Assessing Citizen Involvement Efforts by Local Governments

Based on a national survey of 428 local governments, we demonstrate that citizen involvement efforts can be captured as a construct with four dimensions, including involvement mechanisms, involvement in decision making, involvement in street-level services, and involvement in management functions. We find that although conventional citizen participation methods are consistently used by many governments, broad-based and individual-based methods are utilized less frequently. Citizen input is not frequently sought in decision making or for functional areas that are managerial or technical or involve issues of confidentiality. Governments in large communities are found to be more likely to promote citizen involvement activities than are governments in smaller communities. The form of government is not found to have a significant impact. We also find that the rationale for citizen involvement and the source of pressure for performance and accountability have some effects. A research agenda is developed based o...