This study sought to assess community participation in the rendering of services in the Capricorn District Municipality. The concept of community participation is central in underpinning successful development programmes. However, this is usually undermined in communities where cultural factors and political factors influence decision making. The study was premised on the review of literature and documents as the Researcher believed that more research on the subject matter has been done extensively. Personal interviews were done with officials within the Public Participation units in both the Capricorn District Municipality and its Local Municipalities so as to gain insight as to how implementation of public participation processes is done in the CDM‟s area of jurisdiction. Literature was reviewed in terms of the legislative requirements with regard to the implementation of public participation methods in the Local Government sector. Various documents were reviewed so as to understand what other scholars have written about the subject matter. Personal interviews were done with officials within the Public Participation units in both the Capricorn District Municipality and Its Local Municipalities so as to gain insight as to how implementation of public participation processes is done. An assessment of how Capricorn District Municipality implements public participation methods was done in line with what the legislation provides for as well as what the scholars said about public participation. Gaps in the implementation of such were also identified, wherein recommendations were made on how best Capricorn District Municipality can improve on the public participation processes so as to comply with the legislative requirements.

The Stikine and Iskut Rivers in northwest British Columbia form one of the last pristine wilderness river systems in North America. B.C. Hydro and Power Authority has, as part of its longterm development strategy, plans to dam the rivers some time early in the next century. These plans are opposed by the Tahltan Indians for whom the Stikine-Iskut Basin is an ancestral home and by numerous environmental organizations. This thesis analyzes the interaction of these opposition groups in light of the general literature on the Indian land claims and environmental movements. This is accomplished in four chapters. The first chapter analyses Indian response to internal colonialism through both the maintenance of the native economy and the land claims movement and examines the history of the North American environmental movement in terms of reformist and deep environmentalism. The two movements are found to differ substantially over issues such as land use control and resource development. The second chapter traces Tahltan and environmentalist attachments to the Stikine, outlines B.C. Hydro's plans and describes how B.C. Hydro's planning activities would themselves generate controversy. The third chapter discusses and compares Tahltan and environmentalist opposition to B.C. Hydro's plans. The Tahltan opposition is expressed in two forms, both through the persistence of the Tahltan economy, the adherents to which are not represented in a fully funded formal organization and the more predominant Association of United Tahltans. The environmentalist opposition is falls mainly in the reformist stream of environmentalism. The predominant form of Tahltan opposition and the environmentalists are shown to have markedly different objectives. The thesis concludes that the case of the Stikine indicates that there are many obstacles to alliances between the formally defined land claims movement and environmentalists. The most prominent of these obstacles is federal comprehensive claims policy which encourages resource-extractive development by providing for resource royalties in claim settlements. However, the findings from the Stikine also indicate there are numerous points of common interest between Indians committed to the native economy and environmentalists. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

Public participation in the planning process is a well established concept and an important one to municipal planners as they deal with the question of how to most effectively involve citizens in planning. The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of techniques and processes used to involve the public in a specific planning process: the preparation of official community plans in British Columbia. Two principal methods are used to achieve this purpose: a literature review and a comparative analysis of the experiences of four municipalities located in the greater Vancouver region which have recently completed of official community plans. Data for this analysis came from municipal documents, interviews with planners and field observation. Six process-oriented objectives based on democratic principles are established as criteria of effective public participation. The six criteria are: (1) Accessibility - All citizens have the opportunity and are encouraged to participate; (2) Timing - The public is provided with information and opportunities to participate at crucial decision making points in the planning process. (3) Impartiality - No individual or group is permitted to dominate the participation process at the expense of others; (4) Comprehensibility - Important information is provided and is presented in such a way that it is understood by those whom it affects; (5) Alternatives - The public is presented with a range of alternatives; (6) Efficacy - Participators' views are considered in products of the planning process. The suitability of each participation technique and combination of techniques used in the four municipalities is assessed by these six objectives. Nine summary observations derived from the analysis are presented as suggestions to help planners effectively involve the public in future official community plan processes. It is found that effort to involve citizens in the preparation of an official community plan must go beyond the techniques required or suggested by legislation. A public hearing and an advisory planning commission are not sufficient to provide effective participation. It is not possible to state an ideal public participation program with a set of specific techniques that would be useful in all communities preparing an official community plan. However, by designing and implementing a participation program that strives to satisfy the process-oriented objectives, planners can obtain meaningful response from the public. Achieving these objectives depends foremost on administrative commitment. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

