Varieties of Engagement in Government Citizen Interactions

ETHOS Issue 28, Apr 2025

Introduction: Engagement as a Growing Phenomenon

Theorists and practitioners of citizen engagement—used interchangeably here with related concepts such as deliberative democracy and participatory policymaking—often refer to the Athenian Oath:

“We will never bring disgrace on this our City by an act of dishonesty or cowardice. We will fight for the ideals and Sacred Things of the City both alone and with many. We will revere and obey the City's laws, and will do our best to incite a like reverence and respect in those above us who are prone to annul them or set them at naught. We will strive unceasingly to quicken the public's sense of civic duty. Thus, in all these ways, we will transmit this City not only, not less, but greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”

This oath was often recited by the citizens of Athens, Greece, more than 2,000 years ago. It is frequently cited as a timeless embodiment of civic responsibility and active participation by everyday citizens in the larger social, political and economic life around them.

Several ongoing projects (see box story below) that embody this same spirit of empowerment and agency by citizens, community groups, businesses and other stakeholders—in a climate where governments face declining trust in their ability to deliver services and reliably meet stakeholder needs.

Unified Movement or Varied Phenomena?

It is tempting to see the developments as part of a broad-based, consistent, possibly even global trend—leading ineluctably to more and deeper engagement between citizens, other stakeholders and public agencies.

But the reality is much more murky, with a wide range of outcomes and configurations of how governments and citizens interact. Not all governments, and not all communities, businesses and other stakeholders, participate evenly in deliberative efforts.

Why not?

Many political scientists might address this by looking at how such engagements are structured, organised and institutionally supported. But what if these deliberations do not even happen in the first place, because they did not get approved to proceed, or were aborted at a nascent stage?

I suggest a different explanation for why such projects happen or not, and then whether they succeed, based on what some economists call 'micro foundations' or 'micro motivations': Are the individual human beings involved willing players, or are they more reluctant participants in deliberative activities?

For instance, the staff of a government agency could be willing players and advocates for participatory processes. They could be entrepreneurial, believing in the richness and value of deliberative activity, recognising that governments can have biases and other limitations, and not possess a monopoly on good ideas. Such agency officials may have undertaken successful participatory projects before, and built mutual trust with relevant stakeholders—making them more willing to take on the risks of experimenting with such consultative and co-creative approaches.

Conversely, a government's staff might be unwilling players: risk averse about the potential resource costs and other downsides of deliberative projects, including whether such efforts might generate expectations among citizens that all their recommendations would be taken on board, or that all decisions would henceforth be made in a participatory manner.

In some instances, government officials might have tried but been disillusioned by previous attempts at deliberation. A politician I interviewed remarked that he was "once bitten, twice shy" about engagement processes, and was reluctant to undertake new efforts "because I was so badly burned before" when expectations from an engagement process spiralled out of control and led to ever increasing demands from participants. Even more fundamentally, government officials might simply believe that they should be what New America Foundation CEO Anne Marie Slaughter has described as a "control tower",¹⁵ clearly calling the shots in most interactions because they can access superior information.

Similarly, stakeholders in a project—whether citizen, community groups, businesses or some combination of them—could occupy a spectrum of willingness. They could be naturally and instinctively engaged in civic participation, believe in the ethos of the Athenian oath and see their role as active contributors to democratic life, as well as active students of democracy who learn from the mutual interactions of a deliberative process. Or they could be unwilling—apathetic and disengaged on issues—or disillusioned with previous deliberative efforts that they might have attended and found to be superficial or merely rubber-stamping predetermined decisions.

In any case, participant motivations need not be either binarily willing or unwilling but could instead occur along a continuum of willingness and unwillingness. Individual projects could be situated anywhere in the 2x2 space outlined in Figure 1, but for ease of analysis, I discuss four broad archetypes.

Archetype I involves both willing government and willing stakeholders—leading to rich outcomes from mutual deliberation and engagement. There can be collectively useful outcomes, at the system-level, and mutual learning between both parties.

Archetype IV is the direct opposite, with unwilling parties on both sides. This leads to participatory processes that are either short-lived or do not even take place, getting cut off at the early stages of approval or recruitment of participants.

Archetype II, with more willing stakeholders and less willing governments, may often end up being marketed as "bottom up" or "grassroots" movements. Such projects lack the formal imprimatur of involvement by, or at least support from, government agencies.

Archetype III, with more willing government agents but less willing stakeholders, can often be stylised and ritualised deliberative processes, where discussions are somewhat staged, with pre-set questions and avoidance of more spontaneous discussions. They may take the form of formal town hall discussions, with government officials sharing pre-prepared material and engaging in cursory Question & Answer sessions. Citizens and other stakeholders may cynically regard these as political theatre meant to endorse predetermined government decisions rather than platforms for genuine conversation and debate.

Nash Equilibria and Other Nuances

Several points about the four archetypes are worth noting.

