Forms of Participation
Citizen participation, as stated by Sherry Arnstein (1969), is a categorical term focusing on the redistribution of citizen power within a society. This change in power dynamics allows for more citizens to be included in political and economic processes, inducing social reforms that enable resources to be shared among all groups within a society. That being said, the implementation of participatory programs is not always sufficient to increase citizen involvement. Other factors, such as preexisting power dynamics and government responses, contribute to the overall increase or decrease of participation. Arnstein (1969) recognized these limits and created a typology of eight levels of participation to categorize the extent of citizens’ power and to help in its analysis.
The bottom tiers of Arnstein’s (1969) categorization include Manipulation and Therapy. The ultimate goal of these two levels, as stated by Arnstein, is “to substitute for genuine participation. Their real objective is not to enable people to participate in planning or conducting programs, but to enable powerholders to ‘educate’ or ‘cure’ the participants” (Arnstein, 1969: 4). This is a form of non-participation, where citizens are told what to believe. The next two tiers are Informing and Consultation. When these levels are implemented, citizens may be heard. However, there is not a guarantee that their views will be noticed by powerholders. Placation is a step-up of tokenism, where citizens can advise, but powerholders still retain the ability to decide on who to listen to. The final three levels of participation implement truer forms of citizen power. Partnerships enable citizens to negotiate with traditional powerholders, forming a direct communication line between the two. Finally, Delegated Power and Citizen Control allow unheard citizens to “obtain the majority of decision-making seats, or full managerial power” (Arnstein, 1969: 4). Decision-making is not shared with powerholders but instead given to citizens so they may create the programs and social reforms needed within their society. These eight tiers are important in serving as a platform to study different participation implementations. They allow for efficiency to be categorized.
To evade the lower non-participation and limited participation tiers, Patrick Heller and Vijayendra Rao (2015) argue that deliberation is crucial. As defined in their book, Deliberation and Development, deliberation is “the process by which a group of people can—through discussion and debate—reach an agreement. Ideally, agreement is achieved by both persuading people of a different way of thinking (usually by changing their preferences) and engaging in a process of reasoned compromise” (Heller & Rao, 2015: 1). The definition provided for “agreement” is essential because of its emphasis on compromise. Heller and Rao (2015) argue that a true agreement only happens when each group of people is persuaded to think like one another. All perspectives can be valued and considered as final decisions on issues are being formulated.
When deliberation is implemented in a government, true democracy is practiced. This is because, as Heller and Rao (2015) stated, deliberative democracy makes the power of policy-making accessible to all citizens. Discussions are used to amplify voices, creating new, malleable solutions that include many perspectives. If free, open communication is central, citizen participation will be properly practiced.
Social movements
The sociological imagination is defined by C. Wright Mills (2000) as the ability for an individual to understand themselves in a larger social and historical scene. By applying oneself to a broader social context, an individual “can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within his period, that he can known his own chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances” (Mills, 2000: 4). One’s consciousness is raised so that they may better understand their circumstances and the ability they have to change them. Therefore, a strong sociological imagination is crucial for effective citizen participation, so that citizens are aware of their power over the communities in which they live.
When those in control refuse to listen to certain groups of people, those groups may organize themselves to form social movements as a method of participation. Social movements are created when a group of individuals engage in political or social conflicts with the intention of creating change. According to Castells (2010), a collective identity is essential in bringing the group together because identity is “the process of construction meaning on the basis of a cultural attribute, or a related set of cultural attributes, that is given priority over other sources of meaning” (Castells, 2010: 6). Ultimately, identity provides social movements with their purpose. It is what drives individuals to push for change. There are three main identity groups: legitimizing identities, which are the dominant institutions that extend themselves onto others within a society; resistance identities, which are those in a society who have stigma and devalued conditions; and project identities, which are marginalized groups that redefine themselves and their position within a society to transform its overall structure (Castells, 2010). Through the lens of identity, one can discover the core principles and goals of a social movement, and why they may have begun in the first place.