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Image is illustrative. Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash
The academic literature is littered with accounts of what can go wrong in participation initiatives. The article presents a diagnostic tool – the CLEAR model – that both anticipates obstacles to empowerment and links these to policy responses. Based upon case studies of participation practices in contrasting English localities (Lowndes et al 2006a), the model identifies five factors that underpin citizens’ uneven response to participation (Lowndes et al 2006b).
The CLEAR tool argues that participation is most effective where citizens: