ABSTRACT

Although local governments establish various arrangements to stimulate citizen participation, knowledge about what happens with citizens’ proposals after participation is weak. To gain impact, citizen initiatives must be handled through the decision-making process. This article examines the dynamics of such handling of input from citizen participation in three different cases linked to an area-based initiative in Oslo, Norway. The study shows that different actors can play a role as boundary spanners handling citizen proposals, and how this crucial handling varies with the structural and procedural linkages between the participatory spaces and the formal decision-making processes. The study reveals a ‘complexity paradox’; in cases where responsibility is shared among different sectors and levels of government, each unit represents a veto point that can hinder citizen impact, but also an entrance that can enable such impact.

摘要

尽管地方政府制定了各种措施来刺激公民参与，但对公民提案在参与后的处理情况知之甚少。为了产生影响，公民的倡议必须通过决策过程来处理。本文研究了在与挪威奥斯陆的一项基于区域的倡议相关的三个不同案例中，这种处理来自公民参与的意见的动态。该研究表明，不同的参与者可以作为处理公民提案的边界扳手发挥作用，以及这种关键处理如何随着参与空间和正式决策过程之间的结构和程序联系而变化。该研究揭示了一个“复杂性悖论”；在不同部门和各级政府分担责任的情况下，