Participatory democracy has become an unshakable norm and widespread practice. Nowadays, public professionals and citizens regularly encounter each other in participatory practice to address shared problems. But while the frequency, pace, and diversity of their public encounters has increased, communicating productively in participatory practice remains a challenging, fragile, and demanding undertaking that often runs astray. This book explores how citizens and public professionals communicate, why this is so difficult, and what could lead to more productive conversations. This done by compari ... More

Participatory democracy has become an unshakable norm and widespread practice. Nowadays, public professionals and citizens regularly encounter each other in participatory practice to address shared problems. But while the frequency, pace, and diversity of their public encounters has increased, communicating productively in participatory practice remains a challenging, fragile, and demanding undertaking that often runs astray. This book explores how citizens and public professionals communicate, why this is so difficult, and what could lead to more productive conversations. This done by comparing cases of community participation in neighbourhood governance in three European countries (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Italy). An emergent, grounded theory is presented based on interpretive research of the narratives citizens and public professionals tell about participatory practice. The theory of communicative capacity holds that citizens and public professionals tend to sustain habitual communicative patterns that limit their ability to cooperatively solve the problems they are facing together. Therefore, they need the ability to recognise and break through these habitual patterns by adapting the nature, tone, and conditions of conversations to the ‘law of the situation’. Exercising communicative capacity will enable public professionals and citizens to have more integrative encounters leading to shared understandings, joint activities, and cooperative relating. As such, the book presents policy makers, practitioners, students, and academics with a much needed evidence base for understanding and appreciating the often overlooked impact of communicative practices in participatory theory and practice.