This dissertation combines ethnography and history to study the co-evolution of participatory governance and clientelism in a context of urban poverty and re-democratization in the city of Fortaleza, capital of the Northeastern state of Ceará, Brazil. Government sponsored participatory governance mechanisms have been employed in Brazil since the 1980s to re-incorporate civil society into such processes of government as budgeting and city planning. With an emphasis on citizen participation, participatory governance represents a new form of mediation between the state and society, one that provides an alternative to traditional forms of state-society relationships such as clientelism, a mainstay of Brazilian politics. Despite a large body of research on Brazil’s participatory programs, little attention has been paid to the use of participatory social policy by the military regime (1964-1985) and the impacts of participation’s authoritarian origins on contemporary state-society relations. Three inter-related questions guide the analysis. First, how has participatory governance, originally employed in Fortaleza by the military government, shaped how the urban poor organize and exercise their political citizenship today? Second, how has clientelism adapted to participatory institutions? Do participatory mechanisms aid the urban poor in overcoming existing societal and political power structures? Finally, how have grassroots (non-state sponsored) participatory organizations shaped local conceptions of politics and civic engagement? The main contribution of this dissertation is to bring anthropological discussions on participatory governance in Brazil to bear on discussions surrounding political clientelism and political participation, in a context of democratization in poor urban communities. The analysis, developed in three appended articles, is based on data from twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in Fortaleza involving participant observation, in-depth interviews, and a review of archival data from city participatory planning offices and local universities. The data provides evidence that the institutionalization of civil society’s engagement with the state led to new expressions of and limitations to citizenship among Fortaleza’s urban poor. I argue that the authoritarian origins of participatory social policy in Fortaleza led to the fragmentation of strong civic mobilization in the 1980s and consolidated new forms of urban clientelism. Contemporary participatory governance programs have diversified urban political networks, which lessons the power of traditional clientelist patrons, but some patrons have adapted by institutionalizing methods of exchange within participatory programs and local organizations. Recent informal participatory mechanisms have emerged to assert localized or alternate governmentalities. These grassroots forms respond to the paradoxical and contested nature of participation in participatory programs in Fortaleza’s peripheries; that they often fail to achieve long-term solutions to local issues through sustained civic mobilization.

Huruvida medborgardialog ämnar att stärka demokratin eller legitimera stadsutvecklingen är i många fall tvetydigt, men oavsett motiv har det en stark inverkan på dialogens utformning och effekt. Studien har därmed som avsikt att beskriva med vilket syfte som medborgardialog används som styrningsverktyg vid förtätning. Genom att undersöka drivkrafter för medborgardialog vid förtätning, samt vilka värden dialogen tillskrivs av tjänstemän, beskrivs hur dialogen fungerar som styrmedel. Resultatet visar att drivkrafterna bakom användandet av medborgardialog kom från politikens vilja att öka deltagande i stadsutvecklingen, vilket har prioriterats på teoretisk nivå, men i praktiken saknar samordning och rutiner. Följaktligen har lokala omständigheter, interna strukturer och enskilda aktörer format det praktiska arbetet.  Informanterna diskuterade två huvudsakliga motiv för dialog: inkludering av medborgare och kunskapsproduktion. Varför kunskap respektive involvering ansågs värdefullt fanns det däremot flera tolkningar av. Sammantaget utrönades två underliggande motiv för användandet av medborgardialog: effektivisering av stadsutvecklingen och ett sätt att fördjupa demokratin.

Magister Artium - MA / This research examines the role and impact of local government communication strategies in participatory governance with particular reference to Lamberts Bay, South Africa. The investigation aimed at establishing whether the communication strategies of the municipality serve as an effective mechanism to promote public participation in local government. The study used qualitative research methodology, towards the realisation of the aims and objectives of the study. Accordingly, an interview schedule was used as a tool that contains the pre-determined questions prepared in order to acquire insight and knowledge of the councillors, administration, community and community organisations. In addition, observation was used as a tool to observe the dynamics of the different institutionalised structures such as the ward committee meeting, council meeting and public meeting. An empirical study was conducted to measure the role and impact of communication strategies used by the local authority in the case study area of Lamberts Bay to enhance public participation. The findings indicated that the communication strategies used by local government to encourage meaningful participation within the case study area is not effective with regard to enabling local residents to participate meaningfully in governance decisionmaking within the region. The study concluded by presenting a number of recommendations in an attempt to improve the communication between the citizens and local government and to enhance public participation of local residents.

