Recent experiments in participatory democracy, such as Iceland’s 2013 Constitutional Reform process to Chicago’s annual participatory budgeting process, have empowered members of the public to directly make policy decisions. These new participatory democratic institutions depend on citizens having capacity to organize new institutions and the capacity to participate in them. This makes the question how communities might build capacity to organize new participatory democratic institutions arguably the single greatest challenge to realizing an empowered vision of public life. This dissertation examines what capacities are needed to organize new participatory democratic institutions and presents an organizing model that demonstrates how communities might leverage existing assets to design training processes, tools, and organizational structures towards building those capacities. Based on two case studies conducted over a 9-month campaign to build capacity for participatory budgeting in a new community, the Participatory Democratic Organizing Model argues that communities need technical, government, and grassroots capacity to organize new participatory democratic institutions, and that university assets can be leveraged to conduct pilot participatory democratic processes that build technical and grassroots capacity in the short term. By building on existing relationships with government officials and consistently communicating expertise gained from pilot work, the grassroots and technical capacities developed from pilot participatory democratic processes can be connected to government capacity to formally kickstart a new municipal participatory democratic institution. Study 1 examines how grassroots organizers might leverage university assets to design training processes, tools, and organizational structures for a pilot participatory democratic process that begins building capacity for participatory budgeting. In this design research study, I found that a sociotechnical approach for supporting separate-but-bridged participation pathways for decision making and policy development both helped decrease time, knowledge, and motivation barriers for community representatives engaged in agenda setting and decision making, and built capacity among organizers, students, and volunteers recruited and trained to support the more resource-intensive policy development “bridging” pathway to continue organizing to institutionalize participatory budgeting beyond the 3-month pilot campaign. Study 2 examines what capacities are needed to formally organize a new participatory democratic institution, and how a participatory policy development pilot might be connected to building those capacities. Specifically, Study 2 presents the design of a grassroots campaign to build capacity for participatory budgeting (PB) in a new community. By building on the capacity developed over the policy development pilot, seeking policy feedback from experts in community groups, and consistently communicating interest and expertise to government officials, I found that grassroots organizers and pilot developers were able to build technical capacity to formally organize a new participatory democratic institution. In addition to this technical capacity, I also found that grassroots capacity—having a base of committed, trained volunteers to support outreach, facilitation, and policy development—and government capacity of a supportive city council, staff, and at least two staff dedicated to the new institution also need to be built to start new participatory democratic institutions. This research advances theoretical knowledge in learning sciences, political science, organizational and institutional theory, and human-computer interaction. For learning scientists, the Participatory Democratic Organizing Model extends community-engaged learning models to teach learners how to impact local policy decisions. For political scientists, this research addresses a gap in the literature on building capacity to support participatory democracy and provides a concrete organizing model for community members to build capacity for empowered democratic participation. For institutional and organizational theorists, this model presents a core set of organizing principles by which future researchers and practitioners can compile an organization dedicated to participatory democracy from scratch. Finally, for sociotechnical designers and human-computer interaction researchers, this work contributes a methodological approach that extends participatory design approaches for infrastructuring to community-based participatory researchers designing to organize new participatory democratic publics. Practically, this research provides concrete design principles that can guide future community organizers in identifying existing grassroots assets, bootstrapping to build additional capacity, and investing in training the people for whom that democracy was designed.

Creator

• Lu, Kristine J.

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-bh1j-es39

Subject

• Social sciences education
• Design
• Political science

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• etdadmin_upload_1004866
• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:16675

Keyword

• participatory design
• organizing
• civics education
• capacity building
• participatory budgeting
• participatory democracy

Date created

• 2023-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright