Master of Arts Thesis Euroculture
University of Groningen Uppsala University July 2020
The city as a laboratory of democratic innovation: Negotiating legitimacy, technology and urban entrepreneurialism through participative online
forums
Submitted by:
Beate Steurer beate.steurer@me.com +436605554736
Supervised by:
Dr. Stefan Couperus Dr. Zohreh Khoban
Groningen, 10.07.20
MA Programme Euroculture Declaration
I, Beate Steurer hereby declare that this thesis, entitled “The city as a laboratory of democratic innovation: Negotiating legitimacy, technology and urban entrepreneurialism through participative online forums”, submitted as partial requirement for the MA Programme Euroculture, is my own original work and expressed in my own words. Any use made within this text of works of other authors in any form (e.g. ideas, figures, texts, tables, etc.) are properly acknowledged in the text as well as in the bibliography.
I hereby also acknowledge that I was informed about the regulations pertaining to the assessment of the MA thesis Euroculture and about the general completion rules for the Master of Arts Programme Euroculture.
10.07.20
Abstract
How do different actors involved in a participatory process negotiate democratic legitimacy?
The study examined the ways the democratic criteria of input, output and throughput legitimacy as well as the role legitimacy of the actors involved were negotiated alongside the implementation of an online participation platform in the city of Linz in 2019/2020. The discursive struggle was caused by differing ideas and perceptions and evolved around the following key issues: Firstly, citizens claim a virtual public sphere that is attended by a large part of the municipal society, while the city trusts the community to be formed without interference. Secondly, the acclaimed flexibility of the participative procedure is translated by citizens into a lack of transparency and structure, which nurtures scepticism concerning potential hidden agendas and “green-washing” strategies. Furthermore, the alleged deliberative forum does not spark discussion amongst participants, causing a lack of procedural legitimacy.
Finally, a strong place branding objective oriented towards innovation shifts the discourse from democratic ideals to entrepreneurialism and economic productivity. The initiative oriented towards neoliberal inter-city competition thus subsumes participation under the premise of progressivity, but unintentionally results in a lack of perceived legitimacy.
Key words: citizen participation, e-participation, democratic legitimacy, democratic innovation, urban governance networks, urban entrepreneurialism, city branding, neoliberalism Word count:
Contents
1 Introduction ... 5
2 Aims and research questions ... 8
3 Theoretical Framework ... 8
3.1 Democratic innovation in a changing society ... 8
3.2 The role of the city – local and transnational networks ... 13
3.3 E-participation: future directions and skepticism ... 16
3.4 Evaluations of democratic legitimacy ... 20
3.5 Citizens’ perceptions ... 24
3.6 Legitimacy as discursive struggle ... 26
4 Methodology ... 27
4.1 Analyzing discursive legitimacy in (digital) urban governance networks ... 27
4.2 Case study ... 28
4.3 Empirical design ... 30
5 Analysis ... 33
5.1 Normative projections and expectations of online participation ... 33
5.2 Reflections on community and input ... 37
5.3 Output legitimacy ... 41
5.4 Process evaluations ... 43
5.5 Power struggles and networking competences ... 47
5.5.1 The city: self-perception vs. citizens’ judgements ... 48
5.5.2 The role of citizens between experts and social entrepreneurs ... 51
5.5.3 Negotiation of competences ... 53
5.6 Neoliberalism reflected and projected ... 56
6 Conclusion ... 59
7 Bibliography ... 63
7.1 Primary Sources ... 63
7.2 Secondary Sources ... 63
8 Appendix ... 72
1 Introduction
Representative democracy is facing a decline in conventional citizen participation.1 Low voter turnouts, shrinking trust in political authorities and decreasing numbers of party memberships are among the most cited problems affecting democratic legitimacy and efficacy.
In this sense, scholars have diagnosed a “democratic malaise”,2 referred to a “crisis” of democracy3 or seen the advent of “postdemocracy”.4 In order to reinforce citizens’ interest in taking part in democracy and to positively influence perceptions of democratic legitimacy, national governments and local municipalities experiment with alternative forms of democracy to supplement or transform the representative model. On the supranational level, the European Commission aims at ensuring global competitiveness and supports pilot projects of participative methods through frameworks focussed on innovation and urban renewal such as the Urban Agenda or the Innovation Agenda. Through programmes such as UrbAct the EU thus actively supports transnational cooperation that engages in an active exchange of knowledge in order to disseminate innovative measures in citizen participation. Projects on the European level including the first transnational Deliberative Poll in 2007 and the European Citizens’
Consultations initiated in 2018, reveal the widespread belief that negative feelings towards established democracy can be met with enhancing and supporting innovation in democracy.
Inspired by these programmes and agendas of active knowledge exchange, currently more and more municipalities experiment with innovative political instruments to enable citizens to take part in local decision-making processes. As existing research suggests, the implementation of participative and deliberative tools can improve administrative efficacy, support social cohesion and inclusion.5 Additionally, municipalities seek to remain competitive in a global context of interconnected city-networks. As a consequence, the range of models of citizen participation is growing continuously including citizen mini-publics, town hall meetings, participatory budgeting, e-participation, neighbourhood governance councils etc.6 transforming
1 Russell J. Dalton, Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices : The Erosion of Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 1 online resource (xi, 230 pages) : illustrations vols., Comparative Politics (Oxford ; Oxford University Press, 2004).
A. C. Grayling, Democracy and Its Crisis (London, England: Oneworld Publications, 2017).
2 K. Newton, “Curing the Democratic Malaise with Democratic Innovations,” in Evaluating Democratic Innovations : Curing the Democratic Malaise?., ed. K. Newton and B. Geissel, 1 online resource (233 pages) vols. (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2012).
3 A. C. Grayling, Democracy and Its Crisis (London, England: Oneworld Publications, 2017).
4 Erik Swyngedouw, “The Perverse Lure of Autocratic Postdemocracy,” The South Atlantic Quarterly. 118, no. 2 (2019): 267–86.
5 Graham Smith, Democratic Innovations : Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation, 1 online resource (ix, 220 pages) vols., Theories of Institutional Design (Cambridge, UK ; Cambridge University Press, 2009).
