The Participant's Dilemma: Bringing Conflict and Representation Back In

Abstract

Innovations in democratic participation involving small-scale, long-term focused governing bodies have increased citizen influence in poor American urban neighborhoods. Scholars have described these emerging forms of participation as essentially cooperative in spirit and directly democratic in nature. I argue that the new participatory regimes continue to involve social processes of representation and conflict inherent to more traditional forms of engagement. Participants move dynamically between cooperation and conflict and between participating as individuals and representing constituencies. This article presents a careful study of how a single decision developed and was implemented in such a participatory experiment, the American Street Empowerment Zone in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, between 1994 and 2008. Archival and interview data support the general perspective shared by articles in this symposium - that participation involves dynamic movement between conflict and cooperation. This article suggests that the durability of the participatory regime depends not on the level of conflict but on how participants move between displaying identification with either government or their community constituents. This article uses the concept of intermediation to describe this kind of dynamism and to reflect the flexibility a participatory structure must nurture to endure. Copyright (c) 2010 The Author. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research(c) 2010 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

From exemplary practitioners to urban chameleons? The role of the citizen in the redistribution of tasks in local governance

“…His role as a gatekeeper of governmental resources became transparent and ambiguous among neighborhood residents; while he empowered some, others felt excluded (see Kovács, Smets, and Ghorashi 2019;Naples 1998). This finding resonates with the research of Becher (2010), who shows that intermediary practitioners need to face the dilemma of keeping their legitimacy while moving between the roles of being a representative of different stakeholders, a gatekeeper of particular resources and initiator of contact.…”

Participation in Urban Contention and Deliberation

“…Bringing civic associations into governance changes their character, requiring them to fundraise, professionalize and seek legal, financial and other expertise. As Becher (2010, this issue) shows in her contribution to this symposium, participation of civic leaders in governance also subjects them to cross‐pressures from their collaborating partners and their constituents. Active protest against consensual governance partnerships may even benefit local democracy.…”

Bringing stakeholders together for urban health equity: hallmarks of a compromised process

“… o Diversity of grassroots stakeholders not represented, including diversity within distinct groups [ 24 ]. o Grassroots stakeholders represented by groups funded by government or industry [ 5 , 18 , 19 ]. o Process favours stakeholders with pre-exiting capacity to organize/participate [ 22 – 24 ].…”

“… o Excessive focus on consensus, conflict seen as antithetical to process [ 21 , 24 ]. o Participatory aspect of process includes planning but not implementation [ 19 , 23 , 26 ]. o No plan to monitor and report back on implementation.…”

“… o Project fails to address and/or distracts from broader, systemic processes due to focus on ‘micropolitics’ [ 5 , 21 ]. The broader literature emphasizes that participants resisting or building alternatives to official processes can, in some contexts, face sanctions ranging from loss of paid work [ 19 ] to imprisonment and violence [ 27 ]. …”