Who is invited? A mixed-method study on governments’ and citizens’ perspectives on invitational governance

In Western European democracies, governments encourage and invite citizens to self-organise in citizens’ initiatives to provide public goods and services. For example, maintaining public green spaces, taking over public facilities or organising neighbourhood festivities. This ‘invitational governance’ is frequently depicted as a democratising force, because it is said to give power to ‘the people’. However, critics warn that stimulating citizens’ initiatives increases social inequalities since participation of citizens with a lower social status is structurally lower.

In this doctoral dissertation, Vivian Visser aims to develop a better understanding of how governments govern in relation to citizens’ initiatives and how the social status of citizens plays a role in how they participate and are approached by governments. Using a mixed-method approach and combining insights from public administration and sociology, Visser analyses the perspectives of both governments and citizens on invitational governance.

She concludes that the views of governments and citizens on invitational governance differ profoundly. Governments explicitly invite citizens to take on initiatives because they feel confronted by wicked problems and citizens who believe they are better capable of addressing those issues. While civil servants take a more constructive stance regarding the initiatives of citizens with a lower social status, these citizens themselves do not feel equally invited to take initiative. Simple, efficient and realistic changes to the framing of a municipality’s invitation to participate are not enough to mitigate this. The dissertation ends with a systematic discussion of the relevance of these results for various academic debates and a reflection on the practical implication of the findings.