From citizens to decision-makers: An interactive perspective on local democracy

The project examines democratic participation as an interactional accomplishment, about which little is known, despite the social importance of the topic. In modern democracies, citizen participation in public debate is seen at best as opening up space for genuine and transparent cooperation between citizens and decision-makers. In recent years, however, this ideal of participation has been widely questioned and criticized for the illusory nature of citizens' opportunities for action and the consensual nature of the debate. While previous research on grassroots democratic participation has been primarily based on interviews, in this study I focus on the micro-level of interaction, i.e. how participants construct themselves and each other as active participants in situated talk-in-interaction. Democratic participation is thus seen first and foremost as a social activity in which city residents situate themselves within institutionally bounded activities such as decision-making and urban planning, while shaping their roles as experts and laypeople. The aim of this research is to explore how participation is constructed as an institutional (e.g. decision-making or co-planning) and democratic (e.g. increasing pluralism and experience-sharing) activity, and how these sometimes conflicting aims collide or merge in local democratic contexts.

The data for this project has been collected from two participatory projects in Finnish cities (participatory budgeting and Partnership Tables). The material consists of video recordings of workshops and meetings organized for citizens, discussions on digital platforms, and documents (e.g. reports and memos) and artefacts (e.g. post-it notes and maps) produced during the meetings. The research combines perspectives from linguistics, interaction studies, social policy and urban planning. Theoretically and methodologically, the research draws on discourse and conversation analysis to examine the situational construction of participatory practices and discourses in the interaction between experts and citizens. The project also aims to develop methodologies linked to these premises by focusing not only on linguistic resources but also on the different media (e.g. post-it notes and various digital platforms such as Howspace and social media channels) used to support participation in participatory projects. This focus on mediated interactions allows us to examine issues of participation and inclusion in society not only as linguistic but also as material and temporal phenomena. The project's results are socially important and relevant. For example, they are relevant to cities developing their participatory practices.