There is a growing number of scholars interested in exploring the nature, causes, and outcomes of participatory decision-making processes in government, politics, and the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. This is only a preliminary list. If you'd like to recommend somebody else for inclusion on the list or if you do research on this topic yourself, please send me a brief e-mail with relevant contact information.

Research on Participation in Local Governance

Archon Fung, an Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, is one of the pre-eminent scholars in this emerging field. He includes copies of several of his academic articles and summaries of his books that deal with participatory public policy decision-making processes. Here's a summary of his work taken from his home page:

"My research and teaching aims to understand whether and how participation and deliberation can make contemporary public governance more fair and effective. On this site, you can take a look at what innovative citizens, officials, and activists are doing to improve public education, policing, the condition of the environment, and even the lives of workers in sweatshops in America and abroad. Their projects enable ordinary people get involved in the affairs of state, because government, big or small, Democrat or Republican (or even Communist and Worker's parties in developing countries like Brazil and India), just isn't going to work very well for them unless they do. These ideas of participation and deliberation seem straightforward, but quickly become complex in both theory and practice. But when people to figure out how to practice them effectively in their own corners of social life, democracy pays off like nothing else can."