6 ibid.
urban governance practices into laboratories of participative innovations that are being field- tested for their further applicability in larger political settings.7
A more and more apparent feature in this context is the usage of digital technology and a shift towards e-participation. E-democracy incorporates a vast variety of participatory mechanisms from e-voting, online participatory budgeting, online polls, e-petitions to political discussions via social media. One of the most recent trends of institutionalized participatory practices are online platforms. Websites are set up to enable citizens to communicate with the city authorities as well as with each other, to contribute ideas to certain policy plans, to reach consensus on certain topics and to launch their own initiatives. In a way they aim at materializing a virtual public sphere that is easily accessible and where debates can take place and decisions are made through consensus among citizens.8 Following the theoretical conception of Habermas’ public sphere that allows for collective consensus and rational decision-making, this would ensure better democratic legitimation.9 In this sense, variants of e- participation are subject to hopes for increased legitimacy through better involvement of citizens. Yet, on the contrary, e-participation is also discussed as potential threat to ideals of egalitarian, just and transparent democratic decision-making. Legitimacy is therefore a central concern within the context of the implementation of new forms of governance involving e- participation.
Since the establishment and preservation of democratic legitimacy is essential for the stability of political systems, I study legitimacy within urban governance networks and how it is claimed and affected by converging expectations and perceptions. Legitimation in this context is discussed as a discursive practice or struggle between the actors involved such as civil servants and citizens. Concretely, the study focuses on the (possibly differing) perceptions of a participative online platform that arise from the ways the new tool is embedded in already existing organizational structures and practices, the actual communication taking place through the platform and certain expectations and pitfalls in the implementation process. Taking an exploratory stance, the discursive struggle of legitimacy indicates how the people involved make sense of the changing political structure they are involved in and how the introduction of new forms of governance might pose a challenge or advantage for the functioning of urban governance innovations.
7 Newton, “Curing the Democratic Malaise with Democratic Innovations.”, p. 5.
8 Sofia Ranchordás, “Digital Agoras: Democratic Legitimacy, Online Participation and the Case of Uber- Petitions,” The Theory and Practice of Legislation 5, no. 1 (2017): 31–54.
9 Jürgen Habermas, Sara Lennox, and Frank Lennox, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964),”
New German Critique, no. 3 (1974): 49–55.
As a case study serves the so-called Innovationshauptplatz (‘main square of innovation’) in the Austrian city Linz. It is the third largest city in the country and known as industrial city due to its steel industry. Yet, in recent years it undertook several measures towards the establishment of academic and cultural institutions, festivals and further economic sectors.
Against the backdrop of these developments, it became European Capital of Culture in 2009.
The online participation forum has been introduced in 2019 as part of an elaborate innovation agenda with the objective to gain the European Capital of Innovation (iCapital) Award offered by the EU Commission. Within the framework of this objective, an office has been established in the middle of the city commissioned with the support and development of the outlined measures. The online platform provides citizens with the opportunity to post their own initiatives, to take part in surveys launched by the city, to make suggestions within certain projects (such as “your idea for our climate plan”) and to gain information about the city. The municipality presents its project as an innovative solution for bridging the gap between politicians and citizens and thus achieving a shift in traditional power structures. It is one of many examples of participative democracy that have been implemented by cities across Europe within recent years. The participatory platform in Linz is exemplary in a sense that it is part of a broader trend of e-participative measures among others fostered by EU funding schemes and programmes, but divergent from other cities’ initiatives by using a software provided by the international start-up CitizenLab as a service instead of stemming from a local, non-profit project. Since the platform has recently been set up, its legitimacy is still subject to negotiation and testing. Also, the city has faced a scandal concerning deleted files and especially the mayor has repeatedly received criticism concerning different aspects such as certain expenditures and disregard of environmental protection affecting the municipality’s claims of legitimate government.10 Therefore, it serves as an interesting case to examine in regard to legitimization processes and e-participation.
Through the conduction of semi-structured qualitative interviews with participants as well as civil servants and employees of the software company in charge, I aim at identifying underlying perceptions of democratic legitimacy in relation to the participative online platform shaped by discourse, personal experience and norms of democratic legitimacy. Additionally, a discourse analysis of the local media coverage on the introduction of the new tool helps relating the different perceptions with local discourse and the way the media discourse might affect the ideas of legitimacy articulated by the interview partners. The study shall thus make a
10 https://ooe.orf.at/v2/news/stories/2972257/
contribution to the conceptualization of democratic innovations by revealing gaps in the existing understanding of their reception and legitimization.
2 Aims and research questions
With this study I aim at gaining insights into the discursive construction of legitimacy around the implementation of a new form of governance in urban politics and administration.
Democratic legitimacy serves as a lens through which to analyse how cities experiment with democratic innovation and how this affects perceptions, acceptance and trust in political decision-making. Therefore, my research is guided by the following questions:
• How is the legitimacy of new forms of urban governance negotiated among different actors?
• How does specifically the integration of a participative online forum into municipal organization and local polity affect perceived democratic legitimacy?
In further consequence this shall add to a better understanding of the struggles of political legitimacy in urban governance and the factors that influence it.
3 Theoretical Framework
3.1 Democratic innovation in a changing society
For decades, scholars have found that democracies in advanced industrial countries are challenged.11 Political authorities face a significant decrease in public support and growing disillusion with political systems due to declining trust in politicians and a more and more disillusioned view on the functioning of democratic processes. As a result, a lack of citizen participation in terms of voter turnouts and party memberships leads to a significant threat to democratic legitimacy and the stability of democratic systems.12 As Anthony Grayling points out, this dilemma or growing pressure concerns representative democracy that has never been sufficient in itself according to historical thinkers from Plato to John Stuart Mill.13 Furthermore,
11 Smith, Democratic Innovations : Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation, p. 4.
12 Russell J. Dalton, Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices : The Erosion of Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 1 online resource (xi, 230 pages) : illustrations vols., Comparative Politics (Oxford ; Oxford University Press, 2004).
K. Newton and Brigitte. Geissel, Evaluating Democratic Innovations : Curing the Democratic Malaise?., 1 online resource (233 pages) vols. (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2012).
