. These notes are live-streamed to what is called the “theme team,” which analyzes the data from all of the tables to look for trends. The themes and trends are then broadcast on a large projector screen for all participants to see. Participants typically use handheld keypad polling technology to rate and prioritize issues and themes and submit other data in real time.
This approach solves many of the classic problems of participation that critics have identified. First, it overcomes issues of scale and size by enabling direct participation among thousands of people. Second, the use of laptop and polling technology enables the integration of information among multiple discussion groups. Third, the process is directly connected to the policy process. Moreover, since participants are typically representative of their community, decision makers have more cause to pay attention and potentially implement recommendations.
Despite its benefits, the use of large-scale, technologically advanced participation also has drawbacks. Locating appropriate facilities, finding technology, and enlisting the expertise needed to identify and recruit participants, facilitate and theme discussions, and ensure that the technology works, makes this an expensive form of engagement.
The 21st Century Town Meeting has been used successfully on a number of issues at the local, state, and even federal levels of government, as well as internationally. The Washington, D.C., Summits are one notable case. When Mayor Anthony Williams took office in 1999, he inherited one of the “worst run city government[s] in America” (Moynihan, 2003, p. 175). He turned to AmericaSpeaks to launch a comprehensive plan for increasing accountability in the city. Working with AmericaSpeaks, the city instituted a comprehensive plan through its Office of Neighborhood Action that ran from 1999 to 2005 and included four large-scale 21st Century Town Meetings. Mayor Williams and other public managers attended and directly interacted with constituents, for example, by asking questions that participants answered using keypads. Among the issues participants addressed were setting city and neighborhood budget priorities and performance management issues. The summits resulted in “the development of district and neighborhood vision statements, discussion of citywide priorities and the draft strategic plan, and identification of action items to be carried out in each neighborhood” (Moynihan, 2003, p. 176). According to AmericaSpeaks, “The Washington D.C. Citizen Summits was the longest-running large-scale town meeting in the U.S. Input from 13,000 participants significantly influenced the district's priorities on growth and development, annual spending and legislative initiatives” (http://americaspeaks.org/projects/case-studies/dc-citizen-summit/).
Citizens' Jury and the Oregon Citizens' Initiative Review
The Citizens' Jury was developed by Ned Crosby in his 1971 doctoral dissertation at the University of Minnesota (Gastil, 2008). Its purpose is to “learn whether a mix of information and in-depth deliberation can bring diverse individuals to a broad consensus on a more narrow set of questions” (Gastil, 2008, p. 204). To do this, a Citizens' Jury convenes a randomly selected and demographically representative microcosm of twelve to twenty-four citizens for up to five days of deliberation around a subject or issue of public significance. To engender diverse and representative participation, organizers pay panel members for their time. During the process, participants hear from a variety of expert witnesses or advocates and deliberate together on the issue, with the assistance of one or more trained facilitators (for more information, see Crosby & Nethercut, 2005; see also http://jefferson-center.org/).
As with other thick participation processes, this approach allows participants to become meaningfully informed about the issues under discussion. The public input generated may or may not be considered by decision makers, and since the number of participants is small, decision makers may be less inclined to act on the recommendations, regardless of the Citizens' Jury's representative nature. However, the information generated by the public in this process can help decision makers better understand what the public wants and why. Finally, the process of recruiting and paying participants is comparatively expensive.
One exceptional example of a recently institutionalized Citizens' Jury process is the Oregon Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR). The CIR is designed to enable public evaluation of ballot measures so voters can make informed decisions based on trustworthy information during elections (for more information, see www.healthydemocracy.org). The CIR empanels randomly selected and demographically balanced voters from across the state who hear directly from experts, as well as the campaigns for and against the measure, before deliberating about and evaluating the measure. After the deliberative process, the panel writes a “citizens' statement” that includes key findings, arguments in favor of and opposed to the measure, shared agreements, and a brief comment on the CIR process. Each statement is published in the statewide voters' pamphlet.
After pilot tests in previous years, the CIR process was adopted into Oregon law, with bipartisan support, during the 2011 legislative session. The CIR is impressive for its integration into the initiative process: whenever an initiative makes it to the ballot, the state is required to convene a separate CIR process to provide voters with a statement produced by an informed, representative, deliberative group of Oregon citizens.
Deliberative Polling and What's Next California?
Deliberative polls were introduced by Stanford professor James Fishkin in 1988 and have been used in numerous countries around the world (for more information, see Fishkin and Farrar 2005; see also http://cdd.stanford.edu/polls/). The purpose is to track changes in individual opinions before and after participants have the opportunity to become informed and deliberate about an issue. Thus, one of the main aims is to gauge what citizens will support and why, which provides decision makers with guidelines from which to act.
