Read on Twitter
Ever been asked to take part in a decision-making process, only to realize they aren’t really interested in your opinion? ME TOO. So, I wrote a paper about how decision-making in #CollaborativeGovernance can be done better. Thread 
@JPART1991 https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaa044
@JPART1991 https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muaa044
My amazing co-author, Jade Wong, and I note that although collaborative governance is intended to increase stakeholder participation in decision-making we don’t really know much about how to assess when ‘legitimate’ decision-making has occurred--esp. in the eyes of participants!
In this #MixedMethods paper we suggest that previous approaches to assessing internal #legitimacy conflate two distinct processes: input and throughput legitimacy—concepts more commonly used to assess #democratic decision-making.
Input legitimacy is the degree of openness and access that participants experience in their attempt to offer voice. Throughput legitimacy captures elements of transparency and the perceived adequacy of #deliberation and #representation in decision-making processes.
Using #qualitative interview data and #QCA to study HUD #ContinuumsOfCare, we show that participants see input and throughput as distinct but related. Often, participants can identify opportunities for input but don’t see that input actually used in decision-making (throughput).
BUT, when participants/members don’t have the opportunity to give voice, they uniformly will not trust the process. In other words, procedural rationality cannot substitute for the desire to feel heard.
What helps? In-person engagement, opportunities to lead sub-group work, and managers that adopt a bottom-up style of facilitation. Sounds familiar, but is all-too-rare when it comes to engaging community members and #nonprofit providers.
If we want input from the community, we need to provide meaningful opportunities for them to engage/lead and resist the urge to just ‘get them on board.’ Symbolic inclusion is disempowering and leads to lack of engagement and mistrust.
Bottom line: The only thing worse than a meeting is a meeting that is a waste of everyones time. /end
