Conference Agenda

The model of the “democracy cube” has led researchers internationally to assess the intensity of participatory governance in the dimensions of (1) power delegation, (2) participant interaction and (3) representation. This research contributes to the debate on assessing participatory governance in two ways: First, we discuss the dimensions of the democracy cube as to its empirical applicability, with a special view to whether and how each dimension constitutes a quantitative scale in the sense of “more” or “less” intensive participation, also drawing on recent literature that explicitly tests the model. Second, we perform a quantitative “test” of the model by drawing on a meta-analysis of 305 cases of (more or less) participatory governance from 22 countries in three continents To this end, each dimension was operationalised into one or more different items that were coded by three independent raters for each case. Also, more specific data on the participatory processes at hand, their contexts and outcomes were coded.

Perhaps most strikingly, we find the three-dimensional space as defined by the cube to be hugely unevenly populated. In particular, the dimensions of power delegation and participant interaction are highly correlated such that few cases exist which are high in power delegation but low in participant interaction and vice versa. When comparing average values of power delegation and participant interaction for different participatory formats (such as hearings, public meetings, roundtables or public referenda), those two corners of the cube remain virtually unpoluated. This raises questions about the independence of the two dimensions. The dimension of representation – who sits at the table – is most difficult to operationalize in a quantitative “less and more” fashion. Therefore, we defined a number of different items such as the number of participants, the share of participating professionals, and the mode of participant selection (targeted versus open). While some of these also shows a certain correlation with the dimension power delgation, the space is more evenly populated here. We conclude by discussing the usefulness of the democracy cube model for assessing participatory governance and propose suggestions for improvement.

The roles and responsibilities of citizens in flood risk governance and in climate adaptation more generally are receiving increasing attention. Citizens’ involvement is deemed crucial to make societies flood-resilient. Besides that, more general policy discourses centring on ‘community resilience’, ‘the Big Society’ (UK) and ‘the Energetic Society’ (Netherlands) attach an important role to citizens. An emerging body of flood risk governance literature examines how institutions relate to citizens through processes of facilitation and co-production. Also risk awareness, action perspectives and motivations of individual citizens are more and more studied, mostly from social-psychological and behavioural economics perspectives. I argue that these perspectives need to be combined, integrated and enriched to arrive at better insights into citizens’ roles and responsibilities. For this, I propose to use the social practices approach as developed in general social theory and further specified in environmental sociology. This approach takes the actual practices in which citizens engage as its main unit of analysis. Flood-relevant social practices include gardening (opportunities for inclusion of rainwater catchment technologies); refurbishing one’s house (opportunities for dry or wet proofing, instalment of green roofs); building, buying and selling of a house (opportunities for prevention of urban development in flood-prone areas), amongst others. These practices are more holistically defined than the more narrowly defined policy domains of institutional actors. Applying the perspective provides opportunities for governance since it broadens ideas about the array of actors that can potentially play a role in flood governance and highlights a wider set of mechanisms through which citizens’ flood-relevant knowledge, skills, attitudes and resources can be enhanced. Initial empirical examples from the Netherlands show the analytical and practical added value of this approach. There are emerging examples, for instance in the Dutch municipality of Dordrecht, where governmental actors made the effort to connect closely to the rationalities and concerns of citizens and discovered that the ‘license to operate’ that institutional actors had in the eyes of citizens was broader than expected. For instance, from the citizens’ viewpoint, it would make perfect sense that the same institutional actor addresses mitigation and adaptation action taking. In conclusion, the social practices approach has the potential to connect and integrate individual-centred and institution-centred approaches and to complement them with new perspectives that help identify a broader array of governance options. Hence, the approach addresses an essential missing link in current research and practice on citizens’ roles in flood risk governance.

Citizen participation has become a vital element both in research and technological development and innovation contexts and in decision-making and planning. It thus is a vital element of the governance of sustainability transformations addressing questions of democracy and legitimacy as well as reflexivity and transdisciplinarity. However, participatory processes are generally complex and dynamic and undergo various phases of opening up and closing down due to mutually co-constituting phases of appraisal and commitment. In this paper, we therefore address the question of when and why participation processes are opened up and when and why they are being narrowed down. Based on the development of a conceptual framework, in this paper we seek (i) to analyse a relevant case study with regard to the participation process and its processes of opening-up and closing-down in the course of time; and (ii) to identify reasons for those opening-up and closing-down processes.

