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Advantages Of Public Participation In Decision Making

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1. Policy makers should always engage the public in all policy decisions. Argue for or against and explain your view.

I believe that public participation should be at the heart of good governance and policy decision making. However, the nature of engagement itself is highly contextual – depending on governance culture determined by elements like levels of corruption, transparency, equity and inclusiveness.

While theory on, the subject argues for and against the notion of public participation (Irvin et al, 2004) , in my opinion the benefits of public engagement far outweigh the negative aspects. Moreover, the advantages of public participation are several especially for countries where passivity is culturally embedded or power distance is high and political gridlocks occur frequently. …show more content…

The Arhus Convention on Access to Information and Public Participation in Decision-Making (UNECE, 1998) which was ratified by 46 countries in 2005, recommends three key domains where public engagement should take place:
• Participation in decisions on specific activities (Article 6)
• Participation concerning plans, programs and policies relating to the environment (Article 7) and
• Participation during the preparation of executive regulations and/or generally applicable legally binding normative instruments (Article 8)

While the convention …show more content…

Ambitions reform agendas have failed due to poorly articulated mission, value, and impact (Lavigna, 2014) that prevent the stakeholders (workforce) from seeing the bigger picture. This poses an additional challenge that is unique to the public sector. Another aspect that inhibits change in the public sector is the imbalance between authority and responsibility among government officials. As a result public managers are burdened with immense responsibilities but very little authority to initiate and sustain organizational

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