A systematic review of the literature on determinants of public managers' attitudes toward public participation

ABSTRACT

Research on public managers’ attitudes towards local public participation has expanded rapidly during the past two decades. Studies show that public managers’ attitudes towards public participation play an important role in the success of participatory practices. However, there is a lack of systematic evidence on determinants of public managers’ attitudes towards public participation. In this paper, we conduct a systematic literature review of determinants of public managers’ attitudes towards public participation. Based on evidence from 99 peer-reviewed journal articles, we establish four categories of determinants: 1. Personal characteristics; 2. Process characteristics; 3. Organisational structures and culture; and 4. Contextual features. The results suggest that public managers’ attitudes towards public participation are multi-dimensional and context specific. This study may help policymakers manage public managers’ negative attitudes towards public participation or increase their positive attitudes towards public participation through professional training and education.

KEYWORDS:

• Public managers
• public participation
• attitudes
• determinants
• systematic literature review

Introduction

Public managers’ attitudes towards public participation have been identified as an important predictor of public participation efforts (Ianniello et al. 2018; Liao and Schachter 2018; Yang and Callahan 2007). Public managers influence the design of participatory arrangements (Eckerd and Heidelberg 2019), decide the degree to which citizens’ input is incorporated into administrative decisions (Buckwalter 2014; Yang and Callahan 2007), control administrative resources, and are the primary source of information for elected officials (Liao and Schachter 2018). Without public managers willing to engage with the public, it is unlikely that citizens’ input gets incorporated into the administrative decision-making process (Yang and Callahan 2007). However, up to now no systematic analysis of public managers’ attitudes towards public participation has been conducted to shed light on the determinants of these attitudes (Amirkhanyan & Lambright, 2018; Liao and Ma 2019).

Existing research indicates that public managers hold a wide range of attitudes towards public participation (Hong 2015; Liao and Schachter 2018). Previous literature reviews have focused on the obstacles that hinder successful public participation (Ianniello et al. 2018), on how to increase the use of public participation in local government (Schafer 2018), or on whether public participation is worth the effort (Irvin and Stansbury 2004). Crucially, these studies provide little information on the determinants of public managers’ attitudes towards public participation. Knowledge of these determinants may help policymakers manage negative attitudes, or help increase public managers’ positive attitudes towards public participation through training and education. Furthermore, evidence on determinants of public managers’ attitudes towards public participation remains largely scattered across different academic disciplines, which often focus on similar examples of public participation but through different disciplinary lenses.

In this paper, we develop a comprehensive multi-disciplinary framework of determinants of public managers’ attitudes towards public participation and formulate the following research question:

What are the known determinants of public managers’ attitudes towards public participation?

To answer this question, we conducted a systematic literature review of determinants of public managers’ attitudes towards public participation following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) protocol (Liberati et al. 2009; Moher et al. 2015) of English language, peer-reviewed, empirical studies published in public administration, political science, and urban studies journals between 1969 and the summer of 2019. This paper demonstrates that evidence on public managers’ attitudes towards public participation is on the rise. Based on the results, we inductively group determinants of public managers’ attitudes towards public participation into four categories: personal characteristics, process characteristics, organisational structure and culture, and contextual features.

In the first part of the paper, we define public managers’ attitudes towards public participation, present our research approach and highlight the criteria by which relevant studies were selected and included into the analysis. In the second part, we present the results of our analysis and discuss the determinants examined in the relevant studies. In the final part of the paper, we conclude by highlighting and discussing the main findings and contributions of this systematic literature review.

Attitudes towards public participation

Conceptualising public managers’ attitudes towards public participation is not a straightforward task. In general, the literature distinguishes between two perspectives on public managers’ attitudes towards public participation. On the one hand, the democratic perspective underscores the normative desirability of public participation. According to this perspective, public participation can bring about important educative and empowering benefits, strengthen public trust in government and stimulate the attainment of citizenship skills (Nabatchi 2010b; Pateman 1970; Roberts 1997). On the other hand, the instrumental perspective underscores the pragmatic value of public participation in relation to the performance and goal attainment of public organisations. According to this perspective, public managers are motivated to use public participation in so far as it contributes to administrative and policy objectives at low cost (Eckerd and Heidelberg 2019; Moynihan 2003; Thomas, Poister, and Ertas 2010). In practice, democratic and instrumental perspectives on public participation overlap. However, ‘[in as far as democratic] perspectives are held by administrators, they are secondary to an instrumentalist perspective’ (Eckerd and Heidelberg 2019, 145).

