4. Democracy and Participation

national security, and negative, because it can lead to secrecy, corruption, and even a military dictatorship.

While a liberal democracy can be a plutocracy, where decisions are taken behind closed doors and the people have almost no opportunity to influence the politics between elections, a participative democracy is more closely connected to the will of the people. Participative democracy, built on transparency and everyday participation, has been practised officially in Northern Europe for decades. For example, Sweden allowed public access to governmental documents from 1766, when Sweden passed its Freedom of the Press Act.8 It has been adopted as an ideal to strive for by the other European Union states. Many countries in the world still have older forms of democracy, or other forms of government.

4. Democracy and Participation

Participation refers to different mechanisms for the public to express opinions— and ideally exert influence—regarding different types of governmental activities. Participatory decision-making can take place along any realm of human social activity like participative democracy. There is also a strong development in deliberative democracy which is directly related to participation.9 For well-informed participation to occur, it is argued that some version of transparency is necessary, but not sufficient. It has also been argued that those most affected by a decision should have the greatest say, while those least affected would have the least say.

Participation has different objectives. Participatory activities may stem from an administrative area or a citizen’s perspective. From the administrative viewpoint, participation can build public support for activities. It can educate the public about an agency’s activities. It can also facilitate useful information exchange regarding local conditions. Furthermore, participation is often legally mandated. From the citizen’s viewpoint, participation enables individuals and groups to influence agency decisions in a representational manner.

Participation can be classified in different ways. Sherry Arnstein discusses various types of participation.10 These are broadly categorized as non-participation, tokenism, and citizen power. She defines citizen participation as the redistribution of power that enables the have-not citizens, presently excluded from the political and economic processes, to be deliberately included in the future. Archon Fung presents another classification of participation based on three key questions: Who is allowed to participate, and are they representative of the population? What is the method of communication or decision-making? And how much influence or authority is granted to the participation? Other ‘ladders’ of participation have been presented by Connor,11 Wiedemann and Femers,12 and Rocha.13

Participation can refer to participation as part of decision-making, a notion in legal theory. But participation can also mean ownership and, in that case, it means having something in common with others. Participation in the context of finance means getting some benefit from the performance of a certain underlying asset. Finally, we see more and more e-participation and that refers to participation in e-government, and is related to the involvement of the citizen in the democratic process.

8 Banisar 2004. 9 Akerboom 2018. 10 Arnstein 1969. 11 Connor 1988. 12 Wiedemann and Femers 1993. 13 Rocha 1997.