Public Meetings and the Democratic Process

• Published date: 01 February 2004
• Author: Brian Adams
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2004.00345.x
• Date: 01 February 2004

Public Meetings and the Democratic Process 43

Brian Adams

San Diego State University

Public Meetings and the Democratic Process

Public meetings are frequently attacked as useless democratic rituals that lack deliberative quali-

ties and fail to give citizens a voice in the policy process. Do public meetings have a role to play in

fostering citizen participation in policy making? While many of the criticisms leveled against pub-

lic meetings have merit, I argue that they do. In this article, I explore the functions that city council

and school board meetings serve. While they may not be very good at accomplishing their pri-

mary goal of giving citizens the opportunity to directly influence decisions made by governing

bodies, they can be used to achieve other ends, such as sending information to officials and setting

the agenda. As a complement to deliberative political structures, public meetings have a role to

play by offering a venue in which citizens can achieve their political goals, thereby enhancing

governmental accountability and responsiveness.

Most local governments hold regularly scheduled meet-

ings to discuss and decide public issues. Opportunities for

citizens to voice their opinions are usually a part of these

meetings. Public input may take the form of comments on

specific issues before the governmental body, or it may be

general comments on issues that citizens care about. In

either case, citizens are given a specified period of time

(frequently two to three minutes) to state their opinions

and are usually prohibited from engaging other citizens or

officials in dialogue.

In this article, I examine city council and school board

meetings in a mid-sized city (Santa Ana, California) and

ask what role public meetings have in the participatory

policy process. Can they play a constructive role by allow-

ing citizens to voice their concerns and influence policy

decisions, or are they a hollow ritual that merely provides

a facade of legitimacy? If we want to incorporate greater

public participation into the policy process, is there a place

for public meetings? I add to the literature that examines

the role of public participation in policy analysis (Thomas

1990; Walters, Aydelotte, and Miller 2000) by exploring

what function public meetings serve and how they fit into

the larger institutional context of citizen input into the

policy process.

I argue that public meetings serve an important demo-

cratic function by providing citizens with the opportunity

to convey information to officials, influence public opin-

ion, attract media attention, set future agendas, delay deci-

sions, and communicate with other citizens. Meetings are

a tool that citizens can use to achieve political objectives.

This tool is ill-suited for fostering policy deliberations or

persuading officials to change a vote on a specific issue.

But meetings serve another purpose: By giving citizens a

venue in which they can achieve political goals, public

meetings can enhance the political power of citizens and,

consequently, improve governmental responsiveness to

citizens.

If we keep in mind the functions that public meetings

can and cannot perform, their role in the participatory policy

process becomes clearer. Public meetings can complement

the structures that foster citizen deliberation (such as citi-

zen panels, forums, and roundtables) by providing citizens

with the opportunity to engage in the political process be-

fore deliberations commence and after citizens have de-

veloped a set of recommendations or a consensus policy

position. Even though public meetings themselves are not

deliberative, they can facilitate citizen participation and

the development of good policy by assisting citizens in

achieving their political goals. In this article, I hope to show

the purposes that public meetings serve and how they fit

into a larger scheme of citizen input into policy making.

Brian Adams is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science

at San Diego State University. His research focuses on democracy and citi-

zen participation in local politics. He is currently exploring how citizens try

to influence local public policy and what policies generate the most partici-

pation. E-mail: badams@mail.sdsu.edu.