In the 1970’s the Government of the Northwest Territories was seeking to involve communities in the decisionmaking process about the allocation, priority setting and program and facilities design issues in the sphere of health services. As a result of this desire, relationships were being forged which emphasized a sense of partnership between government at different levels and community groups. In fact, considerable bureaucratic effort was put into the determination of how the communities should provide their participation. This eventually became known, informally at least, as the "community participation methodology". During a forty-one month period (March, 1977 to August, 1980) this methodology was implemented and eventually culminated in the construction of a senior citizens' home in the community of Fort Providence. It is the concern of this thesis to examine that methodology by asking the following question: "How useful and applicable is the Northwest Territories' community participation approach in the planning and development of facilities, specifically for the elderly?" In addressing this question several issues had to be considered. First, what were the objectives of the participants and were they compatible? What were the potential obstacles to the participation process and were they reckoned with? How did the participation process actually occur if, in fact, it did occur? In other words, the efforts of the bureaucrats had to be analyzed in terms of what they hoped to accomplish, how they attempted to accomplish their goal(s) and what they actually achieved. Another problem faced by this examination was the question of theoretical framework. The thesis was a retrospective examination which meant the planners' concepts had to be discussed in terms of theoretical concepts to determine if there is a theoretical basis for the applied concepts and whether or not these strategies were appropriate to this example. It was suggested that the theories of John Foskett, Edmund Burke and Sherri Arnstein were in support of the bureaucrats' efforts. The findings of the examination were that the participants' objectives were compatible; the planners were cognizant of the potential constraints inherent in this project and endeavoured to eliminate or minimize the consequences of these constraints; and, the methodology was successful in achieving participation. With respect to the participation, the thesis concludes that the participation achieved was actually only tokenism and that true participation did not really occur. This then throws the question of utility and applicability of the methodology into doubt. The thesis concludes that everything worked this time because the assumptions of the participants were the same. The thesis closes, however, with a suggestion that the basic assumptions concerning health care are changing. / Medicine, Faculty of / Population and Public Health (SPPH), School of / Graduate

Masters in Public Administration - MPA / Community participation is relevant to every sector of development, for example, education, health, housing, water and sanitation, agricultural development and conservation. The assumption is that public participation is positive in that it can contribute to making programmes more sustainable. Public participation in local government processes, especially in the Integrated Development Plan, is imperative to the promotion of institutional democracy. The Integrated Development Plan as a development tool promotes participatory democracy. This public participation study of the Integrated Development Plan in the City of Cape Town was conducted in four sub-council areas of the city to determine whether public participation was successful and whether the objectives of local government are being met. / South Africa

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / In various formulations, the idea of a developmental state has appeared in official discourse in South Africa since the advent of democratic government in 1994, albeit that its adoption as state policy has been slow, uneven and inconsistent with the original East Asian model. What has been a feature of developmental state thinking in South Africa is the fact that the concept has been so poorly articulated in policy that it has come to mean different things to different state actors and to the public. This has been aggravated by the fact that the idea of a strongly interventionist developmental state has run counter to the idea of a diminished state enunciated in various neo-liberal policies. Moreover, unlike the authoritarian and top-down East Asian model, the government envisages a South African developmental state which is infused with democratic content where citizens assist in the formulation of policy from below. In its emphasis on a bottom-up approach to policy formulation the South African model differs markedly from the conventional idea of a developmental state which is heavily reliant on a strong central bureaucracy to drive economic growth. In the South African model local government has been assigned a pivotal role in addressing persistent economic exclusion and uneven development. A central tenet of this approach is the need for local authorities to institutionalise participatory processes at grassroots level and devise effective structures and processes to facilitate citizen participation in local affairs. In the light of the above, this thesis sets out to examine the manner in which a system of developmental local government is being implemented in the City of Cape Town. Taking as a case study the township of Delft, the study looks at the systems and processes (and particularly the process of integrated development planning) set in place to advance citizen participation. It examines the extent to which the model is perceived to be achieving its goals from the perspective of political office bearers, officials from different spheres of government and residents. The research found that notwithstanding an enabling legislative and policy framework, there is little comprehension of, or interest, in the idea of developmental local government and municipal officials largely pay lip service to participatory processes which are carried out in a top-down fashion and which neither empower local residents nor enhance their welfare. It also concluded that developmental government, in its present form, is contributing little to the establishment of a national developmental state.

