Citizen involvement and participatory governance have been adopted as essential components of urban development policies in many countries. For instance, participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre was successful in mobilizing and empowering poor people. However, in many cases, participation is merely a buzzword which often leads to co-optation. In this article, we propose an explanatory model of participatory governance for making comparative analyses and compare participatory budgeting in the 1990s in Brazil with the Japanese community policy of the 1970s. Based on this, our analysis identifies the paradox of participation and the importance of gatekeeping functions. As a consequence of enhanced citizen participation, the power of the bureaucratic administration becomes dominant unless politicians and the legislature retain their autonomy in decision-making. If the gatekeeping functions of involvement and decision-making are monopolized by the administrative body urban development is de-politicized, which, in turn, leads to co-optation by government and exclusion. It is important to retain the function of politics to deepen democracy through citizen participation in urban development.

中文翻译：

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协商民主与参与的悖论

许多国家将公民参与和参与式治理作为城市发展政策的重要组成部分。例如，阿雷格里港的参与式预算成功地动员了穷人并赋予他们权力。然而，在许多情况下，参与只是一个流行词，往往会导致合作。在本文中，我们提出了一个参与式治理的解释模型，用于进行比较分析和比较 1990 年代巴西的参与式预算编制与 1970 年代日本的社区政策。基于此，我们的分析确定了参与的悖论和把关功能的重要性。由于加强了公民参与，除非政治家和立法机关在决策中保持自主权，否则官僚行政的权力就会占据主导地位。如果参与和决策的把关功能被行政机构垄断，城市发展就会去政治化，这反过来又会导致政府吸纳和排斥。通过公民参与城市发展，保留政治功能以深化民主具有重要意义。