In general, an attitude can be defined as ‘a relatively enduring organization of beliefs, feelings, and behavioural tendencies’ (Hogg and Vaughan 2017, 154). We follow research by Liao and Schachter (2018, 1288) and define public managers’ attitudes towards public participation as ‘the extent that a [public] manager favors or disfavors direct citizen involvement in administrative decision-making’. Attitudes about public participation are closely related to public managers’ actual participation behaviour. Managers with a positive attitude towards public participation are more likely to allow the public to participate (Liao and Schachter 2018; Yang and Callahan 2007).

Methods

For the purpose of this study, we collected, structured and analysed previously published research on public managers’ attitudes towards public participation in administrative decision-making following the PRIMSA protocol (Liberati et al. 2009; Moher et al. 2015). The PRISMA protocol has been developed in the context of the healthcare sciences to increase the reliability and replicability of literature reviews and meta-analysis. The systematic literature review approach stimulates the collection of ‘all empirical evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria to answer a specific research question’ and uses explicit systematic methods that are selected with a view to minimising bias (Liberati et al. 2009, 2). The PRISMA protocol provides guidelines on the identification, eligibility, screening and inclusion of relevant articles, as well as on data extraction, analysis, synthesis and the reporting of findings (Moher et al. 2015).

Eligibility criteria

Records were eligible when they discussed public managers’ stated and observed attitudes towards public participation in administrative decision-making. We defined public participation following Nabatchi and Amsler (2014, 65S) as: any activity that allows ‘members of the public (i.e., those not holding office or administrative positions in government) […] [to] personally and actively exercise voice such that their ideas, concerns, needs, interests, and values are incorporated in governmental decision making’. Records on public participation at a local, regional, national, and supranational level were considered eligible. We purposefully excluded records referring to co-creation or co-production. Our definition of public participation excludes interactive or citizen-initiated policymaking, or collaboration in service provisions (Brandsen, Steen, and Verschuere 2018). The literature on co-creation and co-production has already been thoroughly reviewed by Voorberg, Bekkers, and Tummers (2015).

Eligible records included studies about public participation between citizens (or their representatives) and public managers (or administrations/organisations). We emphasise that this review was specifically focused on public managers' attitudes towards public participation. We excluded records focusing on the attitudes of elected officials, political executives, representatives and lawmakers, or any other kind of politician, as well as records on citizens’, business’, or civil society organisations’ attitudes towards public participation in administrative decision-making.

Furthermore, we included empirical studies only. Since public participation research is often practice oriented, many otherwise eligible studies include reused information and practitioner recommendations that may not be evidence-based. All forms of empirical research (case studies, surveys, experiments, etc.) were deemed eligible. In addition, we focused on peer-reviewed records, written in English and published in international journals in the fields of public administration, political science, and urban studies. These are the fields in which public participation is studied most regularly. Finally, we included records published between 1969 and (summer) 2019. We chose the year 1969 as starting date because this was the year in which the seminal article Ladder of Public Participation by Sherry Arnstein (1969) was published.

Search strategy

Potentially eligible records were identified using standardised searches in two electronic reference databases of internationally published peer-reviewed studies, Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science and Elsevier’s Scopus.

The search queries consisted of three levels with multiple keywords aimed at scanning records’ titles and abstracts. We organised search queries using Boolean operators, with the [OR] Boolean to increase coverage (between keywords) and the [AND] Boolean to add specificity (between the levels). Whenever possible we used the truncation Boolean [*] to include plural variants of keywords. At the first level, search queries specified the subject areas (Public Administration, Political Science, and Urban Studies). At the second level, the search query specified the two sets of keywords for which records were scanned (‘Public Official’, ‘Official’, ‘Manager’, ‘Public servant’, ‘Executive’, ‘Public professional’, ‘City Manager’, ‘Bureaucrat’, ‘Bureaucratic’, ‘Public Worker’, ‘Director’, ‘Policy Maker’, ‘Decision Maker’; and ‘Engagement’, ‘Public Participation’, ‘Participation’, ‘Involvement’, ‘Inclusion’, ‘Deliberative Democracy’, ‘Interactive Governance’, ‘Deliberative Engagement’, ‘Responsiveness’). At the third level, the document types (articles and early access) and the language (English) were specified (appendix 1).

