Original
Democratic Values in Citizen Participation: What Citizens Prioritize in Participation
Abstract
ABSTRACT Citizen participation is often initiated to strengthen democracy. While participatory innovations are typically assessed through normative frameworks emphasizing democratic values, little is known about which of these values are prioritized by citizens. This research note presents findings from an original survey conducted in the Netherlands in 2024, investigating which democratic values citizens prioritize in the context of citizen participation. Drawing on Hendriks' (2022) democratic values typology including inclusiveness, process fairness, efficaciousness, resilience and counterbalance, we operationalize five value statements and asked respondents to rank them. Citizens most frequently prioritize efficacious outcomes and fair procedures, while inclusiveness, resilience, and counterbalance receive less emphasis. This pattern highlights the central role of both effective governance and procedural fairness in citizen participation. Value priorities nevertheless vary across citizens: inclusiveness, understood as the inclusion of diverse perspectives, is more strongly emphasized by left‐wing citizens, whereas counterbalance is primarily prioritized by politically dissatisfied citizens, but remains a lower overall priority. These findings offer an exploratory first step in linking normative frameworks on democratic values with how citizens themselves prioritize those values.
中文
公民参与中的民主价值观：公民在参与中优先考虑什么
摘要
摘要 公民参与往往旨在强化民主。尽管参与式创新通常通过强调民主价值观的规范框架加以评估，但对于公民优先重视其中哪些价值观，我们仍知之甚少。本研究报告呈现了2024年在荷兰开展的一项原创调查的结果，考察公民在公民参与情境中优先重视哪些民主价值观。借鉴Hendriks（2022）的民主价值观类型学——包括包容性、程序公平、效能性、韧性和制衡——我们将五项价值陈述操作化，并请受访者对其进行排序。公民最常优先考虑的是有效的结果和公平的程序，而包容性、韧性和制衡则较少受到强调。这一模式凸显了有效治理与程序公平在公民参与中的核心作用。不过，价值观优先级因公民而异：被理解为纳入多元视角的包容性，更受左翼公民强调；而制衡主要由政治上不满的公民优先考虑，但总体优先级仍较低。这些发现为将关于民主价值观的规范框架与公民自身如何优先考虑这些价值观联系起来，提供了探索性的第一步。
关键词
民主价值观、公民参与、参与式民主、荷兰、程序公平、包容性、制衡、效能