Civic participation in local government: European norms of deliberation and their relevance to the implementation of public consultations in Germany and Poland
The concept of deliberation was developed as an approach for renewing public communication and participation in the political and social sciences in order to increase the legitimacy of political institutions and their decisions. However, the extent to which the values and norms of the deliberation concept (including rationality, interactivity and openness) are taken into account in political practice through legal requirements and in the design and implementation of participation projects in order to achieve the legitimacy-enhancing effects has so far been little researched.
The aim of the joint project by researchers from HHU and the University of Warsaw was therefore to investigate the relevance of the values and norms of the deliberation concept for the practical implementation of public participation in local politics and administration in Germany and Poland. It was investigated how local participation practices differ in both countries and what factors influence them. For this study, the researchers focused on public participation as an institutionalized communication channel between local politics and administration on the one hand, and members of the local public on the other.
In the course of the project, the most important EU documents as well as national, regional and local legal provisions relating to public consultations were first analyzed in order to understand the formal legal context of deliberation in public participation and to identify differences between the two countries. Subsequently, the practical implementation of public consultations was analyzed in exchange with representatives of German and Polish municipalities. The core element of the project consisted of a series of interviews in which administrative staff were asked about the planning and implementation of public participation. Software developed at the University of Warsaw (“inDialogue”; open source) was used for support.
The project recorded which routines are regularly used in the municipalities for planning and conducting public participation and to what extent these correspond to the model of deliberative public participation, which is specified in the literature and formal legal documents, among other things. In addition, various institutional, organizational and individual factors were identified that are responsible for the differences in the attitudes and behavior of administrative staff when planning consultation projects in the two countries. Last but not least, guidelines were developed on how information technologies can be better used to support the administrative processes for planning and conducting public consultations. These were implemented in the inDialogue software as an example.
- Funding: Funded by the German-Polish Science Foundation
- Project partner: University of Warsaw (Center for Deliberation at the Institute of Sociology)
- Duration: May 2019 to July 2021