Participatory Democracy and local representation: A Czech Case Study

There have been rapid development in participatory and deliberative techniques that many local governments are implementing to improve their policy making, to enhance trust of the citizens and generally to improve government performance. Participatory budgeting, neighborhood committee, participatory urban planning or emotional maps are named among many others. Moreover, there is a growing consensus about benefiting role of a more inclusive way of steering in which the citizens are involved. Although most of those mechanisms were thoroughly described and some even empirically scrutinized (Michels & De Graaf 2010), we do know little about what cause that some local government prefer local participatory policy making to more traditional one. The responsibilities lies on municipal councilors who can influence the path the municipality is about to take. Today, councilors have to operate in series off complex and shifting governance networks that shape the policies they undertake (Denters and Rose, 2005). They have to deal with mushrooming citizen’s initiative and also with NGOs that are putting forward more deliberative and participatory mechanisms at the local level. Yet it is primarily of councilors’ decision how the municipality will deal with these challenges. In the Czech Republic as a post-communist country characterized by low trust and civic engagement there is perception among citizens that politicians don’t want to hear their voice. Although from a recent survey among Czech councilors a very high support for a greater citizen involvement was expressed (Ryšavý & Šaradín 2011), only minority of municipalities fully make use of modern participatory techniques in practice. This paper thus aims at explaining what are the factors that lead to more deliberative and participatory government? Is it a certain leadership style or "contextual" factors like social capital or economic development that affects councilors’ decisions? How do councilors perceive citizens engagement? Are they aware of pros and cons? The paper will qualitatively examine case of ten Czech municipalities. Municipalities were selected according to preliminary quantitative research among 205 municipalities with extended scope (ORPs). Municipalities were simply evaluated based on presence of number of participatory techniques. The selections follows the most similar case design as five best “performing” municipalities are compared to ones which barely employ participatory techniques. This qualitative approach best suits to the research of role the councilors play within complex governance network. It will help to better understand those areas that cannot be properly described, evaluated and understood by mean of quantitative approach.