SCALE AND POLICY IMPACT IN PARTICIPATORY-DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY: LESSONS FROM A MULTI-LEVEL PROCESS

This article addresses two interrelated critiques of participatory-deliberative democratic institutions: that they are beset by problems of scale and that they achieve weak policy impact. This article tests these criticisms through the case of the UK Sustainable Communities Act (SCA), a multi-level process that is relatively strongly institutionalized. The evidence lends qualified support to these critiques. The article differentiates between contextual factors, related to the attempt to institutionalize participatory-deliberative processes within existing socioeconomic and political structures, and design factors to do with institutional and process design. The case of the SCA calls for caution about the claim that multi-level participatory-deliberative processes can overcome problems of scale and policy impact, but the question remains open. The article ends by suggesting that expectations of direct policy impact might be too high. Rather than determinants of policy, multi-level participatory-deliberative processes might function best as agenda-setters.