Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Analysis Of The Public Participation Processes Employed For An Urban Greenway Project, Maeve O'Connell

Articles

The purpose of this study is to examine the public participation mechanisms employed for a proposed new infrastructure project. Public participation is a core characteristic of a contemporary democratic society as policy makers are increasingly encouraged to engage with citizens for learning and legitimacy. Participation is a loose concept with many forms and interpretations. This study explores the key characteristics of public participation formats, challenges to and the criteria for success. This analysis is then applied to the proposed local infrastructure consultation process. An additional survey is designed and its role in the public participation process is assessed. The processes …

Academic Health Sciences Libraries' Outreach And Engagement With North American Indigenous Communities: A Scoping Review, Allison B. Cruise, Alexis Ellsworth-Kopkowski, A Nydia Villezcas, Jonathan Eldredge, Melissa L. Rethlefsen

Publications

Objective: We sought to identify trends and themes in how academic health sciences libraries in the United States, Canada and Mexico have supported engagement and outreach with Native Americans, Alaska Natives, First Nations, and Indigenous peoples, in or from those same countries. We also sought to learn and share effective practices for libraries engaging with these communities.

Methods: We conducted a scoping review utilizing Arksey and O’Malley’s framework for scoping reviews and followed principles from JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis. We searched seven bibliographic databases, E-LIS (Eprints in Library and Information Science repository), and multiple sources of grey literature. Results …

Distilling Best Practice Principles For Public Participation In Impact Assessment Follow-Up, Angus Morrison-Saunders, Jos Arts, Jenny Pope, Alan Bond, Francois Retief

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Building upon principles for public engagement and for impact assessment (IA) follow-up, this paper distils best practice principles specific to public participation in IA follow-up. Literature review, followed by a simple survey distributed to IA follow-up and/or public engagement practitioners, helped identify key principles and related published sources. Twelve principles for public participation in IA follow-up are presented, which relate to (1) mandatory public reporting, (2) ease of access to published material, (3) full transparency, (4) clarity about the IA follow-up process, (5) input to decision-making, (6) continuous access to IA follow-up activities and feedback, (7) independent verification, (8) two-way …

Our Streets: Increasing Equity In Active Transportation Planning Through Community Outreach, Jordan Hoy

Master's Projects and Capstones

ABSTRACT Significant research has demonstrated that active transportation infrastructure is essential for the growth and livability of San Francisco: it increases access to economic opportunities, promotes overall improved public health, encourages mobility without contributing to roadway congestion, prevents traffic injuries and fatalities, and supports the sustainability goals of the city. Despite the fact that communities of color will benefit the most from active transportation infrastructure development, historical disenfranchisement in tandem with a lack of diverse representation within public participation contributes to an inequitable distribution of walking and biking investments throughout the city of San Francisco. While research shows that Black …

Technology, Public Participation, And The American Bureaucracy: Participatory Technology Assessment In United States Federal Agencies, Christopher George Torres

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes three participatory technology assessment (pTA) projects conducted within United States federal agencies between 2014 and 2018. The field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) argues that a lack of public participation in addressing issues of science and technology in society has produced undemocratic processes of decision-making with outcomes insensitive to the daily lives of the public. There has been little work in STS, however, examining what the political pressures and administrative challenges are to improving public participation in U.S. agency decision-making processes. Following a three-essay format, this dissertation aims to fill this gap. Drawing on qualitative interviews …

The Co-Creation Of Social Value: What Matters For Public Participation In Corporate Social Responsibility Campaigns, Sun Young Lee, Young Kim, Yeuseung Kim

College of Communication Faculty Research and Publications

This study explores the impact of organization–public relationships (OPRs) and issue-related situational factors on publics’ intention to participate in CSR campaigns, based on relationship management theory and the situational theory of problem-solving (STOPS). We surveyed 698 respondents living in the United States about two CSR campaigns, one focused on girls’ empowerment and one on deforestation. The results showed that situational motivation and OPRs were strongly and directly related to publics’ participation intention for both CSR campaigns. Only two situational perceptions – constraint recognition and involvement recognition – were indirectly related to publics’ participation. We discuss the theoretical implications of these …

What Regulators Can Learn From Global Health Governance, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

The Great Pandemic of 2020 shows how much public health around the world depends on effective global and domestic governance. Yet for too long, global health governance and domestic regulatory governance have remained largely separate fields of scholarship and practice. In her book, Global Health Justice and Governance, Jennifer Prah Ruger offers scholars and practitioners of regulatory governance an excellent opportunity to see how domestic regulation shares many of the same problems, strategies, and challenges as global health governance. These commonalities reinforce how much national and subnational regulators can learn from global health governance. Drawing on insights from Prah …

