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Behind the Scenes: What Empirical Evidence Is Telling Us About the Practice of Citizens’ Participation

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Abstract

People want to influence politics but do not want to be politically active. People like procedures that do not impose much burden on them but which guarantee an influence on decision making, such as elections and referenda. People want a greater influence on politics. This means in effect that people want to be informed but only want to make a decision if significant issues are not going well. Politics is unpopular and trust in politicians is extremely low. Hence, the majority of people has no desire to take part in deliberative citizens’ participation procedures. Representative democracy is better than its reputation—as measured by the demands of gamification. Gamification offers the possibility of bringing the majority and the politically active segments of society together, including planners and politicians.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Mannheim is a regional center in the metropolitan area of Rhein-Neckar with approximately 315,000 inhabitants. Gießen is a university city with approximately 80,000 inhabitants.

  2. 2.

    See for instance, Masser, Kai and Linda Mory, 2014, Bürgerbeteiligung im Web2.0. Zur aktuellen Konjunktur eines langfristigen Trends, in: Dittler, Ulrich and Michael Hoyer (eds.), Social Network—Die Revolution der Kommunikation, München: kopaed, 235–259.

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Masser, K., Mory, L. (2018). Behind the Scenes: What Empirical Evidence Is Telling Us About the Practice of Citizens’ Participation. In: The Gamification of Citizens' Participation in Policymaking . Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78571-4_4

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