What drives civic engagement in weak democracies? What are the psychological processes responsible for overcoming post-authoritarian learned helplessness? This dissertation argues that in non-Western political contexts, traditional psychological predictors of individual engagement in civic affairs---openness to experience, high self-efficacy, and low political skepticism---do not align with previously established Western patterns. Building on the results of a large-scale field experiment on a demographically diverse sample of 1,381 respondents, as well as multi-year ethnographic observation of community engagement in Ukraine, this dissertation demonstrates that perceived self-efficacy and collective efficacy improve respondents’ interest in civic engagement while suppressing their interest in running for office. In the first chapter, I explore what factors prompt citizens’ interest in joining an electoral commission, supporting a recycling campaign, establishing a civic council, and leading a homeowners’ association. Using original experimental data, I demonstrate that individual empowerment constitutes a sufficient condition for civic engagement. Moreover, contrary to most theoretical expectations, the effects of individual empowerment on involvement in local civic activities are comparable to the effects produced by civic education. This study represents one of the first experimental contributions to support the theory of democratic learning and shows that citizens benefit from democracy by practicing it and trying various civic activities rather than by learning democratic values through civic education and top-down democracy promotion. In the second chapter, I study the effects of personality traits on policy priorities and ideological preferences of Ukrainians. Previous research suggests that personality affects political attitudes by predisposing people to certain policies. Contrary to these findings, this chapter shows that personality predicts individual response to the revision of the status quo rather than preference for specific policies. I illustrate this logic by addressing one of the most counterintuitive associations between personality traits and political attitudes---the link between openness to experience and conservatism in Eastern Europe. Combining the results of open-ended coding and bootstrapped regression models, the analysis shows that openness to experience predicts both social liberalism and social conservatism. I build upon these findings to address the existing gaps in the personality theory of ideology by suggesting that those open to experience are, on average, more responsive to any policy suggestion that revises the status quo. In the final chapter, I examine the problem of nascent political ambition in weak democratic states. Building on the results of my original field experiment, I show that higher efficacy discourages political engagement in Ukraine. Specifically, increasing respondents’ collective efficacy, on average, disincentivizes them from running for city parliament. Most surprisingly, citizens with higher pre-treatment levels of internal political efficacy were the ones most dissuaded from running for office after the induction of collective efficacy. Their improved sense of collective efficacy might have discouraged them from political institutions that they consider powerless and inefficient. Altogether, these findings challenge existing wisdom in comparative political psychology by demonstrating that (1) psychological pathways to collective action are more context-dependent than previously assumed; (2) previously established effects of personality traits and self-evaluations on political behavior do not travel well beyond Western European and North American contexts; (3) self-efficacy and collective efficacy do not differ in their causal effects on individual attitudes and behavior; and (4) politically sophisticated individuals are put off from political office when reminded of alternative non-political ways of achieving collective goals, with this running from office creating a trap of declining political ambition in weak democracies. Thus, democratic promotion campaigns that increase self-efficacy or collective efficacy might suppress nascent political ambition when the population is skeptical of the quality of representative democratic institutions.

Citizen participation is seen as relevant in today’s planning process, to let the people be an active part in the planning of the city and to strengthen the trust in democracy. Traditionally, the dialogue takes place in form of physical meetings, where planners and citizens meet face to face. But this concept might be changing. The ambition in Sweden to transition into digitalization is already in motion, where one of the goals is to see the use of digital communication expand.  The main purpose for this work was to examine how two municipalities, one sparsely populated and one more developed, are working with implementing digitalization and what challenges they are up against, how it affects the participation of the citizens in city planning and development. For future Planning, the digital tools will generate greater citizen dialogue and participation since people will be able to participate without needing to leave their current geographical location. This means that the factors of time and space will be out of the question as people no longer will have to rely on resources to travel to be able to attend at meetings face to face, due to the space compression of digitalization. Still, there are risks and challenges that goes along with digitalization. The risk for exclusion of citizens due to lack of access to internet, low levels of use due to lack of competence and the resources to be able to work with the development of digitalization, which can leave municipalities left behind while other municipalities continue to strive forward and grow.

Bibliography: leaves 136-141. / This is an exploratory study using a qualitative approach. This study attempts to explore the nature of makgotla found in the rural community of Ramokgopa. It examines the structure and operation, nature of services rendered, successes, areas of concern as well as the role of makgotla played in community development. The primary objective was to assess the viability of makgotla as a vehicle for development in rural communities. Data was collected via in-depth interviews, and using a community-forum approach. Eleven headmen/key members and five consumers of services were selected for interviewing. Two community meetings were also held for the same purpose. The study found that makgotla have taken initiatives and efforts to develop their own community. This is in spite of the fact that there are areas of concern like gender sensitivity that need to be addressed. The study concludes with some recommendations, one of them being that local government officials be made aware of the presence of makgotla and how best to engage in a dialogue which will reap benefits for the community.

From 2007 to 2011, select Virginia localities were legislatively mandated to update their respective comprehensive plans to include Urban Development Areas. The completion of the Urban Development Area comprehensive plan requirement was complicated by uneven application and codification of the legislative mandate. In 2012, the Urban Development Area legislation had been reduced from a legislative mandate to a state enabled optional comprehensive plan element. This research examines the practice of comprehensive planning in the Commonwealth of Virginia during the Urban Development Area comprehensive plan update requirement to determine legislation outcomes and the effects of citizen participation in the comprehensive planning process in relation to organizational and planning practitioner outcomes. Select local jurisdictional planning organizations were studied using the organizational learning theories of Argyris and Schön in a mixed method research setting. Conclusions find the presence of limited learning systems (single loop planning) and limited modal learning occurring within the Commonwealth of Virginia\'s local jurisdictions, directly affecting completion of legislative mandates. Recommendations suggest modification of existing communal planning procedures at a local and state level to encourage citizen involvement and investment in comprehensive planning and future economic development. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning