The American Review of Public Administration

 

Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here for free access to the SAGE eReference platform!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via ISI Web of Science (1)
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Wagenaar, H.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati  
What's this?
The American Review of Public Administration, Vol. 37, No. 1, 17-50 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0275074006296208

Governance, Complexity, and Democratic Participation

How Citizens and Public Officials Harness the Complexities of Neighborhood Decline

Hendrik Wagenaar

Leiden University, the Netherlands

This article applies complexity theory to urban governance. It is argued that expert-based, hierarchical-instrumental policy making encounters insurmountable obstacles in modern liberal democracies. One of the root causes of this erosion of output legitimacy is the complexity of social systems. Complexity is defined as the density and dynamism of the interactions between the elements of a system. Complexity makes system outcomes unpredictable and hard to control and, for this reason, defies such well-known policy strategies as coordination from the center, model building, and reduction of the problem to a limited number of controllable variables. It is argued that participatory and deliberative models of governance are more effective in harnessing complexity because they increase interaction within systems and thereby system diversity and creativity. Using empirical data from research on citizen participation in disadvantaged neighborhoods in the Netherlands, the author shows (a) that neighborhoods can fruitfully be seen as complex social systems and (b) the different ways in which citizen participation is effective in harnessing this complexity.

Key Words: participatory democracy • complexity theory • urban governance • policy theory


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?