Ank Michels

• Utrecht University

In navolging van de G1000 in België waren er G1000’s in Amersfoort, Kruiskamp, Uden en Groningen en een burgertop in Amsterdam met een vergelijkbare opzet. In deze bijdrage is gekeken naar het ontwerp van deze burgertoppen en de bijdrage die ze leveren aan een aantal belangrijke democratische waarden. Wat is de diversiteit van de deelnemers, de inv...

Embedding democratic innovations that increase and deepen citizen participation in decision making has become a common policy of local governments in many countries. This article focuses on the role of the design of these innovations and seeks to establish the effects of their design on democracy. The article evaluates 20 cases of participatory gov...

Growing levels of skepticism towards institutions of representative democracy have led to a growing interest for alternative ways of decision-making, both among scholars and politicians. Using data collected within an ongoing Dutch internet panel survey (LISS) in 2011, we track citizens’ support for direct, stealth and representative democracy acco...

In terms of the inclusivity of democracy, both the opportunities and risks of using digital media have been highlighted in the literature. Empirical research into the use of digital media and the inclusivity of citizen participation, however, is limited. More specifically, we have a limited understand of the relation between the ‘richness’ of digit...

Dossier In this feature authors discuss recent research findings that are of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

Since less well educated citizens are underrepresented in many forms of citizen participation, deliberative ‘mini-publics’ have been introduced as a democratic innovation to redress some of this inequality. Using data from eleven Dutch deliberative mini-publics (G1000s), this study shows that despite attempts to broaden the appeal of the mini-publi...

This article focuses on understanding the dynamics of citizen participation in smart city initiatives. The literature identifies citizens as key actors in smart cities, however, our understanding of their roles and influence is underdeveloped. Using modes of urban governance to provide contextual depth, alongside the literature on citizen participa...

In this volume, scholars from around the world discuss various innovative forms of collaboration between public and private actors that contribute to making our cities more livable. This book is intended for both academics and professionals working in the field of livability in cities. It offers helpful insights into practices of partnerships and t...

The livability of our cities is becoming a topic of increasing relevance and urgency. As a response to these challenges, urban governments have sought to share responsibilities: unable to adress these major challenges on their own, they seek cooperation with other governments, companies, civil society organizations, and citizens. This first chapter...

In recent decades, many cities have transformed from ‘gray’ into ‘green’ cities. The awareness of the value of green space in the city has grown; urban nature and green rooftops filter the air, and parks and green corridors offer city residents relatively quiet places of refuge, where they can walk and relax. In this chapter, the authors explore fo...

This chapter draws conclusions and shows the dynamic and fluid world of partnerships. First, it shows that a strong commitment to the partnership and its goal, stable funding and stable (political) leadership are essential for a partnership to be effective. At the same time, partnerships must remain responsive to the (changing) needs and wishes of...

The mitigation of global climate change renders effective policy indispensable. In this paper we evaluate a policy drafted in the Netherlands to close all its remaining coal-fired plants by 2030, which is well before the end of their technical and economic life spans. This plan is part of a package to reduce CO2 emissions with 25% by 2020 and 49% b...

This paper presents a systematic review of the literature on smart governance, defined as technology-enabled collaboration between citizens and local governments to advance sustainable development. The lack of empirical evidence on the positive outcomes of smart cities/smart governance motivated us to conduct this study. Our findings show that empi...

En s’attaquant au problème de l’aliénation, les théories démocratiques normatives affirment que la participation citoyenne encourage la mobilisation du public et un sentiment d’appartenance à la collectivité. Dans le présent article, nous analysons les effets de la participation citoyenne sur la mobilisation du public dans le cadre de quatre sommet...

In recent decades, so-called “mini-publics” have been organized in many countries to renew policy making and democracy. One characteristic of mini-publics is that the selection of the participants is based on random sampling or sortition. This gives each member of the community an equal chance of being selected. Another feature is that deliberation...

In recent decades, so-called “mini-publics” have been organized in many countries to renew policy making and democracy. One characteristic of mini-publics is that the selection of the participants is based on random sampling or sortition. This gives each member of the community an equal chance of being selected. Another feature is that deliberation...

Recently, many democracies have developed towards more citizens’ involvement in direct democracy or public deliberation. Are these developments linked to different types of democracy? Can public deliberation be mainly found in consensus democracies, whereas direct democracy prevails in majoritarian democracies? By analysing OECD countries around th...

Although deliberative reforms have been proposed to strengthen democracy, little is known about their impact on politics, public policies, and society. This article develops a framework to systematically assess this impact, differentiating between direct and indirect forms of impact. We apply this framework to two cases of deliberative citizens’ su...

http://lokale-democratie.nl/kennisbank/participatie/toolkit-loting

Non-participation in the ‘do-democracy’ Research into citizens’ initiatives usually focuses on those who already participate. In this article the central question is how those who do not participate yet can be motivated to take part in citizens’ initiatives. To investigate this the authors used vignettes in which four key motives for participation...

In addressing the problem of alienation, normative democratic theories claim that citizen participation encourages public engagement and a sense of community. This article analyses the effects of citizen participation on public engagement in four local citizens’ summits in the Netherlands based on a combination of survey data, interviews and docume...

The G1000 in Belgium and the Netherlands: An analysis of a democratic tension In recent years, there has been a strong diffusion of the concept of the G1000 in the Low countries. Yet, empirical research that concerns the democratic value of these mini-publics is sparse. This raises the question as to how democratic the G1000 initiatives in Belgium...

