Citizen Engagement in Public Policy and Public Management

As soon as direct citizen participation began to be approached as a strategy to develop public policy it is commonly believed that it encourages capacity building and more fair, effective, and legitimate policies. Evidence shows uneven results. As it stands, direct citizen participation is a reality that involves resource investment. In this work, we review its technical implications, which result in a wide array of dilemmas that must be balanced when designing participative instruments and strategies. Five dimensions are thus systematized, and their cross sections give space and options to the design of participative offer. The general approach is to set up the need to develop analytical capacity to delimit the practice and improve the design of institutional participative offer.