To study these research questions, we analyse the participation processes conducted as part of a development process of a new city quarter with about 900 new apartments in a municipality in Northwest Germany. It involved citizens from the community, the municipality itself as well as scientists from the local university in different phases of the planning and transformation of a former military air base into a multi-purpose residential, commercial and recreational city quarter. In this case of a new neighborhood, technological innovations towards a carbon-neutral smart city are tightly linked to social innovations and spatial questions such as community development, sustainable development, equality, and quality of life. The participatory process was launched in 2015 and developed in several phases until the present day. Data has been drawn from participatory observation in workshop events, six expert interviews, and document analysis of meeting minutes, evaluation data, and official planning documents. Results show that normative, substantive and instrumental imperatives support opening-up processes. The closing down could be observed in the narrowing of thematic, spatial, participatory, and methodological scopes. Reasons for closing down comprise financial conditions and external legal conditions as well as conflicting interests, corona restrictions, and stakeholder fatigue. However, narrowing the scope of participants proved critical for the legitimacy and the acceptance of the process by citizens and other stakeholders, it therefore merits critical attention in almost all participatory processes.

Universities are called upon as agents of change to contribute to transformative change addressing sustainability challenges. This role concerns their immediate contributions to greenhouse gasses, but also how education and research activities are organized. For instance, the latter addresses the role of universities in public debates and stimulates researchers to engage with the broader public. It can moreover entail the way research is organized, with whose input and collaboration. Transdisciplinary collaborations, e.g., processes of mutual learning between science and society, often aim to address specific sustainability challenges and can take many different shapes and forms. Academics for instance organize workshops, roundtables, transition arenas, dialogues and other meetings and projects aimed at co-creating knowledge for sustainable futures. Moreover, scholars are increasingly collaborating with artists and designers within these meetings and projects. However, the contribution of such initiatives towards solving grand sustainability challenges is diffuse and difficult to evaluate.

In this paper, we will explore the potential contribution of multi-stakeholder dialogues as a form of transdisciplinary collaboration that is aimed at contributing to transformative change. Specifically, we look at the role of artists and designers in enhancing the quality of the dialogues using art installations and arts-based methods. We will first conceptualize the transformative potential of dialogues and the role of artists within that and secondly investigate a case-study of an ongoing transdisciplinary research network in the Netherlands [Network removed for anonymous review process].

First, we will briefly explain the nature, characteristics and possible outcomes of transdisciplinary collaborations and conceptualize transformative change. Second, we will focus specifically on the method of multi-stakeholder dialogues, as these interactions hold explicit benefits over other types of interaction. For instance, dialogues challenge participants to listen, and make explicit the values underlying their opinions, allowing for socially constructive conflicts. The way these dialogues are held, and especially within what spaces and how knowledge is shared is pivotal to unlock the sketched benefits. A positive contribution is attributed to use of arts, arts-based methods and the sharing of knowledge and data through visualizations, but little is known about how art can be optimally used to support transdisciplinary collaborations, or multi-stakeholder dialogues. Therefore, we will thirdly investigate how the role and contribution of art has been conceptualized in literature thus far, drawing lessons for the upcoming Sustainable Industry Dialogue. Lastly, we will explain the background and work of [Network removed], specifically focusing on the Sustainable Industry Dialogue.

DDIs are digital tools and mechanisms aimed at promoting inclusive citizen participation in political processes. Digital participatory budgeting, where citizens are taking part in decisions about the allocation of public funds, is one prominent example of DDIs. However, empirical evidence regarding the relationship between political trust and DDIs remains ambiguous. Citizens who are generally distrustful towards representative democracy are also likely to distrust institutionalized participatory mechanisms based on complex digital systems. Consequently, it has been argued by some observers that DDIs need to be designed and applied in such a way that they are able to generate trust from both citizens and decision makers alike.

But what are some of the pitfalls for the design and implementation of responsible and trustworthy DDIs? Are such participatory tools simply based on the uncritical ‘fetishization’ of novelty and techno-solutionism? To address these pertinent questions, this paper reviews the findings of the transdisciplinary research project ‘Deepening Digital Democracy’ (3D). The ongoing 3D project conducts research on DDIs in the north of the Netherlands, in collaboration with the Municipality of Groningen, a successful implementer of DDIs. Initial findings from an interactive workshop with Municipal experts on digital services illustrate that DDIs can be useful mechanisms to enhance knowledge exchange and trust among citizens and decision makers. Yet, the study also highlights several limitations for the use of DDIs, such as their limited scalability, existing digital divides, political apathy and time requirements, as well as entrenched polarizations and power relations in urban governance systems.