Join us for a seminar with Nicolas Jager, Assistant Professor at Wageningen University & Research. Does public participation improve environmental governance and foster collective action? What works, when, and how?

Participation and collaboration of citizens and organized stakeholders in public decision-making is widely believed to improve environmental governance outputs and lead to enhanced collective action. However, empirical evidence on the benefits of participatory governance is largely scattered across small-N case studies. To synthesize the available case-based evidence, we conducted a broad case-based meta-analysis across 22 Western democracies, including 305 individual cases of public environmental decision-making. Our analysis provides insights to the questions: How do ‘more’ participatory decision-making processes compare against ‘less’ participatory ones in fostering – or hindering – strong environmental governance outputs, (i.e. environmental provisions in plans, agreements or permits)? Which design features make a difference? What role does the decision-making context play? How do results change if we control for the intentions of the leading governmental agency? And how do participatory outputs lead to environmental collective action? 

Fur further reading, Nicolas recommends the paper “Does stakeholder participation improve environmental governance? Evidence from a meta-analysis of 305 case studies”. Find it here.

This seminar is online. If you would like to attend, please send an e-mail to collective-action@rsm.nl and you will receive a Teams-invite shortly.