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But Is It for Real? The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly as a Model of State-Sponsored Citizen Empowerment

Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, alang{at}ssc.wisc.edu

Emerging forms of empowered participatory governance have generated considerable scholarly excitement, but critics continue to ask if such initiatives are "for real": Are participatory governance processes sufficiently independent? Do citizen participants make good policy choices? An in-depth look at the case of the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform suggests that real citizen empowerment depends on both the institutional constraints of the participa-tory setting and how citizen interests and arguments for policy outcomes crystallize over the course of a participatory process.

Key Words: citizen deliberation • participatory governance • electoral reform • British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly

Politics & Society, Vol. 35, No. 1, 35-70 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0032329206297147


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