CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Webster, Niamh |
|---|---|
| Title | The Drive to Institutionalise: Sustained Citizen Participation in Vorarlberg and Madrid |
| Summary | Democratic governance is changing with the rise in popularity of representative deliberative democracy, where citizens are involved in decision-making. Previously ‘one-off’ processes have been increasingly institutionalised with a legal basis as permanent fixtures. Despite being successful, some permanent processes are discontinued which undermines trust and legitimacy. Revealing the challenges of sustained institutionalisation, there is still more to be learnt about what works. Scholars have analysed deliberative democracy, institutionalisation, and identified developments that leads to these processes being initiated. However, less is known about what makes these processes last. Thus, this thesis seeks to identify the conditions which contribute to sustained representative deliberative processes. The method used is comparative case study and expert interviews on two processes: Citizens’ Councils in Vorarlberg, Austria, which have proved sustainable for almost a decade, and the City Observatory in Madrid, Spain, which was discontinued shortly after being made permanent. This research finds there are eight main conditions that contribute to sustained processes: culture, structure, power, leadership, drive to institutionalise, context, simplicity and experience. Analysis suggests cultural and structural aspects, leadership and power are the most important. Findings inform future practice in the global trend towards institutionalisation where sustained, permanent processes can strengthen democratic governance. |
| Supervisor | Bodenstein, Thilo |
| Department | Public Policy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/webster_niamh.pdf |
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