The titles and abstracts, and if necessary, the full text of all identified records, were screened on eligibility. Studies that were found to (a) explore, describe, or analyse public managers’ individual attitudes towards (b) public participation in public administration decision-making processes were selected.

Identification and data extraction

The final search was conducted on 27 August 2019. We identified n = 2,185 records using Web of Science and n = 1,538 records using Scopus. After merging the results from both searches, we removed 713 duplicate records. We then performed a title-based screening of all 3,010 remaining records and removed 1,855 records unrelated to our topic of analysis. Third, we assessed the abstracts of the remaining 1,155 records based on our eligibility criteria and selected 108 eligible records. A further nine records were removed after full-text reading, bringing the total number of records included in this systematic literature review to n = 99 (appendix 2). Figure 1 presents the flow diagram of the article search and selection process.

Figure 1. Flow diagram of the article selection process.

We extracted n = 664 relevant text fragments through the open coding of full-text records using the qualitative data analysis software NVivo. The process of coding text-fragments into categories of determinants was inductive and continued until saturation was reached (Booth, Papaioannou, and Sutton 2012; Strauss and Corbin 1990). All text-fragments were sorted according to topic and iteratively categorised to form a final set of four categories of determinants. As such, these categories were derived from the data, not theory-based. Furthermore, most records were not exclusively attributable to one category of determinants, meaning that most records provided evidence on multiple determinants.

The records included in this analysis were published in a wide variety of journals. Most articles were published in Public Administration Review (n = 15), Administration and Society (n = 5), Local Government Studies (n = 5), Public Management Review (n = 5), and Public Performance and Management Review (n = 5). Of the ten most cited journals, all had a public administration signature, two also had a political science signature, and one also had an urban studies signature.

Results

Evidence on public managers’ attitudes towards public participation has become more widespread since the late 1990s and has peaked during the last ten years. Figure 2 displays a clear increase in the number of relevant studies published per year since 1998.

Figure 2. Frequency of included studies per year between 1969 and (summer) 2019, n = 99.

Our analysis resulted in four inductive categories of determinants associated with public managers’ attitudes towards public participation. The first category is labelled public managers’ personal characteristics and includes character traits, values, experiences, skills, and demographics related to managers’ attitudes towards public participation. The second category is labelled process characteristics and includes the features of individual participatory processes related to managers’ attitudes towards public participation, including design features, perceptions about participants, and process input legitimacy. The third category contains the organisational structures and culture of the public organisations that organise public participation and that are associated with public managers’ attitudes towards public participation, including organisational structures, culture, resources, and policy area. The fourth category contains the contextual features, the pre-existing politico-administrative and cultural conditions in which public participation is expected to take place. These characteristics include political structures and culture, legal requirements, social capital, and external pressures for public participation. The most important determinants and literature references are reported below. Table 1 displays the number or studies per category and appendix 3 includes a complete list with all references per (sub)category.

Table 1. Number of articles per category

Category of determinants	Number of studies
Personal characteristics	47
Process characteristics	56
Organizational structures and culture	67
Contextual features	50

Personal characteristics

Public managers’ attitudes towards public participation have been related to their personal characteristics and character traits in n= 47 of the included studies. These personal characteristics include psychological character traits, values, experiences, skills, and demographics.

