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AbstractNon‐participation is currently one of the most pertinent problems confronting large organizations. The non‐participation problem is related to two untested assumptions made by the conventional wisdom of participative management: first, power is assumed to flow from top to bottom rather than the other way around and, second, participation schemes provide sufficient opportunities for worker participation. The sociocratic organization provides a participative management model derived from system dynamics concepts which challenges both assumptions. Sociocratic organizations are based on a circle structure, decision making by consent, and double linking between circules. The circular and reflexive nature of these organizations appears to open up real opportunities for participation at all levels.

One of the crucial tests of the policy of public participation called for in the 1968 Planning Act is whether it can work in areas which do not demand a say in planning. There is a danger that these areas could be jostled even further away from resources and consideration as the more vocal areas which have always demanded attention take full advantage of their rights under the new system. The citizen's statutory right to information and consultation means litde if he doubts that his involvement can have any impact on planning, and if the local authority feel they have nothing to gain from hearing his views.
Although the 1968 Act required that the public should be informed and consulted in some way, it also gave local authorities greater power. First, it left the evolution of the means of consultation to the local authority. Second, it made planning a staged process which could be used to render the public quite impotent. In place of the old detailed development plan only the skeletal structure plan is now subject to public enquiry and ministerial approval, but at this stage the plan is insufficiently detailed for potential objectors to know how their interests are affected.

AbstractThis article investigates citizens' refusal to take part in participatory and deliberative mechanisms. An increasing number of scholars and political actors support the development of mini‐publics – that is, deliberative forums with randomly selected lay citizens. It is often argued that such innovations are a key ingredient to curing the democratic malaise of contemporary political regimes because they provide an appropriate means to achieve inclusiveness and well considered judgment. Nevertheless, real‐life experience shows that the majority of citizens refuse the invitation when they are recruited. This raises a challenging question for the development of a more inclusive democracy: Why do citizens decline to participate in mini‐publics? This article addresses this issue through a qualitative analysis of the perspectives of those who have declined to participate in three mini‐publics: the G1000, the G100 and the Climate Citizens Parliament. Drawing on in‐depth interviews, six explanatory logics of non‐participation are distinguished: concentration on the private sphere; internal political inefficacy; public meeting avoidance; conflict of schedule; political alienation; and mini‐public's lack of impact on the political system. This shows that the reluctance to take part in mini‐publics is rooted in the way individuals conceive their own roles, abilities and capacities in the public sphere, as well as in the perceived output of such democratic innovations.

Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) offers the possibility of democratising management of the seas. MSP is, however, increasingly implemented as a form of post-political planning, dominated by the logic of neoliberalism, and a belief in the capacity of managerial-technological apparatuses to address complex socio-political problems, with little attention paid to issues of power and inequality. There is growing concern that MSP is not facilitating a paradigm shift towards publicly engaged marine management, and that it may simply repackage power dynamics in the rhetoric of participation to legitimise the agendas of dominant actors. This raises questions about the legitimacy and inclusivity of participatory MSP. Research on stakeholder engagement within MSP has predominately focused on assessing experiences of active MSP participants and has not evaluated the democratic or inclusive nature of these processes. Adopting the Northeast Ocean Planning initiative in the US as a case study, this paper provides the first study of exclusion and non-participation of stakeholders in an MSP process. Three major issues are found to have had an impact on exclusion and non-participation: poor communication and a perception that the process was deliberately exclusionary; issues arising from fragmented governance, territorialisation and scale; and lack of specificity regarding benefits or losses that might accrue from the process. To be effective, participatory MSP practice must: develop mechanisms that recognise the complexity of socio-spatial relationships in the marine environment; facilitate participation in meaningful spatial decision-making, rather than in post-ideological, objective-setting processes; and create space for debate about the very purpose of MSP processes.

L'impératif participatif ­­s'incarne dans des dispositifs aux objectifs manifestes très différents, à ­­l'initiative des pouvoirs publics comme de la société civile. Mais bien souvent, ces expériences butent sur un même élément : la réponse négative de nombreuses personnes invitées à participer, ou, plus globalement, ­­l'absence ­­d'intérêt pour ce type ­­d'initiative. Cette introduction au dossier retrace le problème de la ­­non-­­participation et discute les enjeux ­­qu'il soulève en termes de reproduction des inégalités sociales, ­­d'imbrication dans les tendances structurelles et de contextualisation dans des dispositifs particuliers.

Cathy Murray considers the involvement of children and young people in research in the field of adoption and fostering in the UK, based on a review in 2004 of the Quality Protects bibliographic database1. The database comprises details of 182 research studies conducted since 1991, of which 72 were categorised as relevant to adoption and fostering. Of these, 38 (53 per cent) involved children and young people in the process. Three aspects of participation and non-participation in research are considered. First, researchers' reasons for involving children and young people are outlined. Secondly, the role of gatekeepers is examined. When embarking on the review, it had been anticipated that ethical and methodological concerns would be the key challenges to involving children and young people in research. However, gatekeepers emerged from the research outputs as equally significant. It is argued that while gatekeeping is played out in specific research projects as an apparently individualised response, it reflects the pervasiveness of a protectionist model of children and young people over a citizen-with-rights model. Thirdly, the strategies that researchers employed to increase the likelihood of children and young people's participation are reported.

This paper is an exploratory study investigating motivators of teenagers to both attend and not attend a climate change related protest event. Using open-ended surveys and focus groups, 16–19-year-old Australian students were asked about their motivators to attend and abstain fromSchool Strike 4 Climateevents. Through qualitative analysis and thematic coding, results show key motivators to attend aStrikeinclude climate change and acts of political participation that provide youth with a public voice. Protest is positioned as a key part of teen political repertoires. Reasons for non-attendance included prioritizing schoolwork and low efficacy in protest or participatory action. However, low efficacy in climate change mitigation, or an outright rejection of climate science, was not evident in this sample. Overall, reasons for attendance and non-attendance at aStrikeevent were not direct mirror images of the other, and implications for inclusion of non-participants in further studies is discussed in this light.

The 20th Biennale of Sydney, inspired by a quote from leading science fiction author William Gibson, is titled: The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed. This edition of the Biennale is presented at seven main venues conceived as 'embassies of thought'. Cockatoo Island (Embassy of the Real); Art Gallery of New South Wales (Embassy of Spirits); Carriageworks (Embassy of Disappearance; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (Embassy of Translation); a bookshop (Embassy of Stanislaw Lem); a Mortuary Station (Embassy of Transition) and a solo exhibtion by Brad Butler and Karen Mirza at Artspace (Embassy of Non-Participation) For more than 30 years, Artspace has existed as an alternative space dedicated to the presentation of contemporary and experimental art in a critical context. Along with existing works, the artists spent two months in residence at Artspace developing new works that draw on the rich history of the building and its surrounds, including its naval heritage, its use as an artists' squat in the 1970s, issues facing the Indigenous communities of Woolloomooloo, the environmental activism of the Green Bans and ongoing gentrification in the area. The multifaceted exhibition at Artspace is conceptualised as an infinity loop, which branches out in two directions linked through a central space near the entrance to the gallery. Here visitors are presented with two adjacent doors that offer different access points to the exhibition, and through which one must return to complete the picture. Thi is a riff off of Duchamp's bespoke door in his tiny Paris apartment which was famously hinged on a jamb shared by two openings, thus serving two thresholds and three rooms simultaneously. A door that closes in one direction opens in another.