Check out the Aarhus principles Dhanraj Rai. These flowed from the Rio Declaration’s Principle 10 and the United Nations’ Agenda 21 program, and were intended to advance procedural democracy - involvement of the public and NGO sector - in environmental decision-making. Experience across various levels (i.e. local, regional, national) confirms that empowering the public - and employees by analogy in the corporate sector - in decision-making processes significantly advances the democratic ideal. The concept of 'subsidiarity' also reinforces this with respect to environmental governance, but identifies resource users rather than (local) people in general.

Personally unfamiliar with use of the term of decentralisation with respect to people's participation. Typically decentralisation is used in the context of 'administrative' decentralisation, or 'deconcentrating', and refers to the redistribution of decision-making power, financial and management responsibilities among 'lower' levels of national government.

I agree with Mike. I also understand "decentralisation" in terms of decentralisation of power (administrative, functional, political, etc.). In order to investigate participation, I would suggest you check out some papers about participatory budgeting (indicators they use) and/or case studies on e-participation tools (e.g. https://tropico-project.eu/). As Mike says, it is important to distinguish levels of participation (enabling, engaging, empowering, ...). Of course, one can also investigate participation in elections and compare municipal election and general election. Needless to say that municipal elections are so called second order and tend to have lower turnout than general election.

Thank you Mike and Matus it is indeed great input as far as my research is concerned.

Decentralisation in the context of Uganda offers many opportunities for democracy and participation in our multi-layered levels of local governments (from Local Council 1, 2, 3, and 5). There are political, administrative, planning, financial, legislative and service delivery powers that have been devolved to the local governments at the different tiers of sub-national governments.

Under the political decentralisation for instance the local people vote for their leaders at the different tiers listed above. They elect councillors to represent them at local governments level. The local governments have powers to make policy and by-laws. These are done in consultation with the people within their jurisdictions.

Another opportunity for local democracy and participation lies with in the planning and budgeting process where budget conferences are supposed to held at the lowest levels to pick local priorities to be included in the local government budgets.

With regard to service delivery, every service delivery unit has a management committee that is picked from the users in that community to oversee its functionality.

Another opportunity for local democracy and participation lies with in the planning and budgeting process where budget conferences are supposed to held at the lowest levels to pick local priorities to be included in the local government budgets.

there are accountability platforms in local governments called barazas where the various local governments (technical and political ) are supposed to regularly provide down accountability to the citizens.

The main challenges has however been the utilisation of these opportunities by the intended beneficiaries to deepen democratization of decision making and enhance participation at the local level. Thus, there are mixed results.

Jonas makes a very useful contribution here in specifying a clear mechanism whereby decentralisation can contribute to representative democracy, and similar examples to that of Ugandan - including local barazas, or their equivalent - are widely found throughout nation states in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

His contribution also serves as a prompt to reflect further on what we may mean by 'democracy'. In it's original Greek the word 'democracy' (I understand) literarily meant 'rule by the people', suggesting that in a direct, as opposed to representative, democracy people directly deliberate and decide on legislature, policy and planning, budgeting. They would directly determine and oversee the decisions impacting and influencing their lives. In the representative democracy described by Jonas, and very familiar to most of us, people only have the authority to choose their representatives in an existing governance structure.

The literature and work on community driven development (CDD) - notably perhaps work by Hans Binswanger, and his collaborators at the Khanya-African Institute for Community-Driven Development - will offer good insights on the challenges of scaling up CDD, which might be considered to be a proxy of 'direct democracy'? Within the conventional multi-layered levels and hierarchical government structures (of representative democracy) described by Jonas, constraints frequently experienced at local levels (in my experience), may be characterised in terms of institutional, professional and individual difficulties amongst political, technical and administrative staff in genuinely and inclusively engaging with local people - women and men, girls and boys. Despite the huge amounts of resources - money and trainings etc - applied here by government and NGOs alike, to promote inclusive if not empowering 'participation', good examples remain the exception rather than the rule. Robert Chambers et al. have written extensively on this, but also check out studies on the 'tyranny' of participation.

Again at local administrative levels, but now looking 'upwards' in the hierarchy (i.e. towards central government), the constraint is that of prising resources out of the centre. Whether centrally determined or positively influenced by 'decentralisation', policies approved by national governments, even when assigned theoretical budgets, are too often denied the resources both for their dissemination and their implementation. Decentralised structures do not guarantee the devolution of power. This has been the constraining feature of 21st century climate change initiatives throughout SSA. UNFCCC COP7 came up with national adaptation programmes of action (NAPAs) to support least developed countries (LDC) in addressing the challenge of the climate crisis, and these were relatively quickly drawn up by national governments throughout SSA. Even where the NAPAs were disseminated securing the funds to facilitate local level implementation has repeatedly proved difficult. The scaling-up of reverse climate change initiatives (i.e. incorporating local innovation into central-level thinking) has proven equally, possibly more, challenging. Work throughout SSA led by Dr Esbern Friis-Hanssen, at the Denmark Institute of International Studies in collaboration with many in-country partner institutions, includes a number of excellent case studies depicting the constraints widely inculcated in decentralised structures for representative democracy. Together with excellent analysis this work comes up with several concrete ideas for improving in-country responses to the climate emergency within the prevailing multi-layered system.