13 Grayling, Democracy and Its Crisis.
tensions between liberalism and representative democracy became ever more evident.14 The protection of human rights and civil freedoms sometimes clashes with the principle of popular sovereignty, especially when the alleged will of the masses is used as legitimization of authoritarian decisions that then create a threat to liberal values. In this way, the notion of a crisis of democracy has been aggravated since the election of authoritarian leaders such as Donald Trump and majority decisions greatly influenced by populism such as Brexit15 that are symptomatic for “deeper, more chronic problems of […] democracy”.16
Grayling sees the reasons for these tensions or problems in a lack of efficient control of political and economic powers, failures in sufficient education as a prerequisite of a well- informed and critical population and strong lobbies that shape public perceptions based on ideological interests.17 Furthermore, democracy is found to be challenged by “rising economic strains” that are closely connected to an increasing global interdependence, “globalization, emerging inter- and transnational structures of government, [a] shifting balance of centralization and decentralization, economic and technological change, migration, shifts in the role and power of the nation state, threat of terrorism, increasing social diversity”.18 Others name modernization processes that incorporate changes of public values and understandings of politics, influenced among others by new forms of communication and news consumption such as via social media, as root causes.19 James Bohman20 for example diagnoses a rapidly transforming society shaped by increasing pluralism, fragmentation, rising inequalities and social complexity that is determined the politics of self-interest. Based on the notion that political participation was declining and thus democratic government “under fire”21, Bohman was part of a range of scholarly work starting in the 1990s that saw the decline of civil society.
Scholars increasingly reflected on possible ways to reestablish an associational society proclaiming to strengthen political participation through secondary associations such as work councils, unions, neighborhood associations etc.22 Conceptions of associational democracy
14 A. C. Grayling, Democracy and Its Crisis (London, England: Oneworld Publications, 2017).
15 Grayling, p. 110.
16 Hollie Russon Gilman and K.Sabeel Rahman, eds., “Democracy in Crisis,” in Civic Power: Rebuilding American Democracy in an Era of Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 1–44, p. 2.
17 Grayling, Democracy and Its Crisis.
18 Newton, “Curing the Democratic Malaise with Democratic Innovations.”, p. 3.
Dalton, Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices : The Erosion of Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies, p. 22.
19 A. C. Grayling, Democracy and Its Crisis (London, England: Oneworld Publications, 2017).
20 James. Bohman, Public Deliberation : Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy, 1 online resource (xi, 303 pages) vols., Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), p. 1.
21 Joshua Cohen et al., Associations and Democracy, The Real Utopias Project ; v. 1 (London ; Verso, 1995).
22 ibid.
have been elaborated as a potential way to increase participation.23 Then the so-called deliberative turn shifted the debate towards citizen deliberation as a certain form of governance that would ensure decision-making based on rational consensus among citizens.24
Against the general assumptions of a decline of associational societies, scholars in recent years have also described the transformation of democratic norms among citizens in relation to social change. Russell Dalton25 reveals that social norms of active citizenship shifted from duty- based participation to engaged participation based on the comparative analysis of quantitative data collected through a selection of European and US-American social surveys. Citizens are thus less passive in the exertion of their right to participate in politics and more skeptical and active. Although less people participate in elections, more are taking part in unconventional forms of democratic participation such as protests, petitions, local citizen groups, public interest organizations, NGOs, internet activism etc., which not only requires more responsibility from citizens, but also creates more pressure on political elites.26
In order to react to changing norms and demands for more participation and citizen engagement and to improve the perceived quality of democracy, the above-mentioned debates have resonated in local authorities, national governments and transnational/global bodies experimenting with novelties in their policy making processes and the introduction of democratic innovations leading to new forms of participation and deliberation.27 It resulted in a range of attempts to introduce institutionalized citizen participation on various levels that has been stimulated and supported by supranational bodies. Global meetings such as the OECD symposium in 1999, which aimed at providing stimulus for improving democracy in its member states, or the Second World Forum on Democracy 2013, which was organized by the Council of Europe, discussed how to connect political institutions and citizens especially in regard to the usage of digital media.28 Measures on EU-level such as the European Citizens initiative
23 Paul Hirst, Associative Democracy : New Forms of Economic and Social Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press ;, 1994).
24 Stephen. Elstub, Towards a Deliberative and Associational Democracy, 1 online resource (vii, 262 pages) vols. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008),
Ian. O’Flynn, Deliberative Democracy and Divided Societies, 1 online resource (vii, 181 pages) vols.
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006).
25 Russell J. Dalton, “Citizenship Norms and the Expansion of Political Participation,” Political Studies 56, no. 1 (2008): p. 88-94.
26 Bruce E. Cain, Russell J. Dalton, and Susan E. Scarrow, Democracy Transformed? : Expanding Political Opportunities in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 1 online resource (xviii, 309 pages) vols., Comparative Politics (Oxford ; Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 251.
Dalton, “Citizenship Norms and the Expansion of Political Participation.”, p. 94.
27 Cain, Dalton, and Scarrow, Democracy Transformed? : Expanding Political Opportunities in Advanced Industrial Democracies, p. 2.
28 Cain, Dalton, and Scarrow, p. 2-3.
Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Ernesto Ganuza, Popular Democracy : The Paradox of Participation, 1 online resource vols. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2017), p. 1.
have been implemented in order to tackle the perceived legitimacy deficit of the Union. In addition to reforms or experiments on the supranational level, those normative agendas have been reflected on the local level to a large extent, where participative methods have increasingly been implemented and embedded in or added to municipal structures.29 In the context of democratic innovation and development it is interesting to study how cities deal with democratic legitimacy and try to increase participation, since the evolvement of cities has always been closely tied to the story of democracy.30 From the Greek agora to modern town meetings, committees or neighborhood parliaments, cities have provided the space to meet and talk, which according to Barber31 is the prerequisite to democracy.32 Today’s urban areas are not only transnationally connected, but also independent to a certain degree concerning the implementation of changes in their policy making processes, which makes it easier for city authorities to experiment with them. Also, Barber points out that in contrast to states, cities tend to be more oriented towards problem solving instead of “ideology and party platforms”.33 This then makes them better not only at decentralized governance but also at global networking and collaboration that among other developments furthers democratic innovation following a broad trend in participatory governance.34
Baiocchi and Ganuza go so far as to diagnose a “participation age” in the 21st century that is shaped by a “new spirit of governance” increasingly emphasizing popular sovereignty. 35 This new spirit is defined by a “normative framework guiding thinking about governance” that incorporates greater participation of citizens in political decision-making processes.36 Among scholars as well as authorities in Western democracies from all over the political spectrum, enhanced participation is often framed as a direct road to better democracy, which is then believed to cure democracy’s ills.37 Models of institutionalized citizen participation are often presented as a way to change political settings adapt to a changing society and to meet demands
29 Archon Fung, “Putting the Public Back into Governance: The Challenges of Citizen Participation and Its Future,” Public Administration Review 75, no. 4 (2015): 513–22.