First, from a game theory perspective, the payoffs to each set of actors (i.e. governments and other stakeholders) may be such that, under conditions of uncertainty about each other's motivations, it is always 'rational'—more convenient, more efficient in the short-term, and more logical according to strict cost-benefit analysis—to assume that the 'other side' is unwilling. If this is the case, then the Nash Equilibrium will tend towards the sub-optimal Archetype IV. This is unless there are other factors demonstrating the willingness of each side to initiate and (crucially) sustain an engagement effort. Perhaps successful examples of citizen participation are in fact an exceptional minority among countries globally, rather than a growing trend.

Second, the boundaries of the 2x2 matrix could well be porous. Within a given polity, different deliberative projects could occur in different quadrants, depending on the government agencies and stakeholders involved. A single deliberative process could also end up inhabiting different quadrants at different times, as circumstances evolve (and the protagonists involved change, for instance).

Third, a system as a whole can be more resistant and unwilling, even if individual citizens or small groups of officials are keen. Such personalities, sometimes described as policy or civic innovators/entrepreneurs, could well be an active minority that ends up sidelined by more sceptical and unwilling counterparts.

Managing these dynamics is key to maximising the opportunities and minimising the challenges of each archetype—as well as avoiding the trap of the sub-optimal Nash Equilibrium.

Implications for Participatory Practice

Game theorists often point out that sub-optimal Nash Equilibria are best avoided when players understand that they are in a repeated game, not just a single scenario where win-loss outcomes are once-off and immutable. They also emphasise the role of commitment mechanisms, whereby each actor can make clear and irrevocable commitments to strategies that, if chosen by both, will lead to better collective outcomes.

Common to both these approaches is the importance of relationships—where each player sees the other not as just a strategic adversary, but someone with whom mutual interests and trust can be cultivated. Such relational approaches could prove beneficial for deliberative outcomes, if they allow public agency staff and stakeholders to get to know one another better and give one another the benefit of the doubt when dealing with uncertain outcomes. It is also important for each group to check their biases and suspicions about the other. If such interactions happen with sufficient regularity and substance—e.g. through regular meetings where information about priorities, plans and programmes are exchanged—they could provide a critical bedrock for deep and substantive deliberative programmes in the medium-term.

Government officials can contribute to realising Archetype I by making clear their intent and the unique selling points of the whole deliberative process, so that participants are aware of what they volunteer for. Governments should appreciate that even with the best of intentions, they wield significant power and are engaged in a highly asymmetric relationship with citizens. Moving towards Archetype I will involve significant sharing of information, particularly on the policy intent of proposed changes or ideas under discussion. Citizens, on their part, can consider where they might exercise autonomy and agency and contribute actively to processes where outcomes are not determined by government agencies alone.

As with many interactive engagement efforts, facilitators play a key role. They should be sensitive to power dynamics between stakeholders and agencies that commission such efforts, even going to the extent of calling out potential power differentials when recruiting participants, and actual power gaps during a process. If necessary, time should be set aside to discuss and unpack issues of willingness—especially if there is an underbelly of reluctance on the part of either the commissioning agency of a project or its stakeholders.

Digital Technology as Participatory Enabler

Digital technology has been much vaunted as a potentially transformative force in politics and governance, including in the space of engagement, deliberation and participation by non-government stakeholders. But technology watchers also know that its effects are seldom homogeneous across sectors and issues.

Conway's Law, a theory of Information Technology created by computer scientist and programmer Melvin Conway in the 1970s, asserts that "Organisations, who design systems, are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organisations."²⁰ This implies that, far from being inevitably transformative, technology can sometimes be adopted in ways that reinforce or even entrench the prevailing culture, history and approaches in an organisation.

Technology makes hierarchical and bureaucratic organisations more hierarchical and bureaucratic, while it is adopted by more democratic, distributed and decentralised systems in ways that intensify those qualities.

For deliberative projects, a key question is what technology does not change. This could include the different underlying logics and motivations for groups in each quadrant of Figure 1—digitalisation may well make unwilling groups more unwilling to deliberate (e.g. due to fears of information being used in ways that erode government security or personal privacy), or make willing groups even more willing (e.g. because of the scope for richer information flows and cross-pollinated ideas).Technology will also do little to change any asymmetries in power dynamics when different groups interact (e.g. protocol-consciousness when politicians participate in engagement events can play out equally in a Zoom meeting and in person), while there will be a continued need for facilitators to design the experience of a deliberative process even on a digital platform.

Scholars and practitioners alike point to the potential of participatory processes to enrich both political and civic life. In many of the examples cited at the start of this article, deliberative platforms have led to better ideas for societies and cities as a whole, while also proving edifying and educational for individual participants. However, these conclusions are far from necessary or foregone, since they depend critically on the micro-level motivations of the individuals involved, both within and outside governments. Addressing these motivations directly, through both analogue and technologically-enabled means, could take deliberative projects to new levels of achievement, and be critical enablers to realising the vision of the Athenian Oath in ways that are fit for our times.