Public Participation and Regulatory Public Policies: An Assessment from the Perspective of Douglasian Cultural Theory

The objective of this paper is to evaluate how public consultation encourages participation from different points of view and if there is a real transfer of power to the society in policy-making. Public participation is a means of inclusion that allows decision-makers to know the real needs of society, and it promotes the elaboration of public policies, leading to greater acceptance. Public participation must be encouraged and the opinions of various groups in the society must be considered. This paper adopted the perspective of Douglasian Cultural Theory to investigate the contribution of public consultations in the formulation of regulatory policies for the food sector in Brazil. The results of this research indicate that public participation remains restricted to some groups in society and that the public authority should dedicate more efforts to offer mechanisms that foster more plural and diversified public participation.

[1]  D. Caulkins.  Is Mary Douglas's Grid/Group Analysis Useful for Cross-Cultural Research? , 1999 .

[2]  Marco Verweij,et al.  Is time running out ? The case of global warming , 2003 .

[3]  Kai Wegrich,et al.  DODGY KEBABS EVERYWHERE? VARIETY OF WORLDVIEWS AND REGULATORY CHANGE , 2010 .

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

[5]  A. C. Gil.  Métodos e técnicas de pesquisa social , 2008 .

[6]  S. Rayner.  Uncomfortable knowledge: the social construction of ignorance in science and environmental policy discourses , 2012 .

[7]  Hartmut Günther.  Pesquisa qualitativa versus pesquisa quantitativa: esta é a questão? , 2006 .

[8]  Tim Bale.  Towards a ‘cultural theory’ of parliamentary party groups , 1997 .

[9]  Virginie Mamadouh,et al.  Grid-group cultural theory: an introduction , 1999 .

[10]  Paulo Henrique de Souza Bermejo,et al.  Open Innovation and Social Participation: A Case Study in Public Security in Brazil , 2015, EGOVIS.

[11]  J. Spickard,et al.  A Guide to Mary Douglas's Three Versions of Grid/Group Theory , 1989 .

[12]  Frank N. Laird,et al.  Participatory Analysis, Democracy, and Technological Decision Making , 1993 .

[13]  Perri,et al.  Introduction to the symposium: an institutional theory of cultural biases, public administration and public policy , 2016 .

[14]  Paulo Henrique de Souza Bermejo,et al.  Desafio de ideias para o governo aberto: o caso da Polícia Militar de Minas Gerais – Brasil , 2016 .

[15]  Philip J. Shrives,et al.  CONSULTATION IN THE POLICY PROCESS: DOUGLASIAN CULTURAL THEORY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACCOUNTING REGULATION IN THE FACE OF CRISIS , 2016 .

[16]  J. Koppenjan,et al.  Public participation in China: sustainable urbanization and governance , 2007 .

[17]  M. Reed.  Stakeholder participation for environmental management: A literature review , 2008 .

[18]  Frank Fischer,et al.  Citizen participation and the democratization of policy expertise: From theoretical inquiry to practical cases , 1993 .

[19]  Ann Macintosh,et al.  E-participation and Governance: Widening the net , 2005 .