Dit themanummer van Res Publica verschijnt rond de Tweede Kamerverkiezingen in Nederland en staat in het teken van de democratie. In de eerste bijdrage maken de Tilburgse onderzoekers Frank Hendriks, Sabine van Zuydam en Koen van der Krieken de balans op: is er in Nederland sprake van een legitimiteitscrisis of een toenemende kloof tussen burger en...

Dit themanummer van Res Publica verschijnt rond de Tweede Kamerverkiezingen in Nederland en staat in het teken van de democratie. In de eerste bijdrage maken de Tilburgse onderzoekers Frank Hendriks, Sabine van Zuydam en Koen van der Krieken de balans op: is er in Nederland sprake van een legitimiteitscrisis of een toenemende kloof tussen burger en...

Participant or data source? Citizens as extension of urban innovative capacity In the private sector, user innovation is used to develop innovations that better fit the needs of customers. In the public sector, interest for citizen innovation is also on the rise and new information and communication technologies seem to offer a great potential for...

How diverse, influential and deliberative is a G1000? The design of a citizens summit and the realization of democratic values In imitation of the G1000 in Belgium in the Netherlands G1000-meetings were held in Amersfoort, Kruiskamp, Uden and Groningen and a citizens summit in Amsterdam with a similar design. In this article the authors investigate...

Public participation has become increasingly important in the water sector. However, the question remains as to what exactly is meant by participation. This paper explores the different ways that participation is understood in local and regional water plans and visions in the Dutch water sector. Partly driven by the key role played by participatory...

Both India and China are countries in transition. Both are fast growing economies showing enormous growth rates; but this growth comes at a cost: the burgeoning population in the cities is putting pressure on water and energy resources, public health, education, and infrastructure. Urban governments are unable to address these major challenges on t...

Participation in neighbourhoods is a highly valued phenomenon. Participation is the basis of a shared social life, but it also makes everyday life, and the lived experience of people participating in it, political. From a public administration perspective, governance and formal policy-making are increasingly reaching out to citizens, instead of dra...

To address issues of sustainable urban development, collaborative arrangements among governments, private sector companies, and (organizations of) citizens are increasingly applied. Against the background of changing relations among state, market, and civil society, this paper aims to picture major trends in partnerships in urban governance in Indi...

Innovations in democratic governance: how does citizen participation contribute to a better democracy? Over recent decades, many countries have gained experience with referendums, citizens’ forums, citizens’ juries, collaborative governance, participatory budgeting, and other models in which citizens have a more direct say. Citizen participation is...

Over recent decades, many countries have gained experience with referendums, citizens’ forums, citizens’ juries, collaborative governance, participatory budgeting, and other models in which citizens have a more direct say. Citizen participation is usually considered a valuable element of democratic citizenship and democratic decision-making. Many t...

This article focuses on democratic reform in Britain and the Netherlands since 1990. The question is whether the UK has become less ‘majoritarian’ and the Netherlands less ‘consensual’, as some have argued. If we look at the formalised institutions of the national system of representative democracy the overall conclusion is that convergence has bee...

Het belang van participatie voor de democratie staat nauwelijks ter discussie. Het is het uitgangspunt van veel normatieve theorieën over democratie. En ook in de praktijk van het bestuur hebben veel overheden inmiddels ervaring opgedaan met nieuwe, meer directe, vormen van participatie van burgers. Maar wat draagt participatie van burgers nu werke...

Citizen participation is usually seen as a vital aspect of democracy. Many theorists claim that citizen participation has positive effects on the quality of democracy. This article examines the probability of these claims for local participatory policymaking projects in two municipalities in the Netherlands. The article focuses on the relations bet...

This article discusses developments in citizen participation and its contribution to democracy since the publication of the original article. It evaluates the continued relevance of the use of a normative framework to assess different forms of citizen participation, nuances some of the conclusions and shows how inclusion and a connection with forma...

Normative theories on democracy differ in their view on the role of citizen participation. Whereas in the model of representative democracy, the role of citizen participation is mainly voting; in the models of associative democracy, deliberative democracy, and participatory democracy, other aspects of citizen participation are emphasized. This arti...

The trend towards horizontalization in government prompts a debate on safeguarding public accountability. This article contributes to the debate by presenting categories of horizontalization in government, types of horizontal accountability and criteria for judging the appropriateness of arrangements for public accountability. Accountability arrang...

Democracies in Europe differ in what they see as being at the core of the democratic system. In some countries, citizen participation constitutes the fundamental tenet of democracy; in others, democracy is closely linked to pluralism and the protection of minorities. This paper tries to identify certain core principles of the Dutch democratic syste...

Although citizen participation is regarded widely as vital to democracy, some wariness may also be observed towards it in cases where democracy is equated with representative democracy. This article investigates the dominant view of the Dutch political–administrative and academic elites on the meaning of participation with respect to the quality of...

Paper gepresenteerd tijdens het politicologenetmaal 1994, een bijdrage over de eerste StemWijzer die serieus landelijk is verspreid.

This article compares the role of government in collective bargaining in five small West European countries. For the period until the second half of the 1970s, a distinction is made between countries in which government often interfered in wage bargaining, e. g. Denmark and The Netherlands, and countries in which government refrained from intervent...