Course Description
In many western countries, urban neighborhoods have been both object and site of intensive public policy efforts by public authorities. These involve policies which are specifically aimed at improving the neighborhood, as well as sectoral policies in the areas of education, health or safety, that are implemented at the neighborhood level. An obvious reason for the attention of public authorities is that inner city neighborhoods represent a spatial concentration of multidimensional problems, such as poverty, unemployment, high crime figures, ethnic strife, and physical decay. On second sight, however, much more is going on than that urban policy being simply a response to perceived social problems. For example, neighborhoods are often seen as the site where social cohesion and community bonds are – or should be – forged, with cities and regions being too large to be able to generate community bonds. The absence of community in a neighborhood is usually seen as a sign of the bad “health” of a neighborhood, and, by implication, of a moral gap in the nation as a whole. These developments, the analytical questions they pose, as well as some tentative answers have been at the centre of the course ‘Governance of Cities: Urban Spaces and Public Policy’.
Part of the answers for these ‘wicked’ urban problems has been a shift in public policy with a new found focus on collaborative efforts, and more specifically forms of partnerships in which citizens are an important actor. Many neighborhoods have become laboratories of new democratic governance. Residents have stepped forward to take charge of neighborhood governance, often working in partnership with a host of political and social actors, such as aldermen, administrators, housing corporations, police, social workers and schools. Here too, the empirical and the normative are hard to separate. While it has been amply documented that citizen participation can make a difference in solving intractable policy problems, democratic participation is also put forward as the solution to the alleged deficiencies of representative democracy.
In this seminar we will situate the current vogue for participatory governance in urban settings in the context of approaches to democratic participation. We will present and discuss the major theories of democratic participation. We will also try to disentangle empirical from normative claims in this contested field. Theories of democratic participation approach the subject from three broad frames of democratic governance: representative democracy, markets, and participatory democracy. In the first half of the seminar we will discuss democratic participation from the representative and
market tradition. Halfway the seminar we will present the American philosopher John Dewey’s trenchant criticism of these theories. His main argument is that we cannot
assume that a public that is interested in and willing to participate in the governance of their environment pre-exists. Instead such a public must be created around
concrete issues that are relevant to citizens. With this he changed the terms of the debate on democratic participation by reframing democratic participation as an active,
ongoing, working relation between government and citizens.
In the second half of the seminar we will discuss recent literature on participatory governance in urban areas, both from the policy and the (in our program underrepresented) planning tradition. In doingthis we will raise a number of important questions that center around issues of inclusion, citizen motivation and capacity, democratic accountability, power andconflict. Central in the organization of the seminar is the interplay between theory and practice. If time allows we will organize one field trip to a neighborhood project of citizen participation.
Coordinator
Dr. Hendrik Wagenaar, Room 5a05A, Tel. 527 3895, email: hwagenaar@fsw.leidenuniv.nl.
Teaching format
The class has a carefully thought out didactic organization. It consists of seven three-hour meetings. The meetings all have the following format: Introduction to the readings prepared by students, discussion of the readings, and presentation of assignments. Active participation is thus a key didactic ingredient of this seminar. Prior experience in teaching this material has taught us that advance reading of the material, careful preparation of the assignments and active participation are essential for an effective learning process; Students are expected to attend all classes but can miss a maximum of one meeting. In that case extra work will have to be done; Students send in short comments (1 A4) on the assigned literature preceding every meeting in time for the lecturer to be able to read them. These comments help the lecturer to give feedback on those parts of the material that students struggle with; The seminar meetings are meant to be the shared culmination point of a period of reading and reflection. Normally, there will be a reading assignment as well as a presentation of the reading material by one or more students. Students who are interested in the topic and who have shown sufficient motivation, will be able to write their master’s thesis on the subject with H. Wagenaar and/or in the capstone project New Democratic Governance.
Course Material
-Archon Fung, Empowered Participation. Reinventing Urban Democracy, Princeton
University Press, 2004 – tba
-Other readings will be distributed before class or are available from the internet
Examination
Students will write a final paper. General master students will have to write a 15 page paper. For your paper you will interview one resident and one official to analyze how bothgroups deal with the interaction of participatory and representative democracy in neighborhoods. Research masters will write a more extended paper of 20 pages. Detailed requirements for this paper will posted on Blackboard.
In addition, in case a site visit is organized, each participant writes a five page paper abou tthe visit. In the site visit paper you reflect on what you have seen and heard from the perspective of the literature. The final paper counts for 80% and the site visit paper for 20% of the grade. Participation in class (or the absence thereof) will be weighed in the final grade. The deadline for both papers is: will be announced
For a detailed overview of the classes please view the Blackboard site
Schedule
Lecture:Tuesday 5/4 – 17/05
Time: 12-15u in room SA-21, exept 17/5: 5A29
No lecture on 12/4, now 14/4 from 14-16.30 in 1a37
This schedule is subject to change.