‘Where do we start?’ Mesogenic participation as an alternative to the ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches to public engagement with science and technology decision-making

Processes of participatory and deliberative democracy can be thought of as alternatives (or supplements) to the ‘picket-fence democracy’ of representative politics and the ‘picket-line democracy’ of social movement politics. In many areas of social science, discussions concerning the extension of public participation into decision-making processes are taking place, with Science and Technology Studies (STS) being the exemplar. These discussions centre on theoretical concerns over the nature of public participation; questions such as ‘what form(s) should participation take?’ and ‘who should be responsible for its organisation?’ Generally, social scientists identify two broad and opposing models of organisation: ‘top-down’ (government-led) participation and ‘bottom-up’ (citizen-led) participation. Critiques of these models have led to the identification of significant limitations in both. STS scholars generally assume the role of analyst or evaluator, although examples do exist, albeit sporadically, of participation processes which have been organised by the independent social scientist. Such work can be seen to constitute a third, social science-led model of participation. This paper provides a typology of public participation models. The typology consists of the exogenic, endogenic and mesogenic models of participation. The exogenic and endogenic models are characterisations of the top-down and bottom-up approaches respectively, to which is added a suggested characterisation of the mesogenic model. It is argued that the mesogenic model, as a pragmatic alternative, can offer a compromised solution to the limitations of the exogenic and endogenic models, thus allowing for more robust and more useful public participation processes. It is hoped that the typology will serve as a useful heuristic device for future research into social science-led participation processes