Environmental Justice Organizing In A Gentrifying Community: Navigating Dilemmas Of Representation, Issue Selection, And Recruitment, Amy Krings, Colette Copic

Social Work: School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Other Works

Environmental justice organizations aim to secure an equitable distribution of environmental resources through the participation and self-determination of affected people, particularly communities of color. Yet organizing in a market economy is complicated: As communities become greener, gentrification can follow, thereby inadvertently displacing low-income communities of color and reproducing environmental injustices. This study informs antiracist community practice methods by examining strategic and ethical dilemmas embedded within an environmental justice organization that is located in a gentrifying Mexican American neighborhood in Chicago. Drawing from interviews, we examine members’ perceptions relating to representation, recruitment, and issue selection. We reveal key considerations for community …

The Importance Of Public Participation In Building Up Democracies In Former Yugoslav States. Case Study: Kosovo And Croatia, Florentina Hajdari Hajra, Dritero Arifi

UBT International Conference

There is a large body of scientific literature in social science and governmental documents which deals with abstract norms and principles for assessing and judging public deliberation and participation. Almost all political scientists agree that public participation enriches democracy by helping to ensure better decision-making and strengthening politicians’ accountability to the people. But, what is the effect of public participation into transforming political systems, and what are the key factors that cause these transformations? These questions remain still unsolved completely. Through this article, the main purpose is to elaborate the effects of public participation on building up democracies (similarities and …

Using Multi-Sensory And Multi-Dimensional Immersive Virtual Reality In Participatory Planning, Mahbubur Meenar, Jennifer L. Kitson

School of Earth & Environment Faculty Scholarship

In the last two decades, urban planners have embraced digital technologies to complement traditional public participation processes; research on the impact of smarter digital instruments, such as immersive virtual reality (IVR), however, is scant. We recruited 40 focus group participants to explore various formats of spatial planning scenario simulations in Glassboro, NJ, USA. Our study finds that the level of participation, memory recalls of scenarios, and emotional responses to design proposals are higher with multi-sensory and multi-dimensional IVR simulations than with standard presentations such as 2D videos of 3D model simulations, coupled with verbal presentations. We also discuss the limitations …

Managing Citizen Engagement: Local Leader Perspectives From A Midwestern Small City, Isabella B. Green

Theses and Dissertations

Small cities, with their mix of urban capacity and small-town charm, are a promising environment for interactive and inclusive citizen engagement. However, small cities have received very limited attention by sociological and planning literature, and even less attention has been paid to the leaders of small city communities. This study contributes to this gap through an analysis of the dynamics of participation between small city leaders and their constituents from the leaders’ perspective. Studying up through interviews with planners and officials of a midwestern small city, this study examines how small city leaders pursue citizen engagement while managing the bureaucratic …

Participatory Mapping, E-Participation, And E-Governance: Applications In Environmental Policy, Pragati Rawat, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

This chapter focuses on participatory mapping as an e-governance tool to facilitate public participation. Public participation is a key component of democratic governance, and there is a growing reliance on digital government tools such as the internet and social networking sites and geographic information systems (GIS). This chapter focuses on public engagement using information and communication technology, namely participatory mapping, known by a variety of terms such as participatory GIS (PGIS), public participation GIS (PPGIS), and voluntary GIS. While the analysis involves use of participatory mapping related to environmental issues, the chapter brings together seminal work from various fields of …

Glocalised Constitution-Making In The Twenty-First Century: Evidence From Asia, Maartje De Visser, Bui Ngoc Son

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

How have Asian nations conducted, or how are they conducting, constitution-making in the face of pressures associated with globalization, and how do they balance those forces with domestic interests and realities? This article aims to develop an analytical framework that can capture this global-local interplay. It introduces the concept of “glocalized constitution-making” to denote the co-existence and relationship between the two governance levels as manifested in the forces, actors and norms pertaining to the process of drafting a new constitution as well as its substance. Glocalization permeates the entirety of a constitution-making episode, from the impetus to initiate the process, …

Public Meetings: Barriers And Solutions, Pauline Mogilevsky

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Public meetings and hearings are some of the most common avenues of interaction between government officials and the public. In many circumstances, they are a legally required element of the public involvement process. However, elected officials, government staff, and residents often find public meetings to be frustrating, unrepresentative, and ineffective (Hajnal and Trounstine, 2016; McComas et al, 2007; Walters et al, 2000). This has prompted many planners to employ other, more nontraditional methods of public participation in order to gain meaningful feedback and build relationships with residents. Though these newer methods, which include workshops, tours, and charrettes, are often more …

