Maximum Feasible Participation? A Pittsburgh Encounter.

This paper describes an attempt by Pittsburgh's Community Action Program agency to put the idea of citizen power into operation through confederating the city's eight neighborhood citizens' councils and providing them with professional leadership. An encounter between this new confederation and the Pittsburgh board of Public Education over two programs provides many lessons regarding the constraints to and dilemmas of citizen participation under the sponsorship of a community action agency. What came out of the experience was that although the citizens' group did exert some influence on the board's decisions, It was primarily on nonbasic Issues on which the two groups' Interests did not clash. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]