The Public Participation Handbook

The Public Participation Handbook
Author: James L. Creighton
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2005-03-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0787979635

Internationally renowned facilitator and public participation consultant James L. Creighton offers a practical guide to designing and facilitating public participation of the public in environmental and public policy decision making. Written for government officials, public and community leaders, and professional facilitators, The Public Participation Handbook is a toolkit for designing a participation process, selecting techniques to encourage participation, facilitating successful public meetings, working with the media, and evaluating the program. The book is also filled with practical advice, checklists, worksheets, and illustrative examples.

From Political Won't to Political Will

From Political Won't to Political Will
Author: Carmen Malena
Publisher: Kumarian Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2009
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1565493117

* Geographically diverse examples of participatory governance in action * Practical case studies show how citizens can participate more fully in the political process Despite a recent wave of democratization around the world, traditional systems of representative democracy seem to be in crisis. Citizens in both the North and the South lack opportunities, rights and access to information and have expressed growing disillusionment with their governments. Ordinary citizens (especially women, poor people and other marginalized groups) are largely excluded from the political processes that directly affect their lives. There is now growing consensus that good governance is participatory governance (PG), but public officials are often reluctant to adopt such an approach. From Political Won’t to Political Will addresses the particular challenge of encouraging these officials to involve citizens in the political process. The book presents contributions by participants from CIVICUS’ 2008 conference on building political will for PG. Representing the perspectives of both civil society and government actors, they propose a number of strategies and lessons such as demonstrating the benefits of PG to governments, complementing formal democratic institutions, building trust, supporting PG champions and using strategic political timing. Their practical and highly original findings will interest anyone eager to see the empowerment of people around the world.

Democracy Disconnected

Democracy Disconnected
Author: Fiona Anciano
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2018-10-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0429794290

Why is dissatisfaction with local democracy endemic, despite the spread of new participatory institutions? This book argues that a key reason is the limited power of elected local officials, especially to produce the City. City Hall lacks control over key aspects of city decision-making, especially under conditions of economic globalisation and rapid urbanisation in the urban South. Demonstrated through case studies of daily politics in Hout Bay, Democracy Disconnected shows how Cape Town residents engage local rule. In the absence of democratic control, urban rule in the Global South becomes a complex and contingent framework of multiple and multilevel forms of urban governance (FUG) that involve City Hall, but are not directed by it. Bureaucratic governance coexists alongside market, developmental and informal forms of governance. This disconnect of democracy from urban governance segregates people spatially, socially, but also politically. Thus, while the residents of Hout Bay may live next to each other, they do not live with each other. This book will be a valuable resource for students on programmes such as urban studies, political science, sociology, development studies, and political geography.

Society in Focus—Change, Challenge and Resistance

Society in Focus—Change, Challenge and Resistance
Author: Lindy Heinecken
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2010-06-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1443823171

The chapters in this book showcase current sociological research, as undertaken both by established and budding social scientists in South Africa and Africa. The book covers a variety of topical themes, the first of which concerns the link between society, power and the environment, and how competing interests, whether these be corporate, legal, socio-ecological or environmentalist, relate to each. Another theme includes contributions on development, democracy and service delivery. Workplace change, resistance and well-being within the agricultural, manufacturing, mining and the service sector constitute a further central focus. The remaining theme addresses the interplay of race, class, gender and power within the context of specific topics, such as HIV/AIDS, tertiary education and minority groups. The collection of work presented in this book reflects a critical stance towards reification of roles, highlights contradictions between principles and practices in society, and underscores the complexity of societal issues on a broad range of contemporary themes. As such, the chapters are notable for their empirical richness and methodological pluralism, which are of interest to an interdisciplinary audience, whether scholars, professionals or practitioners.

The African National Congress and Participatory Democracy

The African National Congress and Participatory Democracy
Author: Heidi Brooks
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2019-08-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030257444

This book examines the development of democratic thought in the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, with a focus on the movement’s ideas about participatory democracy. It makes particular reference to two key periods: the 1980s ‘people’s power’ movement and the subsequent years of policy formulation from 1990 when the ANC began to design and implement a system of participatory democracy alongside a representative government. Through the examination of historic documents and in-depth interviews with former ANC activists, government officials and those involved in policy development, the author explores the inspiration for the party’s commitment to establishing participatory democracy. The book combines democratic theory and political and intellectual history to look at the role of popular participation as part of a broader trajectory of the ANC’s democratic thought. It critically engages with concepts used in the party’s participatory discourse with a view to deepening our understanding of how ideas have shaped the construction of South Africa’s democracy.

