Decision‐makers, advisers or educable subjects? Policymakers' perceptions of citizen participation in a Nordic democracy

Abstract

The perceived disconnect between policymaking elites and citizens has intensified demands for citizen engagement in democracies, but we know little about policymakers' attitudes towards increased citizen involvement. This study presents an in‐depth, mixed‐methods analysis of participatory views of politicians, public officials, and interest group representatives in Finland. We first utilize a unique survey battery presented to representative samples of policymakers (n = 675) and ordinary citizens (n = 1701). We then perform a qualitative content analysis for 24 in‐depth interviews of high‐ranking policymakers to explore reasons for the observed attitudes. We find that while citizens strongly support participatory attitudes, policymakers are more skeptical, especially when participation threatens their control of the policy process. Elite skepticism stems mainly from low trust in citizens' capacity to deal with complexity, and to relieve the pressure to engage citizens more elites support learning‐based methods. The broad citizen‐elite attitude gap may require re‐negotiating representative mandates in the future.

How Dimensions of Participatory Decision Making Influence Employee Performance in the Health Sector: A Developing Economy Perspective

“…The results also mean that the more nurses can talk freely with their superiors, be involved in unit/section decisions, be empowered to make contributions and get involved in setting work goals, the higher the employee performance in the health sector. Though the results agree with the findings of Koskimaa et al, (2024) that PDM leads to employee performance, this study contributed to knowledge by revealing that PDM also leads to nurses' performance in the health sector. Thus, the contribution of this study in terms of the last hypothesis has been the sectoral contributions.…”

“…Thus, the scope of PDM that leads to greater performance relates to the contribution of nurses at the strategic level rather than the operational level since decisions at the strategic level influence what pertains at the operational level. Though the findings of the study were corroborated by that of Koskimaa et al (2024) and Solorio et al (2023) that PDM relates to employee performance, this study adds to the knowledge that the scope of PDM at the strategic level contributes to employee performance at the health sector in a developing economy.…”

“…The most expensive and complex form of participatory decision-making is the direct form which management might not gladly accept due to the cost and time involved. Meanwhile, this form also pays for the cost and time invested in terms of greater impact in the forms of performance among workers and attainment of organisational goals (Koskimaa et al, 2024;Solorio et al, 2023). The perspectives of this dimension from developing economies are missing in literature hence this study hypothesized that:…”

“…The highest commitment of management to participatory decision-making is therefore seen when workers/nurses are involved in decision-making at the strategic level (Nimwesiga, 2023). This means that the level at which decisions are taken (operational or strategic) defines management commitment to the entire participatory decision-making process as well as the performance of nurses at the health facilities (Koskimaa et al, 2024). Meanwhile, there is a dearth of literature on how the scope of PDM really influences nurses' performance in a developing economy.…”

Support for Deliberative mini-Publics among the Losers of Representative Democracy

“…With a few exceptions, they only support giving them a consultative role limited in certain areas. They refuse any arrangement putting the current political order of representative democracy into question (Jacquet, Niessen, and Reuchamps 2022; Koskimaa, Rapeli, and Himmelroos 2023; Rangoni, Bedock, and Talukder 2023). In other words, their preferences are incompatible with the idea of granting losers of representative democracy fairer representation and a direct say in political decisions.…”