Participatory governance – involving ordinary people in policy making and implementation – is increasingly being adopted around the world and across many different policy areas. This includes initiatives like consultations, coproduction, petitions, policy crowdsourcing, participatory budgeting, complaints mechanisms, service delivery reporting, “civic tech” platforms, citizen juries, and citizen assemblies. These forms of participatory governance also vary in important ways, including the deliberativeness of interactions, the mode of participant selection, the role of technology, and the nature of linkage with public authority. While many scholars and policymakers hail the potential for public participation to lead to more effective, representative, and legitimate governance, others raise important concerns such as risks of exacerbating inequalities, limited accountability, or serving as mere “window-dressing,” among others. 

This course examines participatory governance in theory and practice, with a global scope covering applications in both “developed” and “developing” countries as well as at a global level. It surveys theories of participatory and deliberative democracy, and their relationships with representative democracy, as well as themes of coproduction, collaboration, and social accountability; and their applications to applied policy cases and lessons for policymakers. The course also examines key cross-cutting questions, such as who participates and why, the possibilities of meaningful deliberation, relationships with political authority, and applications of information technologies and artificial intelligence. The course also incorporates recent empirical research on the impacts of participatory and deliberative governance and on the representativeness of participation in different settings. Students will have opportunities to apply these concepts and themes to specific case studies in their course essay.