Public Interest and Political Abuse: Public Participation in Social Impact Assessment

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Programs and policies to encourage “public participation” have a natural and important place in Social Impact Assessment (SIA), and an increased emphasis upon public participation is long overdue. It is not, however, without its risks. Efforts to involve the public are valuable in their own right, but they are not a substitute for SIA; similarly, opinion measurement is not impact assessment. Social impact assessment is meant to provide rational, technically competent and depoliticized information for the policymaking process. Public participation programs, on the other hand, can sometimes reinforce rather than counterbalance standard political pressures. Powerful groups tend to participate quite successfully, but weaker and poorer groups rarely use participation programs effectively. Without extensive attention to representativeness, public participation programs could actually distort the SIA process rather than improving it.

This publication has 10 references indexed in Scilit: