Deliberation, Representation, Equity: Research Approaches, Tools and Algorithms for Participatory Processes

Description

What can we learn about the development of public interaction in e-democracy from a drama delivered by mobile headphones to an audience standing around a shopping center in a Stockholm suburb? In democratic societies there is widespread acknowledgment of the need to incorporate citizens’ input in decision-making processes in more or less structured ways. But participatory decision making is balancing on the borders of inclusion, structure, precision and accuracy. To simply enable more participation will not yield enhanced democracy, and there is a clear need for more elaborated elicitation and decision analytical tools. This rigorous and thought-provoking volume draws on a stimulating variety of international case studies, from flood risk management in the Red River Delta of Vietnam, to the consideration of alternatives to gold mining in Roșia Montană in Transylvania, to the application of multi-criteria decision analysis in evaluating the impact of e-learning opportunities at Uganda's Makerere University. Editors Love Ekenberg (senior research scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis [IIASA], Laxenburg, professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Karin Hansson (artist and research fellow, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University), Mats Danielson (vice president and professor of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, affiliate researcher, IIASA) and Göran Cars (professor of Societal Planning and Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm) draw innovative collaborations between mathematics, social science, and the arts. They develop new problem formulations and solutions, with the aim of carrying decisions from agenda setting and problem awareness through to feasible courses of action by setting objectives, alternative generation, consequence assessments, and trade-off clarifications. As a result, this book is important new reading for decision makers in government, public administration and urban planning, as well as students and researchers in the fields of participatory democracy, urban planning, social policy, communication design, participatory art, decision theory, risk analysis and computer and systems sciences. Table of Contents......Page 6 Contributors......Page 8 Prologue......Page 10 Introduction......Page 16 1 Interdisciplinarity and Mixed Methods......Page 28 2 The Concept of Democracy......Page 40 3 Art as a Creative and Critical Public Space......Page 54 4 Plural Democracy......Page 80 5 Criteria Weight Elicitation – A Comparative Study......Page 102 6 Cardinal and Rank Ordering of Criteria with Clouds......Page 120 7 Attitude Ranking......Page 140 8 Evaluating ICT and Development......Page 152 9 A Mobile Urban Drama as a Model for Interactive Elicitation......Page 168 10 Multi-Criteria Decision Making......Page 192 11 Comparing MCDA Methods......Page 208 12 Algorithms for Decision Analysis......Page 226 13 A Model for Flood Risk Management: Bac Hung Hai......Page 252 14 A Model for Flood Risk Management: Tisza......Page 264 15 Roşia Montană Gold Exploitation......Page 274 16 Decision Making in Urban Planning......Page 304 17 Actory: Visualising Reputational Power to Promote Deliberation......Page 320 18 Njaru: Developing Tools for Deliberation in Multiple Public Spheres......Page 342 19 Evaluation of an Online Learning Environment......Page 354 20 A Low Carbon Society by 2050: The Stockholm-Mälar Region Case......Page 364 Epilogue......Page 376 Publications......Page 380