Evaluating the Effectiveness of Deliberative Processes: Waste Management Case-studies

Public participation in decision making through the use of deliberative processes is now widely promoted as the means of enhancing institutional legitimacy, citizen influence and social responsibility and learning. Different methods are being tried but key questions remain about what works best and how practice could be improved. This paper discusses four examples of the application of community advisory committees and citizens' juries to waste strategy development by English local authorities. It evaluates the processes using criteria based on the concept of the fair and competent process, and identifies lessons for the optimum process.