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The multifaceted challenges of contemporary governance demand a complex account of the ways in which those who are subject to laws and policies should participate in making them. This article develops a framework for understanding the range of institutional possibilities for public participation. Mechanisms of participation vary along three important dimensions: who participates, how participants communicate with one another and make decisions together, and how discussions are linked with policy or public action. These three dimensions constitute a space in which any particular mechanism of participation can be located. Different regions of this institutional design space are more and less suited to addressing important problems of democratic governance such as legitimacy, justice, and effective administration.
How much and what kind of direct public participation should there be in contemporary democracy? The multiplex conditions of modern governance demand a theory and institutions of public participation that are appropriately complex in at least three ways. First, unlike the small New England town or even the Athenian city-state, there is no canonical form of direct participation in modern democratic governance; modes of contemporary participation are, and should be, legion. second, public participation advances multiple purposes and values in contemporary governance. Master principles such as equal influence over collective decisions and respect for individual autonomy are too abstract to offer useful guidance regarding the aims and character of citizen participation. It is more fruitful to examine the range of proximate values that mechanisms of participation might advance and the problems that they seek to address. I will consider the illegitimacy, injustice, and ineffectiveness of particular clusters of governance arrangements here. Third, mechanisms of direct participation are not (as commonly imagined) a strict alternative to political representation or expertise but instead complement them. As we shall see, public participation at its best operates in synergy with representation and administration to yield more desirable practices and outcomes of collective decision making and action.
In this article, I develop a framework for understanding a range of institutional possibilities. Such a framework is a necessary-if incomplete-part of the answer to a larger question regarding the amounts and kinds of appropriate participation in governance. Though I do not develop this framework into a general "theory of the public" (Frederickson 1991), this approach suggests...