The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power

The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power
Author: Susan Booysen
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 576
Release: 2011-11-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1868147819

The African National Congress is light years beyond the liberation movement of old. It remains a juggernaut, but its control and dominance are no longer watertight. The ANC lives the contradictions of weaknesses, cracks and factions while retaining its colossal status. As a party-movement it draws on its liberation credentials, and extracts immense power from its deep anchorage in South Africa’s people. It is immersed in electoral politics that marks the state of its overwhelming power cyclically. As government the ANC is the object of protest, but not protest designed to bring the ruling party to its knees. The ANC is in command of the state, yet fails to definitively counter the deficits that make South Africa’s democracy seem so diluted. Its incredulous and thus far trusting supporters condemn but only rarely punish deployees who do not ‘pass through the eye of the needle’. The ANC and the Regeneration of Political Power unpacks these contradictions. It focuses on four faces of the ANC’s political power – the organisation, the people, political parties and elections, and policy and government – and explores how the ANC has acted since 1994 to continuously regenerate its power. By 2011-12 the power configurations around the ANC were converging to a conjuncture holding vexing uncertainties. This book presents insights into how South African politics – in many ways synonymous with the politics of the ANC – is likely to unfold in years and possibly decades to come.

Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making

Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2008-11-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0309134412

Federal agencies have taken steps to include the public in a wide range of environmental decisions. Although some form of public participation is often required by law, agencies usually have broad discretion about the extent of that involvement. Approaches vary widely, from holding public information-gathering meetings to forming advisory groups to actively including citizens in making and implementing decisions. Proponents of public participation argue that those who must live with the outcome of an environmental decision should have some influence on it. Critics maintain that public participation slows decision making and can lower its quality by including people unfamiliar with the science involved. This book concludes that, when done correctly, public participation improves the quality of federal agencies' decisions about the environment. Well-managed public involvement also increases the legitimacy of decisions in the eyes of those affected by them, which makes it more likely that the decisions will be implemented effectively. This book recommends that agencies recognize public participation as valuable to their objectives, not just as a formality required by the law. It details principles and approaches agencies can use to successfully involve the public.

South Africa's Insurgent Citizens

South Africa's Insurgent Citizens
Author: Doctor Julian Brown
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2015-07-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1783602996

Twenty years on from South Africa's first democratic election, the post-apartheid political order is more fractured, and more fractious, than ever before. Police violence seems the order of the day – whether in response to a protest in Ficksburg or a public meeting outside a mine in Marikana. For many, this has signalled the end of the South African dream. Politics, they declare, is the preserve of the corrupt, the self-interested, the incompetent and the violent. They are wrong. Julian Brown argues that a new kind of politics can be seen on the streets and in the courtrooms of the country. This politics is made by a new kind of citizen – one that is neither respectful nor passive, but instead insurgent. The collapse of the dream of a consensus politics is not a cause for despair. South Africa's political order is fractured, and in its cracks new forms of activity, new leaders and new movements are emerging.

Development: An Antidote For Poverty And Inequality?

Development: An Antidote For Poverty And Inequality?
Author: Adrian Sayers
Publisher: African Sun Media
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2022-12-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0639745482

For more than a century, development discourse and practices have been central to initiatives to change and improve the human condition in response to poverty, deprivation, oppression and inequality. It has informed public policies and shaped the public institutions charged with its implementation and its relations with various forms of associational life. Development: An Antidote for Poverty and Inequality? Reflections on Governance, Planning, Impact and Accountability in South Africa circa 1994 to 2020, is an attempt to examine the extent to which this has occurred in South Africa, an environment that has been impregnated by burgeoning corruption since 1994, the 2008 global economic crises and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. The pursuit of public policies such as the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the National Development Plan (NDP) as well as other related sectoral policies and legislation all envisaged the development of institutional capacity to facilitate planning and implementation. This institutional capacity and resource mobilisation would be enhanced by the formation of partnerships with the private sectorcivil society. However, challenges remain in ascertaining progress through the measurement of performance and the evaluation of impacts nationally and in selected regions and local areas. This book documents and outlines these challenges.