Background

Co-production has emerged in the late 1970s as a mechanism to engage citizens in public services, by involving them in the design, delivery and/or evaluation of services which they themselves receive (Brandsen, 2023). In co-production, state actors and lay actors work together in any phase of the public service (Nabatchi et al, 2017). It has the potentiality to increase the legitimacy of public decisions (Boivard and Loeffler, 2017), the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery (Osborne et al, 2013), and to make public services better targeted and more responsive to users (Duffy, 2007). In such process, the role of the lay actor is crucial, and scholars have studied the antecedents of co-production related to lay actors’ demographic and socio-economic characteristics. In particular, increasing attention has been given to the so-called “vulnerable groups”, defined as groups facing social and structural barriers to full participation in co-production activities (Grabovschi et al., 2013; Cepiku et al. 2020). In the case of vulnerable people, co-production raises some concerns as their ability to co-produce can be hindered by their condition. Even before their active involvement in the co-production process, it has been noted that vulnerable groups and marginalized people tend to be underrepresented (Brandsen, 2021). This also raises equity concerns, as when designing a co-production initiative, particular attention should be payed to citizens’ selection and lifting constraints for disadvantaged people (Cepiku and Giordano, 2014). Some attempts have been made to systematize studies on co-production of research with vulnerable people by conducting systematic literature reviews (Amann et al, 2021), or by conceptualizing a framework for analyzing conditions for co-production with refugees (Røhnebæk & Bjerck, 2021). However, the literature on the topic is still fragmented and lacks a comprehensive representation that could be useful in informing scholars and practitioners about the characteristics and implications of co-production with vulnerable people.

Research questions and methodology

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of co-production with vulnerable people in the public sector realm by mapping the existing knowledge and addressing the following research questions: i) What are the specific features of co-production with vulnerable people? ii) How can the impact of co-production with vulnerable people be measured?

First, a systematic literature review will be performed using bibliometric techniques (Pritchard 1969, 348) with bibliometrix R-package, to run the quantitative analysis (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017) and analyze paths within articles (Cuccurullo et al, 2016) mathematically and statistically. Second, an analytical framework on co-production drawn by the literature will be used to systematize the articles with a qualitative narrative analysis (Cepiku et al. 2020). This framework comprises four main groups of variables: general context, antecedents of co-production, management and implementation of co-production, and outcomes of co-production.

Results

A systematic literature review was conducted including all articles on co-production with vulnerable people in the Web of Science database – SSCI. A scoping search was conducted initially to identify the keywords to be used in the search, and only articles written in English were included in the analysis. The keywords include: i) co-production, co-creation, co-design, co-planning, co-delivery, co-evaluation, co-innovation, co-construction, co-destruction, and ii) vulnerab*, fragil*, frail*, stigmatized, marginalized, disadvantaged, underserved. The initial search yielded 1039 articles. Currently, the two authors are independently reviewing the articles according to inclusion criteria referring to the study covering both co-production and vulnerable lay actors. The included articles will be read in-depth to identify key features that condition the functioning of co-production with vulnerable people and criteria to assess its impact. The work is in ongoing, by September we expect to have completed the quantitative analysis and to have preliminary results on the qualitative narrative analysis.

Bibliography

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The paper deals with the sustainability of democratic innovations, that is, the analysis of factors important for the future sustainability of a particular democratic innovation, namely citizen assembly. The research question concerns the sustainability and institutionalization of citizens' councils as a kind of deliberative democracy tool that strengthens the existing mechanisms of shaping public policies through classic representative democracy in local self-government.

The paper will deal with the issues of democratic innovations and deliberative democracy and citizen assembly as a specific democratic innovation and a tool of deliberative democracy. It will in particular tackle obstacles to the institutionalization of democratic innovations. Then, it will present research survey data on Citizens’ Council in City of Rijeka and the data will be discussed and analyzed in the context of main research question of the paper.

The research basis of the paper is a citizens' council held in the City of Rijeka (Croatia) during the late fall and winter of 2023/24. In order to determine the factors of sustainability, the paper analyzes three dimensions (input, throughput and output) of the held Citizens' Council of the City of Rijeka. The research was conducted through a survey of the attitudes of citizens' council participants based on The Citizens' Assembly Evaluation Survey - CAES (Caluwaerts & Reuchamps, 2023). In the second phase of the research, if there seems to be a need for such activity, semi-structured interviews will be conducted with key actors involved in the implementation of the Council in order to additionally test the answers and attitudes of the surveyed members of the Council.

Various and numerous protests and public manifestations of women, named as marches, compound the contemporary Brazilian politics scenery, providing opportunities for reflections concerning ways for the social participation and affirmation for rights nowadays. This article aims to comprehend the contemporary ways of production of human subjects and demands stemming from the compendium of dialogues concerning the presently feminism, the images, and speeches yield during these marches. Through the documentary method of interpretation, it is analyzed the most expressive marches during the period from 2012 to 2018. The research establishes as object the marches/manifestations/public protests which had the most significant number of people that occurred in the capital of Brazil and were led by women, which includes the “Marcha das Vadias” (Brasília, 2012), the “Marcha das Mulheres Negras” (Brasília, 2015), the “Marcha das Margaridas” (Brasília, 2015); the International Women's Strike 8M (Brasília, 2017) and "Ele não" (Brasília, 2018). The intent is to comprehend the different expressiveness of the feminist political action and women in the contemporaneity from the concepts of embodiment and worldviews. This means thinking about the body's policies in the new social movements and the demands resulting from that process. It is intended, therefore, to contribute to the improvement of methodologies of intelligibility of the marches that consider their legitimacy in the process of forming a public policy agenda for women.