Participation in political science and theory of management is an umbrella term including different means for the public to directly participate in political, economical or management decisions.

For well-informed participation to occur, some version of transparency, e.g. radical transparency, is necessary, but not sufficient.

Sherry Arnstein discusses types of participation and "nonparticipation" in A Ladder of Citizen Participation (1969). She grades levels of participation from Manipulation (least citizen participation) to Citizen Control (most citizen participation). The three (3) categories used are:

Degrees of Citizen Power

• Citizen Control
• Delegated Power
• Partnership

Degrees of Tokenism

• Placation
• Consultation
• Informing

Nonparticipation

• Therapy
• Manipulation

Arnstein continues to define citizen participation as "the redistribution of power that enables the havenot citizens, presently excluded from the political and economic processes, to be deliberately included in the future".

Multiple other "ladders" of participation have been presented, most notably Connor's "A new ladder of citizen participation" (1988), Wiedemann and Femers' "Public Participation in waste management decision making: analysis and management of conflicts" (1993) and Dorcey et al. "Public Involvement in government decision making: choosing the right model" (1994).

See also

• Consensus
• Decision making
• Direct democracy
• Election
• Initiative
• Participatory democracy
• Participatory economics
• participatory management
• Referendum
• Kamal Kar (development specialist)

Participation | Deelneming (onderneming) | Partizipation

External links

• The Citizen's Handbook
• A Ladder of Citizen Participation - Sherry R Arnstein
• The World Bank Participation Sourcebook
• International Association of Public Participation

Development | Politics | Group processes