Citizen Participation and the Limits of Local Democracy.

This paper explores citizen participation in local politics to assess its potential benefits to policy making: when citizens participate, do they enhance the problem solving capacity of government by adding resources to the policy making process? To answer this question, I examine how citizens try to influence local policies in a mid-sized city (Santa Ana, California) over a 10-year period, analyzing what issues citizens try to influence and how they try to influence them. I argue that the benefits from participation are limited by citizens' choices concerning which policies they attempt to influence. Citizens had ample opportunities to participate in local policy making, and benefits (primarily in the form of information) did materialize as a result of their activity. Yet, citizen participants typically did not attempt to address major community problems; rather, they focused their attention on smaller, less complex issues. Complex and difficult issues, however, need the benefits that participation can bring the most; the simpler and clearer the issue, the more likely officials will be able to address the issue without the additional resources citizen participation can provide. The issues that generated the most participation were ones that least needed the additional resources that participation can bring. Citizens' preference to participate on simpler and clearer issues limits the benefit from their participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]