In twenty studies, public managers’ attitudes towards public participation were associated with psychological character traits. Four articles established a positive association between managers’ public service motivation (PSM) and their attitudes towards public participation. ‘Managers with higher PSM are better fits with citizen participation’ (Coursey, Yang, and Pandey 2012, 578). Two studies established a positive association between job satisfaction and attitudes towards public participation (Feeney and Welch 2012; Kumar, Kant, and Amburgey 2007). Managers’ attitudes towards public participation were associated with trust in nine selected articles. According to Yang (2005, 273), public managers’ trust in citizens is a crucial ‘missing link’ in understanding public managers’ motivational basis for public participation. He argued that ‘without trust, administrators are not likely to encourage greater levels of citizen participation, or participation will not be implemented effectively’ (Yang 2005, 281). On the other hand, nine studies negatively associated managers’ favourable attitudes towards public participation with fear of losing authority, control, or promotional avenues due to the direct participation of the public. However, according to Liao and Ma (2019, 1839) ‘managers who are confident about their present and future abilities in engaging citizens are less likely to perceive citizen participation as threatening’.

Public managers’ attitudes towards public participation were associated with civic and public values in n = 24 of the selected studies. Johnson (2011) and De Vries (2000) found that managers’ perceptions of civic duty and civic capital were positively associated with their attitudes towards public participation. Similarly, their community and constituency attachment were also positively associated with favourable attitudes towards public participation. Liao and Zhang (2012) argued that a long term relationship between managers and the community can help managers treat citizens as partners and help finding value in their input. In addition, managers’ willingness to be responsive to citizens was positively associated with their attitudes towards public participation in eleven studies. For example, ‘nurturing the manager’s intention to incorporate citizens would help safeguard citizen participation in budgeting against tokenism’ (Liao and Zhang 2012, 31). At the same time, public managers’ technocratic orientation, the believe that policy solutions should be grounded in specialised knowledge, was negatively associated with their attitudes towards public participation (Liao and Ma 2019; Liao and Schachter 2018). ‘A technocratic orientation tends to divert a manager's attention to the barriers [of public participation], discounting the benefits of involving citizens’ (Liao and Schachter 2018, 1301).

Eleven articles associated managers’ attitudes towards public participation with their public participation experiences. Managers with positive prior experiences reported more favourable attitudes towards public participation (Kumar, Kant, and Amburgey 2007; Yang 2005). The same was considered true for their awareness of successful participation practices in neighbouring municipalities (Liao and Ma 2019). According to Liao and Schachter (2018), knowledge of success in other municipalities could help managers reflect and learn on the nature and methodology of public participation. According to the same authors, private sector experience did not appear to influence attitudes towards public participation.

Furthermore, managers’ attitudes towards public participation were associated with self-assessed deliberative and methodological skills in fourteen of the selected studies (e.g., Conrad et al. 2011; Liao and Ma 2019; WahedUzzaman and Alam 2015). Ten studies associated public managers’ attitudes towards public participation with their deliberative skills, conceptualised as the capacity to interact and engage with heterogeneous populations with different values and perspectives. These skills include learning-listening, inquiring, self-reflection, conflict-management and the ‘art of conversation’ (Quayle 1995, 471; Roberts 1997). Methodological skills refer to the capacity to conduct a rigorous and methodologically sound participation process. Ten studies indicated that a (perceived) lack of methodological skills reduced managers’ favourable attitudes towards public participation. According to Liao (2018), public managers’ self-efficacy in working with the public was positively associated with how regularly they used two-way engagement mechanisms.

Finally, public managers’ attitudes towards public participation were associated with several demographic characteristics as well. According to eight studies, female managers were more positive about public participation. Fox and Schuhmann (1999, 240) observed a distinct ‘feminine voice’ and argued that women were more likely to incorporate citizen input, facilitate communication, and encourage public participation. Public managers’ educational attainment appeared positively associated with attitudes towards public participation as well (e.g., Yang and Callahan 2007). Evidence on the association between public managers’ age and their attitudes towards public participation was mixed (Feeney and Welch 2012; Johnson 2011; Webler et al. 2003). Interestingly, according to Liao and Schachter (2018), the association between managers’ age and attitudes towards public participation followed an inverse U-shaped curve. Managers became more receptive to public participation as they became more senior, experienced, and confident, until a certain age was reached (between 55 and 66 years) and their favourable attitudes start to decline.

