Structural Factors Implications and Contingency Framework for Public Participation and Consultation to Improve Governance

Introduction

Participatory governance emerges as a descriptive notion more than a methodology (Mosse, 2000:32). The efficiency of public participation is being explored in some research studies (Callahan, 2007) from the standpoint of how to achieve a more effective public participation. The emerging form of public participatory governance creates new possibilities of power forms suggesting productive anticipation and implying a state both reflective and public participatory (Rogoff and Schneider, 2008: 347). The transaction costs of rational actors determine their form of governance. As transaction costs decreases, agencies tend to spend more on advisory committee. The relationship between members of advisory committees and agency is very close.

The theoretical perspectives of the institutional participatory governance arrangements as the object of research are based on the traditional politics and government framework (Peters & Pierre 2001). Configuration of the participatory framework and the legal entity that results in the founding and operating format of the organizational and institutional framework. Tendencies of change in institutional participatory governance are related to the creation of institutional frameworks attempting to meet the political interests and the needs of citizens to incorporate new forms. The regional participatory governance is supported by an analytical framework. Some sources to develop a framework of participatory governance arrangements and practices for local implementation can be used sources such as document analysis from governments, interviewing, participatory observation, knowledge generated in research institutes and the organizational sectors.

Notions of state and public participation as dominant issues in political science are on the shift from government to network and participatory governance arrangements under a relativist perspective and the conditions of unstable status of universal truths and permanence. In the perspective of the last century the state was the manifestation of the politics as the dominant entity intrinsically manifested in the will and reason, assuming contingency between nation-state, governance, and people. These actors are the central government or the state that experiences a centralist trend and instrumentally rationalistic at ordering the new change towards the implementation of participatory modes of governance.

Participatory institutions are subject to the level of public resources and authority granted to citizens leading to public debates in local political arenas based on specific cases. The informal participation is not always incited by government institutions not being selected by the organizers but self-selected or self-appointed and entering the controversy or debate from the partisan participation. The participatory learning and action implemented by networks of practitioners and researchers has contributed to shape the debates on participatory governance. A hybrid regulatory approach leads to hybrid governance responses to the political debates and controversies over the different concerns and issues. The post-national debate on broader participatory governance in functional territories is in favor of institutional building through processes of reordering (Newman, 2006), rescaling the territory (Perkmann 2007) and consolidation of institutional governance (Nelles and Durand, 2014).

The implementation of some initiatives requires mainly to be governed by properly professional self-regulation and giving rise to public debate that may become more intensive and controversial depending on the specific situation. Dialogue must be instructive regarding the chances, ambivalences, and limits of participatory governance arrangements, such as public debates. At any public meeting supporting the public debates, and the participants could be self-selected the feedback forms should be available to participants to be able to express and manifest their concerns and views.