To politicize or to de-politicize, that is the question! On public encounters’ dynamics in collaborative governance processes

Over the last few decades, public encounters have been extended significantly through the realization of so-called ‘collaborative governance’ processes, designed and managed so that citizens can discuss and confront a plurality of viewpoints and arguments together with public officials (managers, planners, technicians) and can convey reasoned recommendations to improve the design and implementation of public policies. Research on collaborative governance has highlighted that several problems arise when technicians and public officials encounter citizens in participatory deliberative arenas (Hoppe 2011; Bartels 2013; Ravazzi 2023; Verloo 2023). Among the various problems, a recent debate criticizes collaborative governance processes for their depoliticizing effect on citizens’ emotional and cognitive attitudes towards public issues, especially when the arena is based on face-to-face interactions between technicians or public officials, who master scientific and technical knowledge, and ordinary citizens, who do not possess specific knowledge. This paper aims at contributing to this debate by disentangling specific mechanisms of the communicative relations that take place when citizens and public officials encounter in participatory/deliberative processes. The findings of an in-depth research on seven ‘public debates’ on major public works in Italy – collaborative governance processes introduced by law from 2021 to 2023 to involve local communities in the planning of major public works through participatory/deliberative processes that aim at making citizens, designers and public managers discuss and co-design large infrastructures – will be presented in order to show that the issue deserves more nuances than a sharp dichotomy between politicization and depoliticization.