Similarly, public managers’ seniority was positively associated with their attitudes towards public participation in seven studies, though other studies found a negative relationship instead (Campbell and Im 2016; Hysing 2013). Powlick (1991) observed that seniority in years was positively associated with responsiveness to the public, while seniority in terms of rank displayed a negative association. Evidence on the association between tenure and attitudes towards public participation was mixed (Campbell and Im 2016; Feeney and Welch 2012), though a majority of studies failed to observe a statistically significant relation between the two (Liao and Ma 2019; Liao and Schachter 2018). Furthermore, evidence on the association between an academic public administration degree (MPA) and attitudes towards public participation was mixed as well (Liao and Ma 2019; Yan and Ting 2018). Liao and Schachter (2018) argued that more attention for public participation in MPA education could increase willingness to let the public participate in administrative decision-making.

Process characteristics

The characteristics of participatory processes can influence public managers’ perceptions and evaluations of public participation as well. Evidence from n = 56 selected studies associate public managers’ attitudes towards public participation with the (perceived) characteristics of participatory processes. These process characteristics include process design features, perceptions about participants, and process input legitimacy.

The design of participatory processes, the characteristics of the mechanisms through which public participation is possible, was associated with managers’ attitudes towards public participation in n = 24 selected articles. Managers preferred well-structured, focused, and flexible participation processes (Bartels 2014; Yang and Callahan 2007). According to Carey, Mcloughlin, and Crammond (2015, 180) ‘policy makers felt justified in their attempts to narrow or “sharpen” the focus of the agenda to ensure that it could be successfully implemented’. Procedural clarity was deemed particularly important in complex and dynamic public participation (Luton 1995). ‘Having rules that properly accommodate the policy situation might be a better means of achieving success than having open rules’ (Van Damme and Brans 2012, 1065). Structuring deliberation and interactions using process rules and fixed boundaries could facilitate timely and concrete participation-based decision-making. In some cases, governments used public participation experts to ensure the rigorous application of the public participation methodology (Cole 2004).

In general, public managers were more positive about participation early-on during the decision-making process. According to Boyer, Rogers, and Van Slyke (2018, 457) ‘soliciting broad constituent feedback is preferred earlier rather than later’, when larger financial and political costs make changing plans undesirable. Increased access to information by participants, before and during the participation process, was found to improve public managers’ perceptions of good participatory practices as well (e.g., Luton 1995). Managers perceived a combination of multiple participation methods more favourably than the use of single methods (Yang and Pandey 2011). Furthermore, studies identified positive associations between managers’ process ownership (Pina, Torres, and Royo 2017; Webler et al. 2003), transformational leadership (Yang and Pandey 2011), and issue framing and control over participants (Baker et al. 2005) with more positive attitudes. At the same time, poor tailoring to local circumstances was negatively associated with attitudes towards public participation (Boyer, Rogers, and Van Slyke 2018; Conrad et al. 2011).

Second, n = 43 records associated public managers’ attitudes towards public participation with the characteristics of participants, or their perceptions thereof. In general, public managers assessed participants’ participatory skills and knowledge in negative terms. Pecorella (1985, 23) quoted one municipal director stating that public participation was ‘a waste of time … nobody listens to anybody else, nothing gets done’. Similarly, Culver and Howe (2004) found that participants’ limited policy knowledge engendered officials’ scepticism about the practical value of citizens’ input. Instead, participation with competent citizens was valued (Hong 2015; Yang and Pandey 2011). In fact, Yang and Pandey (2011) identified participant competence as the most important factor influencing public participation outcomes according to public managers.

According to some managers, participants often appeared indifferent (Yan and Ting 2018), were motivated by their own self-interest and NIMBYism (Hanssen and Falleth 2014), and had volatile input and opinions that differed from person to person (Dekker and Van Kempen 2009; Van Slyke, Horne, and Thomas 2005). Conrad et al. (2011, 772) quoted one official stating: ‘80% of the time, the public is wrong and the only reasons people get involved are egoism and/or envy’.

Seven studies positively associated participants’ resources with public managers’ attitudes towards public participation. According to Neshkova and Guo (2018), constituencies with high political power and a positive social construction (a positive perception by public managers and citizens) were more likely to get involved in decision-making. Similarly, Cole (2004) found that consultation practices were dependent on the perceived importance of the consultees and that recommendations by socially excluded and unpopular groups were often ignored. At the same time, studies including the effects of community size (Hanssen and Falleth 2014), income and wealth (Liao and Schachter 2018), and race (Liao and Zhang 2012; Yang and Pandey 2011) showed diverging results.

