John Robinson
University of British Columbia, Canada
Recent years have seen a strong upsurge in participatory processes of citizen engagement. These processes serve multiple functions, ranging from the bottom to the top of Arnstein’s well-known ladder of citizen participation (Arnstein, 1969) but one useful typology is suggested by Stirling (2006; based on Fiorino, 1989; see also the discussion in Bendor et al., 2012), who describes three rationales for such processes: (i) normative (citizens have the right to participate); (ii) substantive (such participation improves the quality of decisions, and (iii) instrumental (it provides increased legitimacy for the eventual decisions).