Democratic legitimacy criteria in interactive governance and their empirical application

Introduction: Governance and Democracy
Whatever ‘governance’ is, it is certainly aimed at involving stakeholders. The literature gives various reasons for the necessity of involving stakeholders and thus why (interactive) governance can be more effective than more classical forms of steering. In general, they fall into three categories (see for instance Kooiman 1993; Kickert et al. 1997; Pierre 2000; Sorensen and Torfing 2007):

1. stakeholders have to be involved because governments are dependent on their resources (‘veto power’ argument);
2. stakeholders are involved because they have specific knowledge and can enhance the quality of the problem definition or even more so the quality and innovative character of the solutions (‘quality’ argument);
3. stakeholders have to be involved to enhance the democratic quality of decision-making in modern network societies (‘democratic legitimacy’ argument)