Sixteen studies associated public managers’ attitudes towards public participation with the input legitimacy of participatory processes (e.g., Abelson et al. 2002). Here, input legitimacy referred to the number of participants (turnout) and their representativeness to the wider community. Overall, turnout was positively associated with managers’ attitudes towards public participation (Culver and Howe 2004; Holmes 2013; Yang and Callahan 2007). Holmes (2013) found that public managers’ interests in using public participation was associated to the volume of stakeholder voices included in the process. Similarly, the degree to which public participants reflected the community (their representativeness) was positively associated with public managers’ attitudes towards public participation (e.g., Cole 2004). A lack of representative participants appeared to be a major source of concern for many public managers. According to Andrews and De Vries (2007, 257), managers tended to dismiss the input of the ‘usual suspects’ and found their involvement ‘troublesome’. Yang and Pandey (2011, 888) concluded that ‘the more nonrepresentative the participation is, the less likely change will occur in government decision making’.

Organisational structure and culture

Evidence from n = 67 reviewed studies associated public managers’ attitudes towards public participation with the characteristics of the public organisation organising public participation. These organisational characteristics include organisational structures, culture, resources, and policy areas.

Organisational autonomy was positively associated with public managers’ attitudes towards public participation in four articles (e.g, Neshkova 2014), though country-differences were found as well (Andrews and De Vries 2007). According to Neshkova (2014), increased agency autonomy (measured as allotment control and own-source revenues) was associated with a higher perceived need for public support and legitimacy. Managers can use public participation in search for popular support and legitimacy. Administrative discretion (Liao and Zhang 2012) and inter-organisational coordination (Liao 2018) were also positively associated with public managers’ attitudes towards public participation. On the other hand, formalisation, strict routines, and red tape were negatively associated with public managers’ attitudes towards public participation, with Hardina (2011, 133) arguing that ‘adherence to rigid rules, bureaucratic requirements, and hierarchical decision-making structures’ form barriers against participatory engagements. Other studies found mixed results on the effects of hierarchical structures, organisational size, and extrinsic rewards (Campbell and Im 2016; Huang and Feeney 2013).

Empowerment-oriented or participatory management styles were associated with increased public participation in eight studies. Empowerment-oriented management styles could lead managers away from professional elitism and towards a more community-oriented paradigm (Nalbandian 1999). Similar positive associations were found in relation to an open administrative culture (Chen et al. 2013), and staff involvement in decision-making (Hardina 2011). Evidence on the association between market-orientation and attitudes towards public participation were mixed. While a consumer-oriented focus appeared to strengthen public managers’ willingness to listen to the public (Huxley et al. 2016), a production-oriented culture could lead to process-optimisation at the expense of public participation (Johnson 2011). Similarly, a conservative or ‘bureaucratic’ culture was found to reduce public managers’ favourable attitudes towards public participation in ten selected studies. According to Roberts (1997, 130), a bureaucratic culture led to ‘notions of heroic management, whe[re] the executive is supposed to know all, be all, and do all’.

Organizational resources in terms of budget, staff, time, ICT, or political support were positively associated with public managers’ attitudes towards public participation in n = 24 selected articles. According to Brown (2000), pressures resulting from managers’ workload and a lack of time were perceived as an obstacle to public involvement. Shortages of resources could lead to public managers conducting participation ‘on the hoof’ (Cole 2004, 203), or indicated that they did not have the time to organise participatory processes (Kim and Schachter 2013; Webler et al. 2003). Studies showed that managers believed ICT can help build better relationships with the public (Baldwin, Gauld, and Goldfinch 2012; Feeney and Welch 2012). On the other hand, five studies suggested that agency resources did not affect public managers’ attitudes towards public participation (e.g., Neshkova 2014; Yang and Callahan 2007).

