Abstract:While there has been a proliferation of academic interest in 'democratic innovations', most empirical analysis tends to rely on single case studies. Very little attention has been given to the comparative analysis of innovations, in particular the conditions under which they emerge and are sustained. Recent studies of participatory budgeting (PB) have begun to utilise cross-case analysis in an attempt to explain divergent outcomes. This paper argues that the comparative analysis of democratic innovations could… Show more
“…QCA has only recently been introduced to the subfield of democratic innovations research in the work of Ryan and Smith (). While QCA requires good theory and case‐knowledge on the part of users to reduce risks of measurement error and model misspecification (see Thiem et al.…”
Section: Designing Effectiveness: Institutional Variation and Outcomesmentioning
Abstract. This article makes three key contributions to debates surrounding the effectiveness of democratic innovation, deliberation and participation in representative political systems. In the first instance, it argues that more attention should be paid to the role that participation actually plays in governance. The literature on democratic institutional design often neglects concern about the effects of innovative institutional designs on more traditional representative fora, at the expense of concerns about their internal procedures. Second, the article argues that despite limitations, replicable systematic comparison of the effects of institutional design is both necessary and possible even at the level of national governance. A comparative analysis of 31 cases of National Public Policy Conferences (NPPCs) in Brazil is presented. Finally, the article shows that popular deliberative assemblies that vary in their familiarity and their policy area of interest, and that organise their structure and sequence deliberation in different ways can be associated with differential effects on both option analysis and option selection stages of the policy process, respectively.
“…QCA has only recently been introduced to the subfield of democratic innovations research in the work of Ryan and Smith (). While QCA requires good theory and case‐knowledge on the part of users to reduce risks of measurement error and model misspecification (see Thiem et al.…”
Section: Designing Effectiveness: Institutional Variation and Outcomesmentioning
Abstract. This article makes three key contributions to debates surrounding the effectiveness of democratic innovation, deliberation and participation in representative political systems. In the first instance, it argues that more attention should be paid to the role that participation actually plays in governance. The literature on democratic institutional design often neglects concern about the effects of innovative institutional designs on more traditional representative fora, at the expense of concerns about their internal procedures. Second, the article argues that despite limitations, replicable systematic comparison of the effects of institutional design is both necessary and possible even at the level of national governance. A comparative analysis of 31 cases of National Public Policy Conferences (NPPCs) in Brazil is presented. Finally, the article shows that popular deliberative assemblies that vary in their familiarity and their policy area of interest, and that organise their structure and sequence deliberation in different ways can be associated with differential effects on both option analysis and option selection stages of the policy process, respectively.
“…However, we know much less about the causal factors behind the transition from less participatory to more participatory policy making. Previous research has studied both European and non-European cases and largely focuses on combinations of contextual factors [20][21][22]. Although participatory requirements challenge existing policy networks, historically grown administrative cultures and predominant views on the merits of participation held by organisations, intraorganisational considerations have not received much scholarly attention in explaining the adoption of participatory management principles.…”
Public participation is central to the IWRM discourse and often associated with claims of improved environmental policy outputs and their implementation. Whilst the involvement of nonstate actors in environmental decision-making has attracted scholarly attention from various angles, our knowledge is scant as to the forces that drive organisational reform towards participatory governance. This article sets out to contribute to this largely neglected research area and explores conditions under which policy-makers would be willing to attend towards more participative water governance. Its ambition is twofold: first, to explore the conditions under which public officials attempt to institutionalise more participatory modes of water governance. To this end, I analyse the implementation of the Directive’s active involvement provision in England and Wales. For many decades, water management in England and Wales had a reputation for being a technocratic exercise. In the past 15 years, however, the Environment Agency has made considerable efforts to lay the foundation for enhanced stakeholder participation. Second, with reference to the case of England and Wales, this study contributes to understanding the difficulties that reformers may meet when it comes to building support within an organisation and to implementing reforms towards participatory governance.
“…Here again, the academic literature is much advanced since early work which “tended to focus on single case studies of the paradigmatic Porto Alegre, detailing the conditions seen as crucial for its successful outcomes (Abers, ; Baiocchi, )” (Ryan & Smith, , p. 91). Ryan and Smith (, p.91) go on to list significant cross‐case comparative analysis studies of PB, which use comparative analysis to look at differing experiences in differing contexts, such as different starting points and barriers (Baiocchi, , p.167), factors influencing varying degrees of success in PB (Nylen, 2003 and Wampler, 2007), and comparisons of PB across different country‐specific contexts (Goldfrank, ). However, overall, the literature remains dominated by studies of individual cases, and in any case, it is too late for policy; the PB cat is out of the policy bag and is unlikely to be stuffed back in by a devastating piece of comparative analysis.…”
Section: The Need For Greater Compatibility Between Approaches To Caumentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The dream method should ideally live up to the promise of providing the benefits of transparent, systematic comparison to explore equifinial causal patterns, but which epistemologically start from a qualitative worldview, retain richness and nuance, and offer insights into policy application and concrete issues of participation. Therefore, it might be setting up QCA to fail to say that it is situated: [b]etween the extremes of over‐generalizing and “universalizing” macro‐quantitative approaches, on the one hand, and purely individualizing case‐oriented approaches, on the other, a meaningful “medium‐range” social science can be built which, at the same time, has a higher explanatory power and a greater social and political relevance (Berg‐Schlosser and Cronqvist 2005, p. 172, cited in Ryan & Smith, , p. 92).…”
Section: Moving Towards Compatibility?mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…[b]etween the extremes of over‐generalizing and “universalizing” macro‐quantitative approaches, on the one hand, and purely individualizing case‐oriented approaches, on the other, a meaningful “medium‐range” social science can be built which, at the same time, has a higher explanatory power and a greater social and political relevance (Berg‐Schlosser and Cronqvist 2005, p. 172, cited in Ryan & Smith, , p. 92).…”
The puzzle of causal explanation is a core issue for social science. Searches for causal patterns can be overly mechanistic, seen for example in the desire for the magic bullet in policy, or the lionising of the celebrity policy interventions of the moment. Emphasis in policy interventions on transferable practice is often dismissed as naive for failing to recognise the importance of context, contingency, and complexity. However, a focus on highly context-specific narratives, drawn from single cases, can be equally problematic and exacerbate rather than help the problem of reifica--This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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