Community development often involves organizing participatory decision-making processes. The challenge is for this to be meaningful. Participatory decision-making has the potential to increase the transparency, accountability, equity and efficiency with which public administration serves the least privileged in society. However, in practice, it often fails to bring about these outcomes. A number of academics and practitioners have, therefore, theorized how participatory decision-making processes can better empower marginalized groups. By critically reviewing this body of work and empirically grounding the debate in recent practice, we aimed to develop a theoretically rigorous, easily applicable and holistic model of an inclusive participatory decision-making process that can work across a range of contexts. The empirical strand included surveying public engagement practitioners and participants about the participatory events they had organized or attended. These empirical findings were combined with insights from the theoretical literature to devise a new conceptual model of emancipatory, inclusive and empowering participatory decision-making – the ‘Tree of Participation’. The model can be useful to both organizers of participatory processes, as a check for empowering and inclusive practice, and to disadvantaged groups, as a set of expectations and demands when engaging in public decision-making.

中文翻译：

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参与树：包容性决策的新模式

社区发展通常涉及组织参与性决策过程。挑战在于这是否有意义。参与性决策有可能提高公共行政部门为社会中最弱势群体服务的透明度、问责制、公平性和效率。然而，在实践中，它往往无法带来这些结果。因此，许多学者和从业者提出了参与式决策过程如何更好地赋予边缘化群体权力的理论。通过批判性地回顾这些工作，并在最近的实践中以实证为基础，我们的目标是开发一个理论上严谨、易于应用和整体的包容性参与决策过程模型，该模型可以在各种情况下发挥作用。实证部分包括调查公众参与从业者和参与者，了解他们组织或参加的参与性活动。这些实证研究结果与理论文献的见解相结合，设计了一种新的解放性、包容性和授权参与决策的概念模型——“参与树”。该模型对于参与过程的组织者（作为授权和包容性实践的检查）和弱势群体（作为参与公共决策时的一系列期望和要求）都非常有用。包容性和赋权参与式决策——“参与之树”。该模型对于参与过程的组织者（作为授权和包容性实践的检查）和弱势群体（作为参与公共决策时的一系列期望和要求）都非常有用。包容性和赋权参与式决策——“参与之树”。该模型对于参与过程的组织者（作为授权和包容性实践的检查）和弱势群体（作为参与公共决策时的一系列期望和要求）都非常有用。