Citizens and Resource Allocation: Improving Decision Making with Interactive Web‐Based Citizen Participation

Collective consumption and benefit characterize many government services. Moreover, government services are mostly paid for collectively through taxes—there is little or no relationship between the taxes paid by a household and its use of a particular service. Public sector decision makers face complex budget problems with difficult solutions. Involving citizens meaningfully in these decisions has long been a conundrum. The authors teamed up with the town of West Hartford, Connecticut, to develop a Web-based survey to overcome some of these participation problems and help decision makers better understand citizen preferences. The Web survey allowed for real-time interactivity and was tailored to present respondents with trade-offs between service levels and taxes.

[1]  William Simonsen,et al.  Citizen Participation in Resource Allocation , 1999 .

[2]  J. C. Thomas.  Public Involvement and Governmental Effectiveness , 1993 .

[3]  N. Roberts.  Public Deliberation in an Age of Direct Citizen Participation , 2004 .

[4]  A. Franklin,et al.  Are we All Touching the Same Camel? , 2005 .

[5]  B. J. Reed,et al.  New Public Management and Substantive Democracy , 2001 .

[6]  A. Krek.  Rational Ignorance of the Citizens in Public Partic ipatory Planning , 2005 .

[7]  Edward C. Weeks,et al.  The Practice of Deliberative Democracy: Results from Four Large‐Scale Trials , 2000 .

[8]  S. Arnstein,et al.  Ladder of Citizen Participation , 2020 .

[9]  Sherry R. Amstein.  “A Ladder of Citizen Participation” , 1969 .

[10]  Richard C. Box.  Citizen Governance: Leading American Communities Into the 21st Century , 1997 .

[11]  M. Kweit,et al.  The Politics Of Policy Analysis: The Role Of Citizen Participation In Analytic Decisionmaking , 1984 .

[12]  J. C. Thomas.  Public Participation in Public Decisions: New Skills and Strategies for Public Managers , 1995 .

[13]  Thomas I. Miller,et al.  Standards of Excellence: U. S. Residents' Evaluations of Local Government Services , 1991 .

[14]  Bill Simonsen,et al.  Attempting Non-Incremental Budget Change in Oregon: An Exercise in Policy Sharing , 1996 .

[15]  I. Rubin,et al.  Budgeting: A Guide For Local Governments , 1997 .

[16]  Ned Crosby,et al.  Citizen Panels: A New Approach to Citizen Participation. , 1986 .

[17]  P. Deleon.  The Democratization of the Policy Sciences , 1992 .

[18]  Renée A. Irvin,et al.  Citizen Participation in Decision Making: Is It Worth the effort? , 2004 .

[19]  C. Ebdon.  The Relationship between Citizen Involvement in the Budget Process and City Structure and Culture , 2000 .

[20]  Aimee L. Franklin,et al.  Citizen Participation in Budgeting Theory , 2006 .

[21]  Mohamad G. Alkadry.  Deliberative Discourse between Citizens and Administrators , 2003 .

[22]  Lyn Kathlene,et al.  Enhancing citizen participation: Panel designs, perspectives, and policy formation , 1991 .

[23]  G. Tullock,et al.  The calculus of consent : logical foundations of constitutional democracy , 1962 .

[24]  D. Dillman.  Mail and internet surveys: The tailored design method, 2nd ed. , 2007 .

[25]  J. Kiraly.  Standards of excellence. , 1976, The Journal of the American Dental Association (1939).

[26]  Mark D. Robbins,et al.  Reasonableness, Satisfaction, and Willingness to Pay Property Taxes , 2003 .

[27]  Joseph E. Stiglitz,et al.  Economics of the Public Sector , 1986 .

[28]  E. Feigenbaum.  Simon, Herbert A. , 2006 .

[29]  C. King,et al.  The Question of Participation: Toward Authentic Public Participation in Public Administration , 1998 .