30 Benjamin R. Barber, If Mayors Ruled the World : Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities, 1 online resource (xvi, 416 pages) vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 53ff.
31 Benjamin R. Barber, Strong Democracy : Participatory Politics for a New Age, Twentieth anniversary edition with a new preface. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 267.
32 Except for scholars in the tradition of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who deemed the city the nemesis of democracy in line with his general skepticism of modernity. (Benjamin R. Barber, If Mayors Ruled the World :
Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities, 1 online resource (xvi, 416 pages) vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 54)
33 Benjamin R. Barber, If Mayors Ruled the World : Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities, 1 online resource (xvi, 416 pages) vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 70.
34 ibid.
35 Baiocchi and Ganuza, Popular Democracy : The Paradox of Participation, p. 23.
36 ibid.
37 ibid, p. 3.
Newton, “Curing the Democratic Malaise with Democratic Innovations.”, p. 4.
of citizen empowerment, social inclusion and administrative efficiency.38 Despite the fact that the implementation of feasible and effective participatory instruments is challenged by pluralistic, fragmented societies and stiff bureaucratic structures, authorities on various political levels increasingly support the elaboration and incorporation of new forms of democracy in order to connect citizens and authorities to a greater extent. Although this has also been questioned by scholars within the recent academic discourse, political authorities usually expect participation through institutionalized settings to lead way to more citizen involvement and strengthened perceptions of democratic legitimacy.39
In the literature, new forms of democratic governance are usually discussed as democratic innovations. Innovation being a term primarily associated with technology, economy or science concerning the implementation of new or adapted products and processes, has thus increasingly attracted interest in the political context40. Among many forms of democratic innovation such as associational, occupation or functional democracy, participatory innovations are defined by Graham Smith as “institutions that have been specifically designed to increase and deepen citizen participation in the political decision-making process” and that “take us beyond familiar institutionalized forms of citizen participation such as competitive elections and consultation mechanisms such as community meetings, opinion polling and focus groups”.41 Yet, what is considered as an innovation depends on the respective context with its established form of democratic rule, which becomes evident in Smith’s conceptualization that starts from a specific context of Western democracies.42 In any case, a democratic innovation is framed as a “new practice or process consciously and purposefully introduced with the aim of improving the quality of democracy“43 that “implies a discontinuity or a qualitative break with the existing state of affairs”.44 The central aim is to engage citizens in their role as citizens and to do it by introducing “institutionalized forms of participation in political decision-making at strategic levels”.45 Ideally, participatory elements have a direct impact on decision-making and depending on the respective model of citizen participation, the traditional relationship between
38 Brigitte Geissel, “Impacts of Democratic Innovations in Europe: Findings and Desiderata,” in Evaluating Democratic Innovations : Curing the Democratic Malaise?., ed. K. Newton and Brigitte. Geissel, 1 online resource (233 pages) vols. (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2012).
39 Nicole Curato and Simon Niemeyer, “Reaching Out to Overcome Political Apathy: Building Participatory Capacity through Deliberative Engagement Participatory Capacity and Deliberative Engagement,” Politics &
Policy 41, no. 3 (2013): 355–83.
Baiocchi and Ganuza, Popular Democracy : The Paradox of Participation, p. 23.
40 Geissel, “Impacts of Democratic Innovations in Europe: Findings and Desiderata.”, p. 163.
41 Smith, Democratic Innovations : Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation, p. 1.
42 Geissel, “Impacts of Democratic Innovations in Europe: Findings and Desiderata.”
43 ibid, p. 164.
44 Newton, “Curing the Democratic Malaise with Democratic Innovations.”, p. 5.
45 Smith, Democratic Innovations : Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation, p. 2.
citizens and political authorities is reflected and restructured. Yet, according to Anja Röcke, whether something is considered a democratic innovation not only depends on its “procedural shape” but also on the results that it brings about.46 This then makes absolute judgements difficult, since judgements highly depend on opinion and possibly oppose each other.
Based on an extensive survey conducted at the Social Science Research Center Berlin in 2006, Brigitte Geissel differentiates between three most dominant strands of participatory innovation implemented at the local level: Direct democratic procedures (allow citizens to express their will or to decide per voting), co-governance or network governance (representatives share their power to make decisions and citizens can have direct influence on decisions) and consultative-discursive processes (based on dialogue and discussion between non-state actors taking different shapes form public hearings to well-mediated deliberative forums).47 Very often mixed forms between co-governance and consultative-discursive arise, for example in the case of many participative budgeting procedures, which allow the public to deliberate and decide on the application of a certain budget provided by the municipality. As Frank Hendriks states, modern democratic innovations usually resemble “a hybrid of democratic models that partly overlap and supplement each other”48 such as the combination of participative and deliberative aspects within one innovative model.49 Within the design process on the local level, often certain aspects of deliberation might be included without intention.50 Although generalizations are hard to make and every innovation has its shortcomings and critics, co-governance procedures that provide citizens with real policy making power and ensure equal and inclusive access; as well as citizen deliberation based on random selection are presented as most promising in the recent literature.51
3.2 The role of the city – local and transnational networks
Concerning the emergence and dissemination of democratic innovations, Archon Fung finds that “forms of participatory innovation are often local, sometimes temporary, and highly
46 Anja Röcke, Framing Citizen Participation : Participatory Budgeting in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, 1 online resource vols. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 39.