An Analysis Of United States Nuclear Power Plant Decommissioning Policy And The Public Participation Process, Alexis Stabulas

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

As the number of nuclear power plants slated for decommissioning increases, reflecting on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) decommissioning regulations in relation to public participation becomes increasingly important. When plants close, communities lose security in economics, employment, and environmental and human health. The NRC’s regulations on public involvement are very limited and generally stakeholders do not feel supported in the decommissioning process. Local and tribal governments, citizen groups, the general public, and those directly affected have all found the NRC’s public involvement inadequate, ineffective, and infrequent. The case studies of two completely decommissioned plants, Maine Yankee and Big Rock …

Public Participation In Intractable Conflict: A Case Study Of New York State’S High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing Policy Development Process And Stakeholder Engagement Outcomes, Nancy M. Pattarini

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

The permitting process to determine whether high volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) should be allowed in New York State has been controversial and protracted. There have been intense disputes between those who see HVHF as an economic benefit and those who assert it will jeopardize health and the environment. Using the case study research method, perceptions of directly affected stakeholders regarding the issues, benefits and limitations associated with the public participation process were explored. Purposive sampling yielded participants from the natural gas industry, municipal governments, local landowners and residents. Data collection methods involved in-depth interviews, focus groups and document analysis. Since …

Truth Talks: How North America’S Truth And Reconciliation Commissions Engage The Public In Change, Lawrence Schooler

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

Within the last 15 years, the first three Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) in North America formed and completed their work. Patterned after similar efforts in South Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere, the TRCs in Greensboro, North Carolina; Maine; and Canada heard voluntarily-offered testimony from members of the general public and key parties to decades-long conflicts. The Commissions also evaluated responsibility for the conflicts and offered recommendations for change in their respective communities and countries, informed by the testimonies they received.

This qualitative methods multiple case study of the three Commissions’ recommendations involved archival research and data analysis of testimony …

Creating Spaces For Conversations On Conservation: A Case Study Of Joint Forest Management In East Sikkim, India., Paulami Banerjee

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Successful community-based natural resource management should include both resource professionals and local communities. Recognizing this fact, my research seeks to encourage more locally adaptive and collaborative forest governance that facilitates sustainable development by enabling grassroots participation. Specifically, I explore opportunities for developing a more sustainable relationship between India's Joint Forest Management (JFM) program and rural forest-dependent communities in Sikkim-a remote, northeastern state of India bordering Nepal to the west, the Tibet Autonomous region of China to the north and northeast, and Bhutan to the southeast. As an instrument for sustainable forestry management, JFM seeks to develop partnerships between forest user …

Secrecy Vs. Disclosure Of The Intelligence Community Budget: An Enduring Debate, Anne Daugherty Miles

Secrecy and Society

Little known U.S. congressional documents, dating from the 1970s, debate public disclosure of Intelligence Community (IC) budget. The documents offer a rich repository of the arguments on both sides of the debate and shine a light on the thoughtful, measured congressional oversight practiced in formative years of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Technology, Institutions And Their Interactions: How Do These Explain E-Participation Degree And Levels? A Cross-Country Analysis, Pragati Rawat

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation aims at explaining the difference in the degree of e-participation across countries using institution and technology variables. It further looks at how the factors differ in their influence across the three levels of e-information, e-consultation, and e-decision making. Institutional and technology variables are identified using the literature review of offline and online public participation (or e-participation). Using the policy feedback theory and Giddens’ structuration theory a conceptual model depicting the complex relationship between institutional and technology variables is developed. The dimensions of digital divide, namely ICT affordability and skills, are found to be the most important explanatory variables. …

Public Participation During Reactive, Crisis-Driven Drought Planning Versus Proactive, Preparedness Planning, C. Anna Ulaszewski

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Droughts are occurring globally and should be recognized as a global issue and drought planning should use a proactive approach on the part of the world community. However, much drought planning, even in developed and highly developed countries, is reactive and programs are often poorly coordinated sometimes with unforeseen negative consequences for marginalized and disenfranchised populations. Literature pertaining to planning strategy for existing, drought crises is nominal and often contributes to patterns of reactiveness and resulting inequity. To gain a better understanding of crisis-driven planning and the participatory process, this gap was viewed through the lenses of institutional analysis and …

Competitive Supragovernmental Regulation: How Could It Be Democratic?, Errol E. Meidinger

Errol Meidinger

This paper explores the possibility that a developing form of regulatory governance is also sketching out a new form of anticipatory regulatory democracy. 'Competitive supra-governmental regulation' is largely driven by non-state actors and is therefore commonly viewed as suffering a democracy deficit. However, because it stresses broad participation, intensive deliberative procedures, responsiveness to state law and widely accepted norms, and competition among regulatory programs to achieve effective implementation and widespread public acceptance, this form of regulation appears to stand up relatively well under generally understood criteria for democratic governance. Nonetheless, a more satisfactory evaluation will require a much better understanding …

