Reflexivity and participation in communities PT

Examples of factors at different levels, affecting the ‘triangle’ are, for instance:

Level of politics:

• Political culture (democracy, participation, history of social movements)
• Various notion of citizenship (conditional / unconditional): do citizens have a right to be heard /to co-determine – or do they have to “earn” such rights (by learning how to conform, to become educated, to have already achieved certain levels of citizenship competence)
• Perception of the role of the state’s guiding ideological principles (centralism, familialism, nationalism, populism as “participative””, direct democracy etc.
• Public administrative structures that either facilitate participation or represent barriers (for instance Federalism combined with subsidiarity – as against centralism where the “centres of power” are always perceived as being “far away”)

Institutional models:

• Preference for flat or strongly hierarchical organisations
• Organisational culture influenced by entrepreneurial-managerial principles (orientation towards “letting the best talents emerge” for increasing creativity, effectiveness or profit) or by “traditional bureaucracy” (where everybody is an autonomous expert in their own sector, leadership only coordinates)
• Recruitment policies (each function specified ab initio – or each function still to be developed by the personal input of the person recruited)

Educational traditions:

• “streaming”, selectivity of “talents” who can thereby ‘participate’ more actively than in non-selective, comprehensive, inclusive educational settings where the principle of participation by all kinds of talents “levels” the achievements
• Early childhood education models – more participation when educational facilities “take over” from parents or when parent can participate as long as possible in their own education of children 

Structural conditions:

• Rural / urban conditions that structure social contacts
• Centre / periphery; contact and communication infrastructure (whereby physical proximity not necessarily participation enhances)
• Availability of public meeting places; democratically constructed neighbourhoods

It is therefore crucial to investigate what forces cause the respective polarisations in the various national and organisational national contexts and not to develop a universal “thermometer” with which to measure the “participation health” of a country, study programme, research project or practice organisation. 

The factors create multi-dimensional mixes of participation elements and forms that are not linear like the “ladder of citizen participation (Arnstein 1969): for instance a highly centralised state (e.g. the UK) can also give rise to very vociferous civil society (oppositional) “bottom up” movements, whereas participation in Germany (subsidiarity tradition) is much more institutionalised, channelled through “mediating organisations” so that participation takes a more formal, less “critical” form, while in Italy for instance a highly centralised political culture at the same time makes people shift their participation to family, clan, regional or interest-bound structures out of resignation that “real” participation in the complex, bureaucratic and often oppressive forms of state power is impossible right from the beginning. In each case it is difficult to rank the degree of possible participation because for instance in Italy people would not desire to have a greater share in central state affairs and prefer to devote their energies to participation in local and private contexts 

In Finland, the nature of the mix of participation elements seems to be almost opposite to that in Italy; the institutional model for service production rests on a cultural notion of “the state equalling society” (cf. Kettunen 2001), in which there are no general expectations/fears of the state (and in social services, the municipalities) and of its/their institutions not serving the interests of society. But it also means third sector organizations, including, e.g., user’s organizations, are often getting financial support from the state, and they are utilized in relation to service production/as (financially subsidized) service producers (example: in the training of “experts of experience”), while even the interest in expanding “user involvement” seems to have been promoted largely by the public administration (as a means for developing, not substituting or de-professionalizing, public social services.  At the same time, this hardly means any attempts at “radical” forms of “user participation”, and has not, at least thus far, resulted in any common elements of co-production etc. in education while research into these issues seems fairly theoretical in nature.

The co-production of social /educational programmes or projects can produce a type and an intensity of participation in one type of political culture (e.g. UK as ‘opposition’ to the state – for example the “People First” movement) which cannot be directly compared with that of “participation in compensation for the state’s failings or indifference” in the Czech Republic – or the Finnish form of “participation to improve existing professional services”.