Participation policy from inside: contradictions in policy actors’ perception

Abstract

Formal participation to policy making is implemented via the widespread use of councils, committees and participatory or advisory groups to tackle collisions of different interests, express positions, convey visions and seek consensus over plausible solutions. Despite the long practice of operation and overwhelming research based evidence of success of such participation arrangements, participation policy remains a challenge for practitioners. The goal of this research is to analyse practice of participation in selected participatory groups and search for asymmetry in perception of policy stakeholders that would allow determination of the main obstacles for the development of participation policies. Domains of Health policy and Education and Science policy in Lithuania let us compare the research interests and find out the true tendencies of participation from equivocal statements. Results of this study indicate important differences in perception of participation by different policy actors