The governance concept in public administration

This chapter elaborates on the analysis of strengths and weaknesses in the deliberative model of democracy that we conducted in previous chapter. In terms of the legitimacy criteria outlined in that chapter, several vulnerabilities and weaknesses were noted. Here, our main contention is that an important strategy for coping with these vulnerabilities and weaknesses consists in seeking appropriate linkages between deliberative devices and devices derived from other models of democracy, in particular pluralist and representative democracy. Since the 1990s, the deliberative model of democracy inspires various experiments in democratic practices. The chapter looks at two environmental forums, one Residential Advisory Board in the Rijnmond region in the Netherlands, and a neighborhood environmental committee in the city of Cleveland in the United States. The analysis reveals that both forums fulfill important signaling and monitoring functions within the system of regional environmental governance.

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