47 Geissel, “Impacts of Democratic Innovations in Europe: Findings and Desiderata.”
48 Frank Hendriks, “Democratic Innovation beyond Deliberative Reflection: The Plebiscitary Rebound and the Advent of Action-Oriented Democracy,” Democratization 26, no. 3 (2019): 444–64., p. 458.
49 Curato N. et al., “Twelve Key Findings in Deliberative Democracy Research,” Daedalus 146, no. 3 (2017):
28–38, https://doi.org/10.1162/DAED_a_00444.
50 A.M.B. Michels and L.J. de Graaf, “Examining Citizen Participation: Local Participatory Policy Making and Democracy,” Local Government Studies 36, no. 4 (2010)., p. 487.
51 Smith, Democratic Innovations : Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation.
Curato N. et al., “Twelve Key Findings in Deliberative Democracy Research.”
varied”.52 According to Ken Newton, innovations often start as small-scale experiments, because this bears comparatively low risks before applying them to political systems on higher levels, the costs are relatively low and the outcomes can be registered more directly and closely.53 Also, municipalities are oriented towards urban renewal and innovation in order to keep up with current trends, to remain competitive, to improve the efficacy of local governing procedures and to increase public support.54 Some local innovations were initially developed to solve local issues and then spread globally such as participatory budgeting. It was invented in Porto Alegre in 1989 and since then has been implemented in several hundreds of municipalities around the world, supported by extensive knowledge exchange through global conferences such as the World Social Forum.55
In his proclamatory text on city-network governance, Benjamin Barber points out that
“the challenge of democracy in the modern world has been how to join participation, which is local, with power, which is central. The nation state […] has become too large to allow meaningful participation even as it remains too small to address centralized global power”.56 Instead he proclaims that cities as the “most networked and interconnected” have the potential to serve as “global democratic bodies that work, bodies capable of addressing the global challenges we confront in an ever more interdependent world”.57 With advancing urbanization and globalization, cities appear as potential actors to tackle social and environmental problems through more direct democratic processes. On the city level, it is easier to introduce small-scale initiatives from bike-sharing programs and deliberative decision-making within school boards to citizen assemblies and mini-publics.58 Cities are most successful so far in producing innovations in general and specifically democratic reforms and experiments. Therefore, they act as small-scale pioneers for reformed democracy in order to enhance democratic legitimacy.59 The role of local neighborhoods and urban communities in this context is gaining
52 Fung, “Putting the Public Back into Governance: The Challenges of Citizen Participation and Its Future.”, p.
514.
53 Newton, “Curing the Democratic Malaise with Democratic Innovations.”, p. 5.
54 Michels and de Graaf, “Examining Citizen Participation: Local Participatory Policy Making and Democracy.”
55 Julien Talpin, “When Democratic Innovations Let the People Decide: An Evaluation of Co-Governance Experiments,” in Evaluating Democratic Innovations : Curing the Democratic Malaise?., ed. K. Newton and Brigitte. Geissel, 1 online resource (233 pages) vols. (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2012), p. 186.
56 Benjamin R. Barber, If Mayors Ruled the World : Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities, 1 online resource (xvi, 416 pages) vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 5.
57 Barber, p. 4.
58 Newton, “Curing the Democratic Malaise with Democratic Innovations.”
Archon Fung, Empowered Participation : Reinventing Urban Democracy, 1 online resource (x, 278 pages) : illustrations, maps vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004).
59 Geissel, “Impacts of Democratic Innovations in Europe: Findings and Desiderata.”
importance on a global scale when it comes to the implementation and evaluation of democratic innovations with cities being key actors in knowledge production.60
In contrast to the growing number of democratic innovations on the local level, Newton states that “the number of generalized, high-impact innovations, however, is comparatively small”.61 Since participatory instruments are considered as highly important in contemporary politics, there is great interest of institutions at higher political levels in supporting initiatives that address local democratic field-testing within their innovatory and democratic reform agendas. In Europe, the Urban Agenda for the realization of the principles set out in the Leipzig Charter from 2007 reveals how multilevel governance produces democratic innovations and policy reforms in local governments. Signed by the ministers responsible for urban development of all member states, the Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities promotes the elaboration of measures in European cities in order to maintain them as “centres of knowledge and sources of growth and innovation”62 and to tackle social problems most prevalent to urban areas such as social inequality, exclusion, housing issues, deprived areas, environmental problems etc. Among many objectives it demands cities to “be co-ordinated at local and city-regional level and involve citizens and other partners who can contribute substantially to shaping the future economic, social, cultural and environmental quality of each area”63 and to do so by networking on the European level. The Urban Agenda functions as operationalization of these principles by framing the construction of partnerships between the Commission, member states, regions and cities. One city or member state takes the role as lead management within those cooperations in order to work on a certain topic or project. Within the framework of the Urban Agenda, the UrbAct programme financed by the European Regional Development Fund facilitates transnational exchanges and networking in order to help cities and states to set up these partnerships. Among others, UrbAct operates so-called City Labs that “identify what works where cities are struggling, and how [to] build their capacity to build a bright sustainable future”.64 Additionally, programmes such as Eurocities, a network for knowledge exchange and cooperation between major European cities, and Urban Innovative Actions that provides European cities with funding for innovative ideas towards sustainable urban development, are funded by EU institutions. This reveals the complex structure of enabling innovation on the local level with a combination of top-down and bottom-up
60 Newton, “Curing the Democratic Malaise with Democratic Innovations.”
61 ibid, p. 5.
62 Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities. Final Draft 02 May 2007, p. 1.
https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/archive/themes/urban/leipzig_charter.pdf
63 ibid, p. 2.
64 https://urbact.eu/urbact-city-labs-refreshing-europe-urban-policy
processes. EU funding schemes inspire, support and push democratic innovations among other new strategies at the local level, yet it is up to the municipality to pursue and implement the respective kind of innovation and to do it according to national or regional legislative frameworks.65
3.3 E-participation: future directions and skepticism
E-participation in a broad sense includes every political activity in relation to digital media from discussing political topics online, showing appreciation for politicians or political contents on social media etc. to institutionalized democratic procedures such as e-voting, e- petitions or municipal platforms for deliberative processes such as participatory budgeting or discussion forums etc.66 The internet appears as a potential facilitator of egalitarian and effective models of citizen participation and especially for a possible reinvigoration of citizen participation and interest in politics.67 Technology bears the potential to create innovative forms for bringing citizens together and supporting online discussion or gathering opinions.