Staying with the climate emergency you - Dhanraj - might choose to explore whether it is the failure of representative democracy confronted with the climate crisis that has given rise to the world-wide 'extinction rebellion' movement? I suspect that this 'phenomenon' is less surprising than many of us presently think. Most if not all significant social change has been wrought by the individual and collective energies, initiatives of, and costs to the citizenry - think of the emancipations from slavery, the colonial powers, patriarchy of the respective oppressed people, groups and individuals. There are certainly many situations and times when representative democracy simply fails the electorate - and we haven't explicitly referred to the 'c' word - and direct democracy is imperative?

I believe that decentralisation in its broad sense has a great role in promoting popular participation in decision-making, especially if it is locally linked to participation in decision-making and implementation, in addition to the decision-evaluation process through accountability.

Thank you Jones for sharing the prospects and features of decentralisation in your country. It has similar aspects in our country, India as well.

Thank you Mike Morris for your expertise insight. It will certainly a great contribution for me and my study. It would be again a great insight for study and objectivity of my research which accompanying the discussion on the concepts of democracy, decentralisation and participation in Sikkim. I am trying to examine people’s participation in decentralised governance and local planning. Also reflects the level of people’s participation in two districts of Sikkim. The value of policy recommendation for meaningful participation of peoples in the local government system.

I am expecting more attributes through which we can measure the level of people's participation in decentralisation.

Thanks Dhanraj Rai. In terms of measurement there are a number of methodologies outlined in the participatory literature for assessing participation in procedural decision-making. As before, my starting point would be to identify the principles needed for participation in local decision-making - such as those expressed in the Aarhus declaration - and seek to generate relevant indicators from these key principles? The success or otherwise of people's participation in democratic processes, inevitably depends on the existing governance context, and specifically the extent to which the system encourages inclusion and is open to change (i.e. its responsiveness). Without the associated assessment of context, it will be difficult to adequately calibrate any qualitative and/or quantitative assessment of citizen-only focused indicators for participation. For example, there could be significant engagement of the citizenry in a given location due to the enlightened disposition of individuals - it's often key individuals - or groups of councillors with support from officials, but implementation of the decisions jointly taken are subsequently stymied by senior folk located further up the government hierarchy. This has far too often been the case where local women play an active role, only to have their decisions overturned or denied funding by senior, male government officials.

It might be worth bearing in mind the dimensions now associated with equity considerations - that is, recognitional equity (i.e. recognition of, and in the case of government securing and protecting, people's rights); procedural equity (i.e. active participation in decision-making); and distributional equity (i.e. ensuring both costs and benefits are fairly shared). The right to participate in decision-making about issues that directly or indirectly impact one's life and livelihood (i.e. procedural equity), does not automatically guarantee the fair contributions and outcomes (i.e. distributional equity). See for example publications by ESPA and by IIED on understanding governance and equity in conservation.

Thank you Mike Morris once again for your valuable suggestion. The term like recognitional equity, distributional equity, protective and procedural equity is indeed very new for me. These will certainly have positive impact to my research.

with best regards

Hacer uso del ARS (análisis de redes sociales)por grafos; donde los vínculos (links) sean las relaciones de personas o de instituciones.

Efren Barrera Restrepo kindly write in English. This language is unknown to me

Thank you

1. Share of participants / total population.

2. Social-demographics of participants.

3. DQI.

4. Measuring the impact of participants' proposals on public decisions.

yes Jordi Pacheco exactly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-democracy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_freedom

http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/governance/WillAmericaBecomeDemocracy2006.pdf

https://www.coe.int/t/dgap/democracy/Activities/GGIS/CAHDE/2009/RecCM2009_1_and_Accomp_Docs/6647-0-ID8289-Recommendation%20on%20electronic%20democracy.pdf

http://eparticipation.eu/information/e-democracy/

----------------------------------

Some thoughts on e-Democracy and political self-determination (links, above)

----------------------------------

Concerning measurement techniques, Efren Barrera Restrepo social network analysis is a practical tool.

Thank you Stephen

Please, you red:

• Newman, M., Barabasi, A., & Watts, D. J. (2006). The Structure and Dynamics of Networks. (1º ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Scott, J. P. (2000). Social Network Analysis: A Handbook (2º ed). London; Newbury Park, Calif: Sage Publications Ltd.
• Thelwall, M. (2008). How are Social Network Sites Embedded in the Web? An Exploratory Link Analysis. International Journal of Scientometrics, Informetrics and Bibliometrics, 12(1).

Thank You Efren Barrera

I recommend reading a seminal reference here, which is still very relevant: Arnstein, S. R. (1969). A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Planning Association, 35 (4), 216-224. https://lithgow-schmidt.dk/sherry-arnstein/ladder-of-citizen-participation.html

Thank you Dias