Citizen participation in administrative policy making: Bureaucratic impediments and social construction: Implications for democracy

Citizen participation is an essential part of the democratic process. All citizens, according to democratic principles, should have equal access to the decision making structures of government, and should have equal opportunity to participate in public decision making. The concept of citizen participation and the manner in which participatory mechanisms have been implemented are very different. Who participates and the profundity of their involvement appear inconsistent with democratic requirements. Historically, some group or groups of citizens have consistently been left out. Those citizens who are involved are usually not representative of the demographic make-up of the larger population, may not be representative spokespersons for the needs and desires of those citizens for whom policies and programs are being designed, and often have little impact on what is decided. Citizen impact on decision making appears to occur only when the citizens represent groups that are socially constructed positively and their ideas closely mirror those of bureaucrats involved in the process. The reasons for lack of participation generally, and lack of substantive participation specifically, have focused on citizens. Little if any attention has been focused on the role government administrators play in both defining participatory processes and bringing citizens into them. This dissertation suggests that both the inclusion and exclusion of citizens from the policy making processes is a result of (1) requirements and attitudes generated by a bureaucratic structure, and (2) characterizations of population groups held by decision makers. These assumptions were tested in a study of a statewide planning and policy making project. A triad of data collection techniques was employed including a mail survey, a telephone survey and personal interviews. Models of social construction and bureaucracy were used to analyze the findings. The findings demonstrate that lack of participation by groups such as minorities, the poor, those classified as dependent on government services, and those characterized negatively by bureaucrats may be purposely excluded from participatory mechanisms. They also show that target populations often do not make substantive contributions to the policies that affect them. The implications of these findings for both democratic theory and practice cannot be ignored