Decision-making and participation: The Watertime results
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to present the analysis of public decision-making developed by the Watertime project in the context of discussions of participatory decision-making in relation to public services. The project was concerned with studying the process of decision-making on systems of water services in 29 cities in Europe, presenting analytical narratives of these decision-making episodes, and analysing the role of the historical context as constraining and enabling future possibilities. The final results of the project were to generate a set of Good Practice Recommendations for decision-makers, and to design a set of Internet-based tools to support participatory decision-making, which is expected to contribute to more sustainable decision-making.
This paper sets out a formalised account of these results in terms of the interaction of the historical context, the impact of actors and factors, and public processes of debate, in the context of the notion of the public sphere (Habermas, 1989). These results are then discussed in the context of current debates on participatory democracy, which treat public participation as a specially desirable set of interactions between agents (Macy and Willer, 2002), characterised by inclusion of multiple social actors in a public process of consideration and discussion of competing reasons (Pimbert and Wakeford, 2001), which provides an enabling environment, both for improving the information and knowledge available, and for giving a prominent role for public values (Beirle and Cayford, 2002).
Section snippets
Analytical framework
The Watertime project was structured around an analytical framework which provided for the use of the basic concepts of actors, factors and events, and the organisation of these into higher-level structures (episodes) through analytical narratives identifying sequences of events which together comprise an episode of decision-making (Bates et al., 1998, Levi, 2002, Sanz et al., 2003). This provided a standardized analysis applied to a set of structured case studies of changes in public policy (
Data: international context, case studies, and City in Time
The project data were collected through three sets of studies. Firstly, the international context, identifying the actors and factors operating at international level which influenced and constrain the decision-making processes studied at local level – typically, but not exclusively, municipal level. A set of national context reports was also produced, in order to provide a complete set of higher-level contexts for the local decisions. Secondly, the case studies themselves, observing the actors
Constructing Good Practice Recommendations (GPRs) and Participatory Decision Support System
The Good Practice Recommendations (GPRs) (Watertime, 2005a) and the Participatory Decision Support System (Watertime, 2005b) are derived from this analytical framework and synthesized data. Both aim to provide tools to assist participative decision-making by public authorities in pursuit of public interest objectives. Both are based on a common core of four elements, derived from the analytical framework and the data sets:
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the formal structure of decision-making as rational choice;
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the
Public decisions
Some elements of the analysis offered above – the historical context, interaction with other actors, and formal rationality – are relevant to all decision-making. Private agents, as well as public agents, face similar issues concerning past constraints and future possibilities, a constant need to interact with other actors and the various factors at play, and their decisions may be structured by a similar formal rationality. The element of the analysis which is distinctive to public interest
Conclusions
The analysis developed here permits the recognition that actors will operate in pursuit of their objectives whether or not the public decisions follow a formal pattern of diagnosis, identification of options, etc., and whether or not there is a significant public sphere. Actors may seek to influence events outside the public sphere (though others may prefer to operate in the public sphere). They may seek to exert their influence through non-public mechanisms, for example through confidential
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support from the European Commission for the WaterTime project (EVK4-2002-0095, http://www.watertime.net). This article is based on the work and results of that project.
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