Furthermore, it provides new opportunities for political participation such as social media activism, easy access to and distribution of information etc.68 Conventional forms of political participation can experience an innovative twist through the application of digital technology, such as e-petitions that have become easier accessible and more wide-ranging due to the internet. On the other hand, it is held responsible for an identified aggravation of persisting participation gaps as studies on information and communication technology (ICT) enabled participation have shown.69 In this sense, online participation is often discussed from a perspective of usage typology, digital divides etc. A general critique in this context is that a
“lack of political interest amongst the population and the digital divide combine in such a way that it is the already politically interested and knowledgeable who tend to engage” and in terms
65 Geissel, “Impacts of Democratic Innovations in Europe: Findings and Desiderata.”, p. 170ff.
66 Smith, Democratic Innovations : Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation.
Russon Gilman and Rahman, “Democracy in Crisis.”
Baiocchi and Ganuza, Popular Democracy : The Paradox of Participation.
Maria Leitner, Digitale Bürgerbeteiligung: Forschung Und Praxis – Chancen Und Herausforderungen Der Elektronischen Partizipation (Wiesbaden, 2018).
67 Christensen and Bengtsson, “The Political Competence of Internet Participants.”
68 Leitner, Digitale Bürgerbeteiligung: Forschung Und Praxis – Chancen Und Herausforderungen Der Elektronischen Partizipation, p. 13.
69 Karen. Mossberger, Caroline J. Tolbert, and Ramona S. McNeal, Digital Citizenship : The Internet, Society, and Participation, 1 online resource (x, 221 pages) : illustrations vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008).
Sims, C. “From differentiated use to differentiating practices: Negotiating legitimate participation and the production of privileged identities.” Information, Communication & Society, 17 (2014): 670–682.
of gamification e-participation processes have to compete with all other variants of consumable information-communication technology.70
Another dominant strand of literature focuses on democratic principles realized through e-democracy71. By taking an evaluative approach, Smith gives an overview of the most dominant e-participation methods. He discusses to what extent information and communication technology can realize the goods of democratic institutions and support grassroots initiatives and individuals against corporate power despite possible threats of governmental surveillance72. A variety of models such as 21st century town meetings, open discussion forums, Womenspeak and Online Deliberative Polling is introduced and examined in regard to their ability to improve democratic practices in regard to their inclusiveness, transparency, efficiency, transferability and the extent to which they allow for popular control and considered judgements made by participants.73 Womenspeak for example is a form of government-supported platform that is supposed to provide a safe space for women to communicate and debate on sensitive, primarily women-related issues such as domestic violence. Smith describes the results of a case study revealing that it “enabled […] women to participate in a virtual dialogue on a sensitive area of public policy”.74 In this way, vulnerable groups can be empowered by testifying and suggesting improvements of policies. Yet, like many other attempts of institutionalized e-participation, a weakness of these platforms is that there is “no formal relationship with decision-making”,75 which results in low output legitimacy.
Open discussion forums are usually not political but sometimes used by activists. As
“virtual discussion forums that enable citizens to communicate across space and time”76 they provide new networking possibilities, but they also implicate new forms of exclusion and overrepresentation of certain groups due to differences in access and time resources of participants. Also, they depend on their respective design that foresees a certain way and quality of communication leaving them “rarely as creative and engaging as popular networking sites”.77 Such forums often lack a user-friendly design (easy navigability) and transparency of online as well as offline operations.78
70 Smith, Democratic Innovations : Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation, p. 153.
71 Leitner, Digitale Bürgerbeteiligung: Forschung Und Praxis – Chancen Und Herausforderungen Der Elektronischen Partizipation, p. 13.
72 Smith, Democratic Innovations : Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation, p. 160.
73 ibid, p. 11.
74 ibid, p. 154.
75 ibid, p. 155.
76 ibid, p. 147.
77 ibid, p. 150.
78 Lawrence Pratchett, Melvin Wingfield, and Rabia Karakaya Polat, “Local Democracy Online: An Analysis of Local Government Web Sites in England and Wales,” International Journal of Electronic Government Research 2, no. 3 (2006): 75–92.
Similar to open discussion forums, 21st century town meetings, generated by random representative samples, showed how information and communication technology can enable a large number of citizens to engage in policy discussions without large logistical efforts. In this sense, they restructure collective space that is implied in participatory policy making.79 Online deliberative polling for example generates an online mini-public through random selection that
“exploits the real-time (synchronous), interactive function of the internet so that citizens who are geographically dispersed can deliberate with one another at the same time, in the same virtual space”.80 In a sense of overcoming spatial and temporal limitations, participative and deliberative online forums, where people can share ideas, launch initiatives and vote on each other’s suggestions, are sometimes framed as an approximation of a virtual public sphere, that shall allow citizens to get closer to politics.81 Sofia Ranchordas for example compares practices of digital petitioning to the Ancient Greek agora, the marketplace where citizens could discuss local political issues. This relates to Habermas’ definition of the public sphere as a “realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed”.82 Within this sphere, access is guaranteed to all citizens and they are able to form a public body, which can exert political control if information is accessible for everyone. Furthermore, the public sphere is conceived as “a sphere which mediates between society and state”83 through the articulation of public opinion. Since the lack of feasibility of such a sphere has often been criticized, digital platforms of citizen participation have been conceptualized as a way to virtually realize a public sphere, where citizen engagement can work productively and inclusively. Digital platforms and social media are expected to succeed in enabling and promoting civic engagement since they are anonymous, easily accessible and create a sense of community across geographical or social boundaries.84
Regarding the potentials of online public spheres to support low-threshold, easily accessible and inclusive citizen participation, Jürgen Gerhards and Mike Schäfer examined how online and offline media in Germany and the US differed in terms of accessibility and the freedom to communicate and deliberate. They find that the internet provides the opportunity for more participation of actors with less resources. In this way it grants easier access to the
79 Baiocchi and Ganuza, Popular Democracy : The Paradox of Participation, p. 8.
80 Smith, Democratic Innovations : Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation, p. 156.
81 Ranchordás, Sofia. "Digital Agoras: Democratic Legitimacy, Online Participation and the Case of Uber- petitions." The Theory and Practice of Legislation 5 no.1 (2017): p. 32.
