The Challenge of Promoting and Sustaining Meaningful Citizen Participation

Increased interest in achieving more meaningful involvement of citizens in the deliberative process presents many challenges for public administrators. Broad goals of shared partnerships and collaborative relationships between citizens and public managers provide little direction for public administrators. This lack of direction causes frustration and confusion among citizens, public administrators and elected officials. This article reviews the literature on citizen participation and then recommends incremental steps that can be taken to achieve more meaningful public participation. The key factor to achieving more meaningful citizen participation is the presence of clearly articulated goals and objectives.