UK Local Government and Public Participation: Using Conjectures to Explain the Relationship

The relationship between local government and public participation is aproblematic one. Despite more than 40 years of good intentions, publicparticipation has been a peripheral activity for local government andpositive outcomes have been hard to find. Whilst offering a range ofplausible explanations for this state of affairs, the literature isnevertheless haphazard and under-theorised. In order to bringorganisation, and borrowing from an approach developed by Klijn andSkelcher (2007), five conjectures developed from the UK experience arepresented and discussed. These are the; developing compatibility;democratic incompatibility; elite rejection; corporate manipulation; andinstitutional constraint conjectures. Implications for policy and forresearch are suggested.[...]