82 Jürgen Habermas, Sara Lennox, and Frank Lennox, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964),”
New German Critique, no. 3 (1974), p. 49.
83 ibid, p. 50.
84 Sofia Ranchordás, “Digital Agoras: Democratic Legitimacy, Online Participation and the Case of Uber- Petitions,” The Theory and Practice of Legislation 5, no. 1 (2017): p. 35.
public sphere, but at the same time online as well as offline public debate is dominated by certain actors. Although the authors did not include social media in their study, their findings can be related to other areas of virtual spheres such as digital discussion forums.85 Sofia Ranchordás for example discusses how powerful private actors attempt to instrumentalize platforms in order to push lawmakers in a certain direction by giving it the outlook of a grassroots movement.86 Interestingly, she not only focusses on a specific platform for online petitions but also on the affiliated usage of larger digital networks in order to gain outreach and in this case manipulate the outcomes by making use of the larger public sphere of the internet.
In contrast, Scott Wright analyses a specific tool, Downing Street e-petitions and challenges its perception as a highly successful democratic innovation. Although the portal has accepted and processed a vast number of petitions so far, the author argues that there has been a surprising lack of empirical research. He concludes that there are many flaws in the tool that affect its legitimacy and efficiency such as superusers affecting inclusivity, a lack of discussion among users and that it does not operate in a transparent way undermining its purpose to a large extent.87 In this sense, Gerhards and Schäfer conclude that the virtual sphere is not necessarily more democratic than the offline sphere.88 Yet, Zizi Papacharissi argues that while the internet provides new spaces for public debate, it is not up to the technology itself to create a better or healthier democracy, but that it mainly reflects the political culture it is embedded in.89
The implementation of democratic innovation is a complex and unpredictable process, which in this case is combined with technological innovation adding another layer of innovative complexity and potentially conflictual aspects.90 Therefore, the integration of technological means into democratic processes is discussed as a chance as well as a challenge to perceived democratic legitimacy. As is often mentioned in the literature, problems of transparency, navigability, security and a lack of fairness are prevalent in this context and strongly impact the perceptions of e-democratic processes. Also, the perceived quality of e-participative instruments depends on the way it is embedded in other parts and offline-processes of administration. In their study, Frieß and Porten-Cheé91 examine how the intensity of e-
85 Z. Papacharissi, “The Virtual Sphere: The Internet as a Public Sphere,” NEW MEDIA AND SOCIETY 4, no. 1 (2002), p, 13.
86 Ranchordás, “Digital Agoras: Democratic Legitimacy, Online Participation and the Case of Uber-Petitions.”
87 Scott Wright, “Assessing (e-)Democratic Innovations: ‘Democratic Goods’ and Downing Street E-Petitions,”
Journal of Information Technology & Politics 9, no. 4 (2012): 453–70.
88 Jürgen Gerhards and Mike S Schäfer, “Is the Internet a Better Public Sphere? Comparing Old and New Media in the USA and Germany,” New Media & Society 12 (2010): 160.
89 Z. Papacharissi, “The Virtual Sphere: The Internet as a Public Sphere,” NEW MEDIA AND SOCIETY 4, no. 1 (2002), p. 22.
90 Newton, “Curing the Democratic Malaise with Democratic Innovations.”
91 Dennis Frieß and Pablo Porten-Cheé, “What Do Participants Take Away from Local E-Participation?,”
Analyse Und Kritik : Zeitschrift Für Sozialwissenschaften. 40, no. 1 (1979): 1–29.
participation affects users’ assessments of democratic effects. They show that the more intensively people participate online, the more they are aware of tolerance and oriented towards common goods, which can be interpreted as a positive effect on democratic legitimacy. Yet, more in-depths studies in this field are needed to explore the relation between e-participation and perceptions of legitimacy including a variety of actors involved.
3.4 Evaluations of democratic legitimacy
The literature incorporates a big strand on the evaluation of democratic instruments.92 In regard to the detection of critical aspects of current democracies, empirical studies on the quality of democratic processes and instruments is crucial for further developments.93 Yet, since the variety of democratic innovations as well as the ways they are implemented is vast, judgements differ accordingly. On the one hand, new ways of including citizens in decision- making processes have been found to increase citizen engagement and to invigorate citizen’s interest in politics94, to change power relations towards non-state actors and to increase social equality,95 as well as having positive effects on communities such as increasing social cohesiveness and integration, enhancing social capital through civic education, and supporting political efficacy.96 On the other hand, they have been accused of lacking procedural transparency, of missing out on the efficient implementation of policy outcomes and of failing to tackle problems of “inequality, exclusion and disparate political power”.97 Julien Talpin even claims that “successful experiences“ in the field of participatory democracy are still rare.98
One normative framework for the evaluation of participatory innovations is democratic legitimacy since as Fung argues: „the strongest driver of participatory innovations has been the quest to enhance legitimacy“.99 Participation is thus framed as an instrument for enhanced
92 K. Newton and Brigitte. Geissel, Evaluating Democratic Innovations : Curing the Democratic Malaise?., 1 online resource (233 pages) vols. (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2012).
93 Simon M.A. Bein, “Demokratien in Der Krise? : Zum Beitrag Zentraler Indizes Der Demokratiemessung Zur Debatte Um Funktionsstörungen Etablierter Demokratien,” Zeitschrift Für Politikwissenschaft : Journal of Political Science 28, no. 2 (2018): p. 150.
94 Christensen and Bengtsson, “The Political Competence of Internet Participants.”
Curato and Niemeyer, “Reaching Out to Overcome Political Apathy: Building Participatory Capacity through Deliberative Engagement Participatory Capacity and Deliberative Engagement.”
95 Baiocchi and Ganuza, Popular Democracy : The Paradox of Participation, p. 10.
96 Pratchett, Lawrence; Durose, Catherine; Lowndes, Vivien; Smith, Graham; Stoker, Gerry & Wales, Corinne.
Empowering communities to influence local decision making – A systematic review of the evidence. London:
Communities and Local Government Publications, 2009, p. 298.
