Participatory governance in China: ‘Informal public participation’ through neighbourhood mobilisation

Abstract

Public participation is an emergent feature of urban governance in Nanjing, China. Though introduced to address social conflicts around urban redevelopment, the fact is that government-led public participation did not successfully soothe tensions, but resistance instead played a role like ‘public participation’ which influenced the governing processes. This Chinese case thus requires us to rethink the limitations of Western governance theories in explaining this Chinese story. With the purpose to research urban political studies beyond the West to have more plural and heterodox voices to depict a diversity of urban knowledge, this paper focuses on this heterodox phenomenon in China to understand how Chinese insurgent urbanism reconfigured and made a new form of urban governance. Through critical investigation of public participation in Nanjing, this paper argues that public participation is the buffer that mediates and ‘repairs’ the inconsistencies between different levels of governmental agencies, while also because of this disjointed and stratified administrative feature, resisting by appropriating government policies thus can influence the governing processes and become a way of ‘informal public participation’. By introducing the concept of ‘informal public participation’, this paper’s research findings shed light on governance studies about how participatory governance is made through both governmental approaches and bottom-up insurgent urbanism, and also illustrates how resistance can reshuffle power dominance in urban politics to make a new form of urban governance.

Classification and Spatial Differentiation of Subdistrict Units for Sustainable Urban Renewal in Megacities: A Case Study of Chengdu

“…A critical survey in Nanjing [46] indicates that public participation is the buffer that mediates and 'repairs' the inconsistencies between different levels of governmental agencies. In fact, in the complex urban renewal process, relying solely on government power to fully control environmental remediation and conduct socioeconomic regeneration is extremely difficult; it is necessary to explore and guide social forces effectively.…”

Public Participation and Performance of Government Projects in Thailand

“…A study by Cao (2022) has discovered that the theories of public participation in development,participatory governance adopted by the Office of Public Sector Development Commission (OPDC) as their management standard and for execution by Thai government officials presently, are various from the western concept when used in actual technique. The research used qualitative techniques and multiple case studies.…”

Ignoring people: The micro-politics of misrecognition in participatory governance

“…Scholars in this journal have shown that everyday practices of citizenship fall short of the standards policymakers prescribe (Bartels, 2018;Cao, 2022;Hoekstra, 2018). Participatory governance's understanding of citizenship is often narrow, framing the good citizen by specifying appropriate norms, values, and behavior (De Koning et al, 2015).…”