Finally, evidence from fourteen studies suggested that public managers’ attitudes towards public participation differed across policy areas. Managers employed in human services (Neuse 1980), the mayor’s office, parks & recreation (Feeney and Welch 2012; Li and Feeney 2014), community interaction, ethics management (Chen et al. 2013; Hysing 2013), culture, sports & recreation, and social services (De Vries 2000; Hardina 2011), ecological issues (Faehnle et al. 2014), or issues of high salience (Powlick 1991) were found more likely to support public participation. At the same time, managers involved in enforcement were significantly less likely to engage with the public (Yan and Ting 2018).

Contextual features

Contextual features refer to the pre-existing politico-administrative and cultural conditions in which public participation is expected to take place (Ianniello et al. 2018). Contextual features were found to affect public managers' attitudes towards public participation in n = 50 selected studies. Among these features are political structures and culture, legal requirements, social capital, and external pressures for increased public participation.

The perceived responsiveness of a political system to the demands of citizens affects public managers’ attitudes towards public participation (Clark 2018; Nabatchi 2010a). Twenty studies observed significant between-country differences in managers’ willingness to let the public participate (Andrews and De Vries 2007; De Vries 2005). Some states and administrations lack the political and technical capacity to implement participatory decisions (Neaera Abers and Keck 2009; Yang and Callahan 2007). Participation appeared more likely in cities and municipalities with a leftist-mayor (Hong 2015), a council-manager system of administration (Li and Feeney 2014; Yang and Callahan 2007), a racially diverse council (Liao and Schachter 2018; Liao and Zhang 2012), a high median income (Liao 2018; Liao and Ma 2019; Liao and Schachter 2018), with less competitive elections and small political cleavages (Johnson 2011; Powlick 1991), relatively weak party institutions (Hong 2015), and with more resources and capacity (Yang and Callahan 2007; but see: Liao 2018). Political culture appears to affect public managers’ attitudes towards public participation as well, with officials from a moralistic culture appearing more likely to participate than others (Neshkova 2014; Neshkova and Guo 2018).

Ten studies associated public managers’ attitudes towards public participation with the legal context in which participation was expected to take place. In a number of policy domains, public involvement is mandated by law (Faehnle et al. 2014; Rich 2019). In general, the presence of public participation laws was associated with an increased use of public participation (Huang and Feeney 2013). Citizens that invoke such laws were generally more likely to be heard and receive a swift response (Rodríguez and Rossel 2018). Interestingly, legislative requirements can also lead to goal displacement, with officials organising ‘ticking the box’ (Conrad et al. 2011, 771) participation in order to fulfil the legal requirement for participation without actually listening to the public.

Finally, n = 25 articles associated public managers’ attitudes towards public participation with external pressures for increased public participation. While political control over participatory arrangements can increase administrative resistance to those participatory arrangements (Kumar and Kant 2006), elected officials’ trust appeared positively associated with managers’ adoption of participatory arrangements. According to Liao (2018) political trust can increase municipal managers flexibility to figure out solutions through dialogue and discussion. Similarly, pressures and demands for more public participation by citizens (Yang and Callahan 2007; Zhang and Feeney 2019), media organisations (Li and Feeney 2014; Liao and Ma 2019), business (Li and Feeney 2014; Yang and Callahan 2007), and civil society organisations (Hong 2015) were also positively associated with public managers’ use of public participation in administrative decision-making. At the same time, there appeared to be a strong negative association between managers’ stated use of public participation and government or bureaucrat bashing by citizens (Conrad et al. 2011; Yang 2005) or media organisations (Liao 2018). ‘Bureaucrat[...] bashing channeled through media will restrain managers from taking continuous two-way communication with citizens’ (Liao 2018, 536).

Discussion and conclusion

In this study, we systematically reviewed evidence from n = 99 studies in the public administration, political science, and urban studies literature on public managers’ attitudes towards public participation. Previous research had identified public managers’ attitudes towards public participation as key determinants of public participation decisions and outcomes (Liao and Schachter 2018; Yang and Callahan 2007). However, up to now no systematic analysis of public managers’ attitudes towards public participation had been conducted. This study mediates this hiatus and is the first to combine evidence from public administration, political science, and urban studies literature on public managers’ attitudes towards public participation. Based on the findings of this study, policymakers can provide guidelines to manage public managers’ negative attitudes towards public participation, or endeavour to change possible negative attitudes through professional training or education.

