Citizens are demanding greater transparency and accountability from their governments, and seek to participate in shaping the policies that affect their lives. The diffusion of the Internet has raised expectations that electronic tools may increase citizen participation in government decision-making and stop the decline of trust in political institutions. This paper brings together two relevant...

Recent discussions in Public Participation Geographic Information Science (PPGIS) research highlight the importance of examining the local contextual factors that shape the PPGIS process. Through ongoing comparative case-study research, we are specifying the local contextual factors that influence PPGIS production and neighborhood planning activities. Using the case of Milwaukee, this article e...

When facing the challenge of restructuring the energy system, bottom-up initiatives can aid the diffusion of decentralized and clean energy technologies. We focused here on a bottom-up initiative of citizen-funded and citizen-operated photovoltaic power plants. The project follows a case study-based approach and examines two different community initiatives. The aim is to investigate the potenti...

INTRODUCTION Commissioned by the Wisconsin Medical Society in 2003, the Wisconsin Citizen Congress project aims to get at least 5000 physicians and 100,000 citizens in a partnership for health and health care improvement in Wisconsin. The power of activated citizens and a citizen-physician partnership is one of few hopeful answers to current policy failures in health care. Citizen Congress II a...

Initiating and sustaining sufficient levels of participation among residents in low-income and urban neighborhoods have become significant focuses of many initiatives that strive to develop healthy communities. This study examines the factors associated with citizen participation levels in resident leaders and followers in seven low-income neighborhoods in one community. Overall, the findings s...

It is widely argued that increased community participation in government decision making produces many important benefits. Dissent is rare: It is difficult to envision anything but positive outcomes from citizens joining the policy process, collaborating with others and reaching consensus to bring about positive social and environmental change. This article, motivated by contextual problems enc...

Based on an analysis of several municipal e-participation experiences, and of the virtual environments used in these, this article covers key aspects to be considered when designing an electronic Internet-based system for participation at the municipal level, whose aim would be to enhance communication between public officials and citizens while streamlining municipal civic participation and co...

Much of the literature on citizen participation in the budget process links the council-manager form of government with higher levels of citizen participation, assuming the council-manager form represents professional administration. This is contradictory to the reality that different forms of government have “borrowed” features from each other and many now have mixed forms of government (i.e.,...

PARTICIPATION by lay citizens in technically complex political controversies often raises questions about the competence of participants and the quality of their contributions to decision-making. One way of addressing such concerns has been to establish temporary advisory bodies that involve lay people in cooperative deliberation informed by expert advice. Citizen juries, consensus conferences,...