Citizen proposal is one of many participation governance arrangements introduced the last few decades in Sweden in order to improve communication between local government institutions and citizens. In 2002 citizen proposal was introduced by the state, thus making it possible for the municipalities to allow citizens and other inhabitants to come up with proposals to the elected. In 2007 the law was revised and now gave the municipalities opportunity to delegate decision-making related to citizen proposals to the committees [nämnder/styrelser]. This study examines the implementation of citizen proposals in Kumla municipality 2002-2019. First analysing the arguments raised by the municipality to implement citizen proposal in Kumla, it then proceeds to show how it was implemented before and after the revision of the law that gave opportunity to delegate decision-making to the committees and what consequences it had on the content of the decisions. The study ends by showing how and why Kumla municipality decided to repeal the citizen proposal in favour of another kind of citizen participation.

Due to the general unawareness of the existence and significance of the informal recycling sector in the global north, leading to a great deal of exclusion and stigmatization, this thesis seeks to investigate waste governance in Vancouver and the level of participation of the informal recycling sector in municipal waste management. It also documents the critical role of grassroots innovations in promoting participatory governance and the challenges faced in the process. Results show that the informal recycling sector (binners) play a significant role in municipal waste management, and that there exists some level of participation in decision-making on waste management issues. Results also indicate that exclusion of binners in certain decision-making processes such as the City’s recycling bylaw led to challenges such as reduced access to recyclable materials, which threatens binners’ day-to-day activity and survival. Furthermore, the current level of participation of binners can be linked to the influence of a grassroots innovation called the Binners’ Project, which has at its core, empowerment and capacity building of its members. Challenges faced by this organization as well as binners, in general, are also documented. This thesis concludes with recommendations to promote transformative participatory waste governance and highlights strategies to ensure the sustenance of binners’ livelihoods. / Graduate

In response to the continuing challenges of homelessness in Victoria, BC, a variety of homeless-serving agencies are active in the region. Community concerns about these services have given rise to the practice of developing Good Neighbour Agreements (‘GNA’) and forming Good Neighbour Groups (‘GNG’) with local community members to monitor the social services, mitigate conflict, and prevent undesired impacts on the neighbourhoods. Based in an interpretive description methodology using interviews and document analysis, the purpose of this research is to explore the involvement of the street community in the development of one GNA and subsequent governance activities of the associated GNG. Findings demonstrate that individuals from the street community generally have not been directly involved but instead represented by a local homeless-serving agency, a model of representation that has important limitations. Despite the lack of formal involvement, people from the street community continued to engage independently in neighbourhood matters, undertaking ongoing advocacy work that in turn helped to yield greater participation of the street community in the GNG. / Graduate / 0617 / 0452 / 0615 / crossgeoff@yahoo.ca

abstract: This dissertation examines whether participatory budgeting (PB) processes, as a case of participatory governance and an innovative approach to local governance, promote inclusive and deliberative government decision-making and social justice outcomes. The first chapter introduces the case of the dissertation, PB in the city of Seoul, South Korea. It reviews the history of PB and the literature on PB in South Korea and discusses three issues that arise when implementing legally mandated PB. The second chapter explores whether inclusive PB processes redistribute financial resources even without the presence of explicit equity criteria, using the last four years of PB resource allocation data and employing multi-level statistical analysis. The findings show that having a more inclusive process to encourage citizen participation helps poorer districts to win more resources than wealthier ones. The third chapter is a follow-up exploratory study; the possible reasons behind the redistributive effects of PB are discussed using interview data with PB participants. The findings suggest that the PB process could have been redistributive because it provided an opportunity for the people living in the comparatively poorer neighborhoods to participate in the government decision-making process. Additionally, when scoring proposals, participants valued ‘needs’ and ‘urgency’ as the most important criteria. The last chapter examines the 32 PB meetings in order to find the combinations of conditions that lead to a deliberative participatory process, employing qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). This dissertation contributes to the field of public management, and particularly participatory governance by providing a review of the literature on PB in South Korea, presenting empirical evidence on the redistributive effect of PB without explicit equity criteria, and finding the combinations of meeting conditions that could be used to promote deliberation in the context of PB. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Public Administration and Policy 2018

