Selection of participatory formats as success factor for effective risk communication and decision-making processes. Conclusions from a systematic empirical format comparison

Abstract

The article contributes arguments to the discussion about the effectiveness of dialogue and participation within the field of risk communication and decision-making, considering the special issue of societal resilience. The contribution summarises selected empirical findings of a systematic comparison of participatory formats based on a multi method and a multi concept approach as well as a comprehensive data base. The analyses detected systematic differences between the formats according to their internal impact on the persons involved and their external impact. These differences can be explained by procedural features of the formats. Appropriate format selection turned out to be an important success factor for developing effective participatory projects. The article sketches the opportunities for synthesising research findings to assess and compare formats. In addition, the potentials of how integrative research can structure and refine the available knowledge are illustrated, so that coordinators and organizers in the field are supported, for instance in selecting formats appropriately. Systematic knowledge of success factors does not only facilitate the practical field work. A couple of arguments from interdisciplinary literature indicate that effective interactive communication and decision-making can be seen as a functional and relevant resource in democratic systems to strengthen the society to react effectively against threats, and to cope with development issues. Effective dialogue and participation, therefore, can be understood as resources for strengthening the social resilience of modern democratic societies.

Keywords:

• dialogue
• participation
• format comparison
• resilience

Acknowledgements

The partner institutions ‘Wissenschaft im Dialog’ (Berlin) and ZIRIUS (formally ‘ZIRN’, based at the University of Stuttgart) conducted the extensive research project, which delivered the data for the current study, together. We thank all institutions and persons involved for their support, especially the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for funding the initiative.

Notes

1. To keep the focus on the elaboration of the research questions, complex discussions of concepts or statistical procedures were avoided. For instance, the concepts ‘deliberation’ and ‘participation’ can be differentiated (Goldschmidt 2014, 39–74), but they are used interchangeably in this article.

2. ‘Formats’ are abstract concepts for process forms. Each format comprises a group of participatory events which share comparable characteristics. For example, the format ‘citizens’ conference’ can be differentiated from a ‘consensus conference’ according to the number of participants, the process designs or the way interaction and communication within the event are organised.

3. The deliberation aims to develop a common perspective by a role-based interactive communicational exchange in the form of a competition of arguments (Habermas 1998, 138 f. a. 438; Habermas 1991, 161; Chambers 1992, 172; Cohen 1999b, 412 f.). If actors, involved in a deliberation, share the same perspective, they build the common collective perspective (Feindt 2001, 147). If there are opposing perspectives, one side can try to persuade the other until the positions are transformed sufficiently. It is possible that a common perspective cannot be developed (Habermas 1991, 165 f.). Although this is not an intended result, a deliberation that fails can contribute to reduce societal uncertainty, since dialogue results can build the base for other solutions (Habermas 1991, 166). For instance, a deliberation can reveal the existing perspectives and make the argumentative justifications of one party more comprehensible for the others. Putting these arguments together, there are chances to succeed with an effective dialogue-orientated communication strategy to persuade social actors and to develop support and acceptance for specific societal development options.

4. ‘Aggregation’ processes (Cohen 1999a, 75) merge individual voices to a preference structure consisting of different and often separable sub perspectives (aggregates). Voting procedures are a good example. Normative democracy theory (Habermas 1991, 16) maintains that there is no functional equivalent to dialogue and deliberation.

5. Inglehart often speaks about a decline in trust, but he also differentiates the trust decline between single institutions (Bentele 1998, 309; Inglehart 1998, 410). Therefore, the rather neutral term ‘development’ was used. This complex issue of trust decline is not discussed here in detail.

6. Actually, this is also supported by the concept of deliberation, which can be understood as an intentional and, therefore, inherent effective exchange of arguments (cf. Footnote 3) with a closure (Stern and Fineberg 1996, 129).

7. The T-Test compares mean values of two groups (type for independent samples) or two time points (type for dependent samples). The selection of the test type depended from the analysis question. The T-Test was most appropriate statistical procedure in the given test setting since it is robust against several biases especially in small sample analyses, which were conducted for validation purposes for instance at level of individual events. In addition, mean differences can be used as effect sizes in statistical meta-analysis, which is an option for future research on this research field.

8. An important side condition for methodical decisions was that the analysis level of individual events (within a format) was always considered for validation of results, further exploration or controlling purposes, for instance for investigating the influence of the contexts’ conditions.