Design and Management of Participatory Public Policy Making

In The Netherlands many local governments make public policy in a participatory way. Civilians and other interested parties are invited by policy makers to design public policy cooperatively. As a consequence many actors and information are embedded in the policy making process, because these actors describe the issue(s) and solutions for the policy problem differently. Some municipals are able to cope with the growing complexity of the policy process, others not. In order to deal with the growing process complexity, local governments hire independent process professionals. These process professionals design and manage the participatory policy process. However this is far from easy in practice. The process-architects and process-managers are faced with a lot of dilemmas in their process-design and process-management activities of the participatory public policy process. This article will describe some dilemmas for process-design as well as for process-management of participatory public policy making, and ...