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Stakeholder Participation
Introduction
There is a gradual shift in the planning systems to allow better participation of various groups to planning processes. This is due to the growing awareness that plans and strategies need to be firmly embedded in the civil society to be efficient. It is also linked to a general shift in planning strategies, where the impact of public interventions goes through coordination and impulse provision rather than publicly funded actions as such. Finally, participative approaches help local and regional authorities to respond flexibly and creatively in a more complex, diverse and dynamic environment (Kooiman 2000).
One can consider that participatory planning has two main components. The regulatory component relates to the legally grounded right of individuals and groups to express their opinion on specific plans produced by the administration. The more dynamic component derives from autonomous initiatives taken by members of the civil society, who develop activities on the basis of locally available resources and needs that can be incorporated in local and regional development plans. The objective for planners is to make sure these two components of participation are well integrated.
So far, however, most municipalities have preferred formal community participation rather than more dynamic modes of interaction with the civil society, especially in the Nordic countries. This may be due to the high level of municipal autonomy, as one can observe that the impetus to develop more informal and bold types of civil society involvement is greater in countries where municipalities have less power.
Scotland until recently followed a similar trend to the Nordic countries. However, wider stakeholder participation and evidence based planning has been strong focus of the UK government since 1997. The participation in planning agenda in Scotland is even further defined as a direct consequence of devolution (1999) and NGO pressure. This is confirmed by the recently produced government planning document PAN 81 ‘Community Engagement’. Finally, the Local Government in Scotland Act (2003) provides for an integration of local stakeholders in planning activities. This act creates a framework for a form of community planning which, as pointed out by Bowman (2006),
“make[s] sure people and communities are genuinely engaged in the decisions
made on public services which affect them”.
The positive experiences of participatory planning in the work on Agenda 21 has however encouraged some local communities in the Nordic countries to develop a more generalised approach to participatory planning. This development took mostly place from the year 2000 onwards. The attempts to promote participatory approaches to planning were not based on any specific model, but built rather pragmatically on previously experienced methods in co-operative planning and management.
Participative planning vs. representative democracy?
However, there is a concern how to maintain an appropriate balance between planners and the various interest groups. Indeed, planners have a democratic legitimacy, insofar as the legal framework within which they intervene is determined elected representatives, who also control and supervise their decisions. The level of participation of interest groups on the other hand depends upon their wealth, capacity to establish representative organisation and connections with established political powers and senior officials. Public authorities therefore have a responsibility to re-establish a balance between the diverse interest groups, and to promote the expression of social groups who do not spontaneously intervene in planning processes.
The objectives of participatory planning can be multiple, leading to participation at different stages in the planning process. The main objectives of participatory planning are enhanced legitimacy, improved steering capacity, and more efficient implementation. The enhanced legitimacy is obtained by giving stakeholders the opportunity to express their opinions before the plan is finalised. The improved steering capacity presupposes that the groups which the plan should affect are represented in relevant steering groups, and help following up the impacts of measures that are taken. Finally, participatory planning can contribute to make the implementation of plans more efficient, insofar as it facilitates communication between the authorities and the recipients of measures.
Participatory planning in some respects challenges traditional views on representative democracy. It reflects the view that society is manifold and complex and that the legitimate conflicts that arise cannot solely be addressed through elections. The process of consensus building requires a more comprehensive recognition of the diversity of social and economic interests.
Participation as a way of sharing and producing knowledge
Beyond the need to embed strategies in the civil society, participative processes provide a knowledge of local conditions which is otherwise not available to the planner. This knowledge however does not easily integrate in the planning process: it is different in nature from that of experts, consultants and administrators. On the one the hand, the knowledge claims to be factual, value-neutral and scientifically based. On the other, participative processes involve elements of knowledge that can be based on individual perceptions, biased to support the interests of specific groups or explicitly based on convictions or ideology. While both types of knowledge are valid on their own terms, integrating them in a planning process proves challenging.
The very process of participative planning also creates knowledge. As people meet and interact they establish different types of organisational arrangements and develop a competence on how to make common projects work in their specific community. The challenge for public authorities is to systematise and generalise this knowledge, so as to reproduce efficient processes in different contexts and at different times. These efforts to systemise knowledge and transfer it into guidelines and information presuppose a long term perspective in the planning process.