To conduct a deliberative poll, a representative sample of two hundred to five hundred people is randomly selected from the population. Each participant is then polled on a set of questions to establish a baseline from which to measure participants' opinions and knowledge. Participants are paid to attend a summit that typically lasts one to two days. In advance of the summit, participants receive and are instructed to carefully review informational briefing materials that may include discussion guides, information about the event, and other details. At the summit, participants spend time in small group discussions with trained facilitators, punctuated with periodic presentations and briefs by experts. Following the deliberations, participants are polled again. The postdeliberation results are compared to the baseline data to determine any refinement that participants have made on their understanding of the issue.
This type of thick participation process offers many benefits. It overcomes, to a large extent, issues of scale and size and allows participants to become meaningfully informed about the issues under discussion. Moreover, because it empanels a large and representative sample of the population, officials have reason to take notice of the results. Indeed, deliberative polls are designed to be catalyzing events that stimulate public action and compel decision makers to participate, listen, and act on the recommendations of participants. Despite its potential benefits, the financial requirements for the process—renting space, recruiting a large number of demographically representatives, and paying participants—can be quite large.
One notable example of this process is “What's Next California? A California Statewide Deliberative Poll for California's Future,” held in 2011 and attended by 412 registered California voters (Fishkin et al., 2011). The size and scope of the event attracted national media attention. The agenda for the process centered on reforming California politics, including the “structure of the legislature, the initiative process, state-local reform and taxes (and related fiscal issues)” (Fishkin, et al., 2011, p. 2). Over the two-day summit, participants covered a lot of ground, including specific recommendations for reform. Many proposals saw near double-digit increases in support between pre- and postsummit polling. After the polling process, participants reported feeling more efficacious about their role in public affairs, were highly enthusiastic about their participation and future participation, and showed strong evidence of knowledge gains.
In sum, although many civic advocates, reformers, and scholars call for direct public participation to strengthen accountability, it is clear that not all forms of participation are created equal. This does not mean that administrators should be limited to only one of the three choices; in fact, some combination of thick and thin participation is probably the optimal choice for most situations. Even conventional forms of participation, still required by law in some cases, may have positive effects on accountability when combined with one or both of the other two forms.
Summary
One of the essential goals of public participation is to enhance citizen voice and ensure accountability. This chapter has argued that participation can do so by involving the public in decision making and in discussions about what government does, enhancing fairness by giving voice to the public, and enabling the public to specify what ought to be done, how, and by whom.
Conventional, thin, and thick participation are not equal in terms of their ability to improve citizen voice and accountability. If citizen voice and accountability are truly among the desired aims of participation, public managers need to think more systematically about how to design participatory processes to achieve those outcomes. Here, we identify some of the most salient design choices for direct participation and draw connections between those choices and accountability:
- Participant selection and recruitment. Accountability can be enhanced when participatory processes convene a diverse, representative, and critical mass of people. Conventional processes tend to attract a small group of “usual suspects.” Since thin participation efforts can reach people quickly, they tend to result in a larger, more diverse turnout, but this is not easy to predict. The proactive recruitment strategies typically associated with thick participation are more likely to generate a critical mass of demographically representative participants, although doing so can be resource intensive.
- Participant preparation. Accountability can be enhanced when participants receive the information necessary for them to engage meaningfully and effectively. Preparation is almost entirely up to the participant in thin and conventional forms of participation and is typically built in to thick participation.
- Communication mode. Accountability can be enhanced when participants have, through deliberation, the opportunity to learn about a range of views and policy options from one another and decide together what they think should be done. Deliberation is a key feature of thick participation but seldom one of conventional or thin participation.
- Nature of recommendations. Accountability can be enhanced when participants are able to generate specific, consensus-based recommendations. Conventional participation almost never allows opportunities for finding group consensus. Thin participation sometimes allows the development of consensus-based group recommendations, and thick participation almost always does.
- Connection to the policy process. Accountability can be enhanced when public input is directly connected to officials and their decision-making and policy processes. Although officials are often in the room for conventional participation, they are unlikely to respond to and use public input. Thin participation, mostly because of its ability to go viral, is sometimes connected to the policy process. Designers of thick participation generally attempt to connect processes to the policy process, although this is not always possible (Nabatchi, 2012; Nabatchi & Amsler, 2014).
This discussion suggests that conventional participation is less likely to enhance and ensure accountability than thin participation, which is less likely to enhance and ensure accountability than thick participation. Unfortunately, conventional and thin participation are the norm. If public managers want to promote accountability through direct participation, they should attempt to (1) convene a diverse and representative set of participants; (2) give participants relevant, neutral information about the topics of discussion; (3) encourage deliberation; (4) provide space for developing consensus-based recommendations; and (5) use public input in decision-making and policy processes. In the future, it will be useful to revise legal frameworks such that officials are empowered to use a broader array of participation strategies. However, the suggestions above do not require changing our current legal framework and following them improves the potential of using public participation to enhance citizen voice and promote accountability.