Communicative planning as counter-power

ABSTRACT

This article presents a theory of communicative planning in which the power of citizens is conceived as a resource in the promotion of long-term planning against the short-term interests of investors in public planning. Its point of departure is the depiction of three planning paradigms – traditional synoptic, incremental and participatory planning – and a critical discussion of different theories within the latter. In the light of this, it is argued that, in practice, planning authorities most often regard public participation as a problem, rather than as a potential. The article dismisses this conception and (a) conceptualizes planning on the basis of a Habermasian theory of communicative action and power, (b) shows that the participation of citizens is necessary to secure the inclusion of ethical and aesthetic rationalities in the planning process, and also that (c) citizens may constitute a counterpower to short-term investor interests in planning by (d) strengthening the respect for long-term solutions and the common good. This becomes a structural necessity when it comes to securing sustainability and democratic justice in planning. The article conceptualizes the difference between planning and politics, since in the former, power is constituted in the actual process, not given in advance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Conventions

Covenant of Mayors, http://www.eumayors.eu/IMG/pdf/covenantofmayors_text_en.pdf

The Aarhus Convention or UNECEs Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, adopted in Aarhus on June 25 1998.

Notes

1. For example, in Frank Fischer’s and John Forester’s anthology on The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning from 1993.

2. These are both the political decision-makers and their employed planning experts and may in addition be the investor/developer; see below.

3. This group is sometimes an independent actor for whom administrators must devise a plan, for instance when a private construction requires an EIA conduction and approval or a local development plan before being initiated, and sometimes occupies both positions of investor/developer and administrator when, for instance, a new municipal or local development plan for new public constructions is required.

4. Deontological argumentation means that the citizens must be able to orient their arguments towards mutual understanding of what the process should achieve without taking notice of a pre-given goal. For example, that the processes are goal-setting or goal-seeking with regard to optimizing environmental care-taking and to direct the plan to that goal – instead of the opposite, which would be directing the plans of environmental care-taking to a pre-given goal. That is to take environmental care under the precondition that a pre-given goal is realized at first. In the latter case, environmental care-taking is made a means of realizing the pre-given purpose.

5. This concept is defined by Habermas in his main work about democracy, Between Facts and Norms, Polity Press, Cambridge 1996, cf. below.

6. Habermas speaks of different types of discourses, including ethical-political, moral, and juridical discourses, which also deal with normative statements on goods that are part of political negotiations and decisions. It would be going beyond the limits of this article to make further mention of this; see Between Facts and Norms, pp. 157–168, 176–183.

7. Cf. the Aarhus Convention or ‘The UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters’, adopted in Aarhus on 25 June 1998.

8. Cf. in this regard the European association Covenant of Mayors, which has been formed by European municipalities exactly to address these challenges: http://www.covenantofmayors.eu/IMG/pdf/covenantofmayors_text_en.pdf.

9. Obviously, conflicts of interests and attitudes can occur among the citizens themselves as well. However, in contrast to the other actors discussed here, the interests and attitudes of the citizens are not given systemically, but can be chosen freely by individual citizens. Moreover, the actions of citizens in the planning process are oriented towards mutual understanding of such conflicts and thereby to promoting a joint insight and influence.

10. Within the empowerment tradition, there is talk of both empowerment, referring to the formal conditions or the space of possibilities for the actual participation of individuals or groups, and authoritativeness, referring to the development of individuals or groups that renders them capable of exploiting these possibilities (Andersen 2007). Empowerment, then, is not to be regarded as achievable solely by the establishment of the formal requirements for public inclusion in planning, but has to be viewed as the actual processes of inclusion, which means that planners have to strive for de facto inclusion. In this regard, the aspect of authoritativeness also becomes central, since it is in the interest of planners as well to contribute to the authorization of weak or marginalized groups in such a way that they are actually capable of contributing to the planning process as well. Thus authoritativeness can be juxtaposed with responsibility.

11. The concept of counterpower has various origins and basically refers to the fact that a manifestation of power leads to one or more opposite polarities – that is, that asymmetric relations of power create resistance. It originally stems from early Marxism, where the working class is thought of as establishing itself as a counterpower to the domination of capital, that is, resistance and seizure of power. Foucault employed the concept in his formulations on power and resistance as well (he writes: ‘Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power.’ The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, p. 95). The empowerment tradition also references the concept, when it discusses the need of the power of certain groups to be strengthened concerning the relations of power with regard to which they are powerless at the outset. Counterpower is thus, in accordance with the above description of the relativization of power, not an independent or permanent force; it is something that arises in relation to other forms of power.

12. In this regard, reference may be made to a work by the French sociologist and philosopher Jacques Rancière (2007), Hatred of Democracy, which investigates exactly the view, so prevalent in Modernity within the educated elite, that the ignorant masses only derail ‘democracy’ with their ‘populism’, ‘narcissism’, ‘consumerism’, ‘egoism’, etc.