Geoscience Reference
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approaches, promote 'good' practice, enhance transparency, and demonstrate their
effi cacy and legitimacy to sceptics (Renn et al., 1995; Rowe and Frewer, 2000). Key
questions underpinning this stream of research include: what criteria defi ne effective
participatory processes and outcomes? Does participation make a difference to
environmental governance? Are these impacts good or bad and for what/whom?
How does context infl uence process effectiveness? What methods are appropriate
to answer these questions?
In essence, such questions offer a way of testing whether rationales, claims, and
assumptions about the virtues of participation are actually realised in practice.
Evaluative work remains in its infancy, however. The current situation is defi ned
by a lack of detailed empirical studies and evidence to answer these questions.
These are not recent concerns by any means. Within geography, this second
stream of work stretches back at least as far as Smith's (1984, p. 253) review of
early public participation in Canada in which he called for 'more attention to the
formal evaluation of participatory exercises' and outlined a similar, though some-
what simpler, context-process-outcome model to that shown in fi gure 24.1. Excite-
ment about doing participation (under stream one) means that evaluation has often
been marginalised as little more than an informal or
ad hoc
afterthought. Neglect
is also rooted in diffi culties inherent in the subject-centred and multi-dimensional
nature of participation where, 'whoever is doing the perceiving is crucial to any
understanding of the effectiveness of citizen participation' (Rosener, 1978, p.
458).
Most evaluative attention to date has focused on process effectiveness. This partly
refl ects the emphasis on procedural justice in the deliberative democratic theories
from which a number of evaluative criteria have been derived (e.g., Fiorino, 1990;
Laird, 1993; Webler, 1995). Beyond this, other evaluative criteria have been derived
from the views of individual authors (e.g., Rowe and Frewer, 2000), process par-
ticipants (e.g., Webler et al., 2001), decision makers and participatory researchers/
practitioners (e.g., Burgess and Clark, 2006). Across these studies there are at least
seven broadly accepted effectiveness criteria. These state that participatory processes
should:
1. be representative of all those interested in and affected by a decision and remove
unnecessary barriers to participation (
representativeness and inclusivity
);
2. allow all those involved to put forward their views in interactive deliberation
that develops mutual understanding (
fair deliberation
);
3. provide suffi cient resources (information, expertise, time) for effective participa-
tion (
access to resources
);
4. be transparent about objectives, boundaries, and the relationship of participa-
tion to decision-making (
transparency and accountability
);
5. enhance social learning for all those involved, including participants, specialists,
decision-makers and wider institutions (
learning
);
6. be conducted in an independent and unbiased way (
independence
); and
7. be cost-effective and timely (
effi ciency
).
Process evaluations often apply criteria such as these in a 'check list' fashion to
judge individual cases of participation based on documentary analysis, process
observations, and interviews with participants. For example, Renn et al. (1995)
evaluate eight participatory approaches employed in Europe and North America