Who Participates And Why? What Do They Expect And What Do They Accomplish? An Evaluation Of The Superfund Technical Assistance Grant (Tag) Program, Lance R. Cooper

Dissertations - ALL

Abstract

This research was performed to investigate public participation in highly technical policy

scenarios and the outcomes of this participation. A detailed evaluation of community

involvement at Superfund sites (via the Technical Assistance Grant, or TAG, Program) was

performed by researching a specific type of complex, highly-technical policy problem, using a

mixed methods approach, incorporating a quantitative econometric evaluation and qualitative

multiple case study of selected Superfund sites.

The existing literature on public participation argues that citizen involvement is central to

democratic decision-making and is an important part of the policy process. This study was

rooted in a series of …

Thinking In Circles: A Systems Theory Approach To Public Participation In Planning, Stephen Meno

Masters Theses

In the field of planning, there is widespread consensus that the mechanisms in which most planners use to engage with the public are ineffective and exclusive. Although there has been much work done on the techniques planners can adopt to reach out to underrepresented segments of the community, few municipalities have adopted them. This thesis seeks to advance the conversation on public participation beyond the mechanisms and into a discussion of why only certain communities are implementing these more progressive, efficient, effective, and equitable measures. By depicting how public participation functions as a system of interconnected paths and feedback loops, …

The Voice Of The People: Public Participation In The African Continent, Rafael Macia

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

Public participation is becoming a more common characteristic of constitutional drafting processes around the world, and Africa has not been an exception in this regard. This paper seeks to survey several of the public participation processes undertaken in a number of African nations, in order to examine the methods followed and the effects produced by such processes. For that purpose, I have analyzed the constitutional drafting efforts in South Africa, Uganda, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Kenya, and Egypt. These processes all show different circumstances and approaches, with variations in terms of their top-down or bottom-up nature, and, more importantly, in terms …

The Politics Of Town Hall Meetings: Analyzing Constituent Relations-In-Interaction, Robert J. Green

Open Access Dissertations

The politics of town meetings proposes that town hall meetings are institutions of representative democracy that present an opportunity for constituents to hold their elected representatives accountable in a public setting. Constituent relations-in-interaction glosses a complex set of interactional practices and procedures through which ensembles of participants bring town hall meetings, as structures of social interaction, into being. This study uses conversation analysis, the study of talk-in-interaction, to show that the politics of town hall meetings orients to three types of accountability: Interactional accountability, political accountability, and public accountability. The articulation of these accountability types provides a sense of overall-structural …

Book Review: Laugesen & Gauld. Democratic Governance & Health: Hospitals, Politics And Health In New Zealand, Vivienne Byers

Articles

No abstract provided.

What Citizens Want To Know About Their Government’S Finances: Closing The Information Gap, Meagan Jordan, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Martin Mayer, Kaitrin Mahar

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

There is an information gap between citizens and their governments when it comes to government finances. The inherent complexity of fiscal policy makes it exceedingly difficult for effective public participation. Effective public participation in fiscal decision making must address informing or educating the citizenry with accurate and meaningful government financial data. Better understanding citizen wants and perceptions is critical to closing the information gap between users and providers of financial information. This study uses information gathered from focus groups with residents of Norfolk, Virginia that asks what government financial information they want and how to make that information useful. Results …

Climate Change Planning In Dallas-Fort Worth: Discourse And Public Participation In A Politically Conservative Region, Ann W. Foss

Public Affairs Dissertations

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges currently facing our world, and in the field of planning there has been much attention paid to climate action planning by environmental leader cities. However, political controversy surrounds climate change in the United States, making it difficult for some cities and regions to explicitly and effectively respond to climate change. This dissertation examines planning actions related to the federal Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant, and climate change more broadly, in the politically conservative Dallas-Fort Worth region of Texas from 2005 to 2015. In particular, the research strives to better understand the …

Public Participation In Public Policy: Case Studies On Egypt’S Right To Information Draft Law And National Plan, Yasmin Khodary

Political Science

In multiple international conventions, such as the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, public participation was emphasized as a genuine and inseparable human right. However, public participation should not be only perceived as a human right, but also as a precondition and a necessity for an all-inclusive, informed and sustainable development. This research reviewed two public participation processes that were carried out in Egypt post to the 25th of January Revolution. While utilizing participant observation as one of the most important research methods, this research described and assessed the strengths and weaknesses …