Using Appreciative Inquiry to Engage the Citizenry: Four Potential Challenges for Public Administrators

Abstract

In the United States, calls for new citizen engagement strategies have continued to grow at the local government level. One answer is Appreciative Inquiry. As part of a larger study conducted in 2007, the question was posed to public administrators, “What challenges do you see regarding using an Appreciative Inquiry approach to increase citizen participation in local government?” Findings based on a content analysis of the data identified four challenges in particular. Discussion suggests public managers need to be aware of these challenges but depending on local conditions they can be mitigated or overcome.

Keywords:

• citizen participation
• appreciative inquiry
• public managers
• local government

Notes

¹For example, panels such as “Participatory Policy Making” and “Civic Engagement.”

²These discussions included informal conversations throughout the week by attendees as well as more formal dialogue such as the meeting held by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (2008).

³Examples include, DeLeon and DeLeon (2002) and King and Stivers (1998).

⁴Direct democracy has its origins in the United States primarily in the Populist Movement of the 1890s, the Progressive Movement in the early 1900s and in the writings of various politics and administration scholars since the Progressive Era such as Mary Parker Follett (1918) and John Dewey (1927).

⁵Examples include Friedmann 1973 and McKelvey 1973.

⁶Examples include Citrin 1996 and Lowndes 1995.

⁷There has been an ongoing debate regarding direct versus indirect citizen participation in the United States since the inception of the republic. Some scholars such as Brian Cook (1996) and O. C. McSwite (1997) have posited the origins of the contemporary debate can be traced back to the Federalist/Anti-federalist arguments. In the literature review as well as in the data analysis section of this article many of the traditional arguments are made for both camps. However, the purpose of this work is not to engage or address in any substantive way this debate as it is outside the scope of this research project.

⁸ Warren's (2002) suggested target number of between 20 and 30 interviewees, which is in accordance with other qualitative researchers' suggested sample sizes, was met as well as the requirement that no new information emerge from the interviews as the research progressed. Warren (2002) writes while there are “few reasons set forth for numbers of respondents appropriate in qualitative studies, there seem to be norms … [with] the minimum number of interviews [falling] in the range of 20 to 30” (p. 99).

⁹A full description of the research strategy and design as well as the data collection and analysis for this project is available upon request from the author.

¹⁰Content analysis is an acceptable method to evaluate and interpret data when data are qualitative and deal with an episodic record (Johnson & Reynolds, 2005). In content analysis the researcher identifies themes from textual data using such techniques as identifying keywords-in-context and extracting excerpts and quotes (Ryan & Bernard, 2000).

¹¹While this theme in re negativity and/or negative comments emerged from the data it is important to be clear many scholars and practitioners view negative dissent as an indispensable requirement and even a moral obligation or “duty” in a democratic system of government such as exists in the United States. Negative dissent is essential to maintaining public administrators' and politicians' accountability to the citizenry.

¹²There are those who argue direct citizen participation does not produce a representative sample of the population. However, representativeness is an issue for indirect forms of citizen participation such as voting as well because it has been noted voter turnout statistics (e.g., 50 percent–55 percent in recent decades for presidential elections (Lijphart, 1997; Patterson, 2007)) for elections are not representative of the larger population either and have been on a steady decline in general since the 1960s.

¹³Arguably, administrative discretion is the most powerful tool civil servants wield (e.g., Denhardt & Denhardt, 2006). Warren (2008) defines administrative discretion as “the degree of latitude or flexibility exercised by public administrators when making decisions or conducting any agency business.” Although some respondents downplayed or minimized their discretionary power many scholars maintain practitioners have wide latitude in this area. For example, Warren (2008) writes “[P]ublic administrators are normally not hesitant to exercise broad discretionary power because the reviewing courts tend to routinely defer to agency discretion (i.e., expertise), and also are specifically prohibited by statute from reviewing any agency action precluding judicial review or committed to agency discretion by law [Section 700 of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of 1946, as amended, United States Code: Title 5].”

¹⁴For example, the focus on the positive as being crucial to the Ai process and the concern with the potential negativity surrounding direct citizen engagement processes.

¹⁵ Rohr (1998) acknowledges his approach to ethical decision making is subjective and it is not without ambiguity but maintains it is still useful.

¹⁶For example, the Civil Rights movement and nonviolent protest marches rooted in moral suasion.

¹⁷For example, the role of the Appreciative Administrator developed at length by the author elsewhere.

¹⁸For instance, as the Kettering Institute's Deliberative Democracy model has the potential to do.

¹⁹The right to resist or the right to protection from power, especially tyrannical, oppressive, arbitrary, and capricious power, derived from natural law and natural rights (e.g., Tella, 2004). In the American context more specifically, expounded on in the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, who was drawing primarily on the social contract theory and political philosophy of John Locke (1689) in his Two Treatises of Government.

²⁰This is just one example of a plethora of consensus building strategies available. For instance, see The Consensus Building Handbook (1999) by Susskind, McKearnan, & Thomas-Larmer.

²¹ De Tocqueville's (1835/1945) argument juries comprised of citizens can be civic education opportunities can be expanded to include other mechanisms for educating the citizenry such as public administrators using Ai to engage them.

²²Precluding ancient Athenians such as Plato and Aristotle, starting points for a discussion concerning both procedural and substantive justice may well begin with Rawls (1971), Nozick (1974), and Schaefer (2007).

²³Study on the discourse movement in public administration in the United States might begin with David Farmer (e.g., 1999, 1997) on the right, Charles Fox and Hugh Miller (1996) in the center, and O.C. McSwite (1997) on the left (e.g., King, 2005).

²⁴For example, Ai may work better with a citizen policing initiative rather than with a budgetary process or vice versa. Several policy areas were identified in the larger study and are available upon request from the author.