Based on the results, we formulate at least two avenues for further research. First, future research could examine how public managers’ decision-making processes affect their attitudes towards public participation (Battaglio et al. 2019; Grimmelikhuijsen et al. 2017; Nørgaard 2018). The dominant interpretative approach to public managers’ attitudes towards public participation remains instrumental and is influenced by rational choice cost-benefit considerations (Eckerd and Heidelberg 2019; Moynihan 2003). However, it is unlikely that public managers’ attitudes towards public participation are based on rationalist motives alone. In fact, the results of our analysis show that there are non-rational, attitudinal, cognitive, and cultural factors that affect public managers’ attitudes towards public participation as well. Future research could further theorise how bounded rationality and cognitive biases affect public managers’ attitudes towards public participation.

Second, the link between public managers’ attitudes towards public participation and their actual behaviour preceding and during participatory processes remains understudied. The claim that public managers’ attitudes towards public participation affect participatory decisions and outcomes has become almost axiomatic (Liao and Schachter 2018; Yang and Callahan 2007) but largely lacks empirical grounding. Most research examining this relationship study attitudes instead of behaviour and use associational instead of causal research methods (Liao and Schachter 2018; Yang 2005). Future research could significantly contribute to the literature by using more advanced research methods to put this claim to the test. Additional studies could also examine how interactions between groups of determinants (individual characteristics, process characteristics, organisational structures and culture, contextual features) affect public managers’ attitudes towards public participation. Additional causal research, for example in the form of experiments, could strengthen the robustness of these findings.

The results of this systematic literature review should be assessed in light of at least two limitations. First, we chose transparency and replicability over exhaustiveness. We included English-literature, peer-reviewed studies, published in the international public administration, political science and urban studies literature only. Consequently, we excluded research papers, practice-oriented reports, dissertations and book chapters from the analysis. Furthermore, our results in part reflect the inclusion criteria used to select the relevant articles. We cannot exclude the possibility that additional determinants of public managers’ attitudes towards public participation may exist outside of these criteria. Future research could use a different reviewing approach to make these studies more widely available as well.

Second, all literature reviews are dependent on studies that have been made publicly available or have been published before. Although the systematic review approach reduces the effects of selection bias on the literature synthesis, publication bias could still have skewed the results. Furthermore, we focused on English-language articles only, which might have biased our results towards Anglo-Saxon administrative traditions and participatory practices. Literature research on studies published in languages other than English could also greatly benefit the public participation literature and theory.

In conclusion, this paper provides a systematic overview of determinants of public managers’ attitudes towards public participation. Even though public managers’ attitudes towards public participation had been identified as an important determinant of public participation decisions and practices, no systematic study on the determinants of these attitudes had been conducted before. Based on evidence from n = 99 systematically selected articles, we found that public managers’ attitudes towards public participation are based on their personal characteristics and character traits, characteristics of the participatory process, organisational structures and culture, and contextual features. The results show that public managers’ attitudes towards public participation are multi-dimensional and context specific. Policymakers motivated to increase the use and success of public participation in administrative decision-making can use the results of this study to formulate guidelines to manage public managers’ negative attitudes towards public participation, or endeavour to change possible negative attitudes through training or education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission H2020 under Grant number: 726755; Project CITADEL; EC H2020 [726755; Project CITADEL].

Notes on contributors

Koen Migchelbrink

Koen Migchelbrink is an assistant professor of Public Management at the Department of Public Administration and Sociology at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His research focuses on administrative behaviours and attitudes towards public participation and includes citizens’ and public officials’ attitudes and satisfaction with government, public management reform, and experimental public administration.

Steven Van de Walle

Steven Van de Walle is Professor of Public Management at the Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Belgium. His research focuses on public sector reform, interactions between public services and clients, and attitudes and behaviours of public officials. His most recent books are, with Gerhard Hammerschmid, Rhys Andrews, and Philippe Bezes, eds, Public Administration Reforms in Europe: The View from the Top, Edward Elgar, 2016; and, with Nadine Raaphorst, eds, Inspectors and Enforcement at the Front Line of Government, Palgrave, 2019.