97 Fung, Empowered Participation : Reinventing Urban Democracy, p. 3.
Smith, Democratic Innovations : Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation.
98 Talpin, “When Democratic Innovations Let the People Decide: An Evaluation of Co-Governance Experiments.”, p. 192.
99 Fung, “Putting the Public Back into Governance: The Challenges of Citizen Participation and Its Future.”, p.
515.
legitimacy through including citizens’ perceptions in the policy making process.100 For the evaluation of democratic legitimacy, Fritz Scharpf101 has been highly influential with his theoretical framework of input (inclusiveness) and output (effectiveness) legitimacy. Following this conception, the legitimacy of democratic processes has been subject to a variety of investigations usually focusing on either input or output of urban governance.
Input legitimacy is often discussed as achieved through high representation of citizens, inclusiveness and diversity among participants in a sense of governance “by” the people.102 It is lacking when only certain groups have access to participative procedures or certain actors do not have access. Gundelach et al103 on the other hand measure output legitimacy and conclude that “the participant’s power to affect politics and policy is essential when aiming to deepen democracy by the introduction of participatory arrangements. […] participation loses its attractiveness and positive impact in the case that participation means merely consultation and advice instead of effective control and exertion of influence”.104 Merely consultative tools are not found to support participants’ perceptions of being involved and being able to exercise control. In this context, Talpin points out that the implementation of participatory budgeting in Europe often follows models where the budget has almost no autonomy from the municipal administration and it mainly serves to decrease the gap between elected representatives and citizens.105 This is in line with the lack of output in participatory processes found in an empirical study by Font et al.106 The study reveals that only a small number of proposals generated through participation are being implemented although they have been formally approved, which leads to the assumption that officials “cherry-pick” to policies for implementation, which they liked in the first place. The implementation then mostly depends on the “wills of [the]
initiators”.107 A lack of output in this sense reveals practices where participation is used as an instrument for legitimizing traditional policies instead of attempting to improve democracy from an ideological standpoint.108 In these cases, output legitimacy is negatively impacted by
100 Michels and de Graaf, “Examining Citizen Participation: Local Participatory Policy Making and Democracy.”
101 Fritz Wilhelm. Scharpf, Governing in Europe : Effective and Democratic?, 1 online resource (viii, 243 pages) : illustrations vols., OUP E-Books. (Oxford ; Oxford University Press, 1999).
102 ibid.
103 Birte Gundelach, Patricia Buser, and Daniel Kübler, “Deliberative Democracy in Local Governance: The Impact of Institutional Design on Legitimacy,” Local Government Studies 43, no. 2 (2017): 218–44.
104 Gundelach, Buser, and Kübler, p. 236.
105 Talpin, “When Democratic Innovations Let the People Decide: An Evaluation of Co-Governance Experiments.”
106 Joan Font et al., “Cherry-Picking Participation: Explaining the Fate of Proposals from Participatory Processes Cherry-Picking Participation,” European Journal of Political Research 57, no. 3 (2018): 615–36.
107 ibid., p. 629ff.
108 Michels and de Graaf, “Examining Citizen Participation: Local Participatory Policy Making and Democracy.”
Talpin, “When Democratic Innovations Let the People Decide: An Evaluation of Co-Governance Experiments.”, p. 202.
superficial sham participation as described by Sherry Arnstein in her analytical framework A Ladder of Citizen Participation.109
In addition to the above-mentioned criteria of input and output, scholars have also found the process of participatory democracy to be important for evaluations of legitimacy. Vivien Schmidt defines throughput legitimacy as “consultation with the people” that is judged in regard to the “efficacy, accountability and transparency” of governance processes.110 Studies dealing with throughput legitimacy therefore focus on the “legitimacy of the actual decision-making process”111 or “procedural fairness”.112 Schmidt stresses that the process cannot be overlooked because negative throughput legitimacy is most obvious in comparison to input and output legitimacy. A lack of throughput legitimacy is related to “oppressive, incompetent, corrupt or biased practices”113 and therefore can call input and output into question. The specific design and objectives behind the participatory process and its incorporation within existing forms of governance are found to be crucial to legitimacy. Iusmen and Boswell highlight that participatory mechanisms alone do not elicit throughput legitimacy, but that “parallel strategies are needed to augment or strengthen their impact”.114 This resonates in the findings of Gundelach et al.: “deliberative governance needs to be established as institutionalized innovation rather than being applied as sporadic events in order to significantly deepen democratic values”.115 Yet, although institutionalized participation aims at increasing legitimacy, exactly this poses the “operational dilemma” how to embed participation in the policy process.116 The European Commission for example initiated the participation of civil society stakeholders in the Forum on the Rights of the Child meetings, but did not manage to connect this civic engagement with the actual policy process. As a result, there was participatory input into the Forum debates, but not into policy-making.117
109 Sherry R. Arnstein, “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” Journal of the American Planning Association 85, no. 1 (2019): 24–34.
110 Schmidt, Vivien A. "Democracy and Legitimacy in the European Union Revisited: Input, Output and
‘Throughput’" Political Studies 61 no.1 (2013): p. 2.
111 Iusmen I. and Boswell J., “The Dilemmas of Pursuing ‘Throughput Legitimacy’ through Participatory Mechanisms,” West European Politics 40, no. 2 (2017): 459–78.
112 Maija Jäske, “Participatory Innovations and Maxi-Publics: The Influence of Participation Possibilities on Perceived Legitimacy at the Local Level in Finland,” European Journal of Political Research 58, no. 2 (2019):
603–30.
113 ibid.
114 Iusmen I. and Boswell J., “The Dilemmas of Pursuing ‘Throughput Legitimacy’ through Participatory Mechanisms.”, p. 473.
115 Gundelach, Buser, and Kübler, “Deliberative Democracy in Local Governance: The Impact of Institutional Design on Legitimacy.”, p. 219.
116 Iusmen I. and Boswell J., “The Dilemmas of Pursuing ‘Throughput Legitimacy’ through Participatory Mechanisms.”
117 Iusmen I. and Boswell J., p. 470.