Foresight has been increasingly acknowledged as a valuable policy-making process. It has evolved from informing policies about key technological fields that would be of outmost importance in the future to (re)orienting and opening up policies towards societal needs. The wide application of foresight would benefit from a common evaluation and assessment framework that hardly exists today. This would facilitate the identification of good practices irrespective of case-specific objectives while it would also allow for benchmarking and coordination of policies for socio-economic development. Such a common assessment framework would require a higher level of reference, i.e. the attainment of generic goals, beyond the specific objectives of each case. This higher level of reference is offered by the commonly agreed goal of the EU to become 'the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world' by also promoting participatory governance in ensuring sustainable development. Apart from their case-specific impacts, foresight exercises have wider impacts in terms of networks creation, actors' alignment, knowledge diffusion and creation, or promoting public engagement in policy-making. Thus, the two 'pillars' of the 'knowledge society' and 'participatory governance', are both relevant and feasible to become the generic level of goals where a common foresight impact assessment framework can be based. The thesis argues that such an assessment framework can be built based on the main features and pre-conditions of more participatory, 'knowledge societies' and the broader impacts of foresight systems. To this end, it starts with exploring the main features of modern societies and the pre-conditions of what may be called in future 'more participatory knowledge societies'. Then follows the examination of foresight literature to better understand the main functions and impacts of foresight systems and identify relevant areas of contribution in relation to more participatory, 'knowledge societies'. The foresight impact assessment framework is eventually built inspired by relevant frameworks and concepts of socio-economic and research programme evaluation in order to adequately address the challenges faced in foresight evaluation. Its validity is then tested through case studies. The case study analysis demonstrates the comprehensiveness of the framework and further refines the main hypotheses and associated success factors, leading to certain foresight principles to be taken on board for foresight exercises to contribute to more participatory, 'knowledge societies'.

The thesis discusses the participatory governance establishment in Georgia and Ukraine with a focus on the elements of deliberative public participation. Through the analysis of the established practices of citizen engagement, the research attempts to find out whether Georgia and Ukraine managed to construct the system of the inclusion of the people in policy-making and set up the opportunities for deliberative public participation. The thesis contains the analysis of the legislative frameworks and the implemented Open Government Partnership initiatives in Georgia and Ukraine to find out which platforms of citizen engagement are set up in both countries and identify their character: do these platforms include the elements of deliberative public participation? If yes, to what extent? Each of the main mechanisms of citizen engagement is analysed according to the four categories defined in the evaluation framework. After identifying the level of deliberative public participation in both countries, the thesis discusses the environments both in Georgia and Ukraine to understand which factors underpinned the process of the development of deliberative public participation, and also, which factors held back the progress.

Court use of web-based videoconferencing software like Zoom to host court hearings grew exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shifting hearings online has had some benefits—it has reduced travel time for participants and allowed the courts to conduct hearings during government shutdown, for example. There is hope that these video hearings can help courts rectify longstanding access barriers that have made the courts less accessible than they should be to people with limited economic resources, those socially marginalized due to their racial, language, or other group membership, those without attorney representation, and/or those living with disabilities. Yet, prior court technologies like electronic filing have disproportionately benefited those with resources and legal training instead, and early empirical research on video hearings shows a similar trend. This dual-sided relationship between injustice and court communication technology creates a paradox: How can court communication technology support equal access when it creates its own injustices? Communication scholarship offers a fresh perspective to this intractable problem. Drawing on communication technology affordances, software design justice, and political philosopher Amartya Sen’s ideas on injustice-reduction, this dissertation proposes a normative, analytical framework—the Justice Enhancing Communication Technologies (JECT) Framework. The framework provides philosophical grounding for collaborative efforts aimed at re-imagining court technologies alongside the communities that have been harmed by them. The JECT framework consists of five analytical steps tailored towards discovering the just actions courts can take when using communication technologies:1) listening for the manifest injustice, 2) acknowledging and apologizing for the institution’s role in the injustice, 3) understanding the communicative aspects of the injustice, 4) committing to address the injustice, and 5) cooperatively planning, implementing, and evaluating with members of the public. These steps point those dedicated to enhancing court access towards injustice-reducing action. The framework can be used by communication scholars and others that study the courts, court information technology practitioners, judges and court staff that utilize the technologies, court program evaluators, and court diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants. To illustrate how the framework can be utilized, the dissertation applies it to an illustrative, empirical case study of video hearings. / Media & Communication