Managing Stakeholder Involvement in Decision Making: A Comparative Analysis of Six Interactive Processes in the Netherlands

Abstract

Initiatives to encourage and stimulate the involvement of citizens but also various societal organizations in decision making can be seen in a wide variety of European countries. Citizen panels, citizen charters, new types of participation, and other forms are being used to increase the influence of citizens on decision making and to improve the relation between citizens and elected politicians. In the Netherlands a lot of local governments have experimented with interactive decision making that is enhancing the influence of citizens and interest groups on public policy making. The main motives to involve stakeholders in interactive decision making are to diminish the veto power of various societal actors by involving them in decision making, improve the quality of decision making by using the information and solutions of various actors, and bridge the perceived growing cleavage between citizens and elected politicians. In this article six cases are evaluated. The cases are compared on three dimensions: the nature and organization of participation, the way the process is managed (process management), and the relation with formal democratic institutions. These organizational features (in terms of both formal organization and actual performance) are compared with the results of the decision-making processes in the six cases. The article shows that the high expectations of interactive decision making are not always met. It also shows that managing the interactions—called process management in network theory—is very important for achieving satisfactory outcomes.