Towards Interactive Governance : Embedding Citizen Participation in Local Government

Abstract

In this article, we explore the embedding of citizen participation in local government. Our study combines and synthesizes the focal aspects of two theoretical streams—citizen participation and interactive governance—in a novel way to identify, illustrate, and analyze the layers of governance required for citizen participation. The analysis shows how the institutional pervasiveness and holistic nature of citizen participation affects the strategic, executive, and citizen interface layers of governance and their interconnections. The research contributes to the literature on embedding citizen participation in government by emphasizing the need to address citizen participation as a profound question of governance and management.