Cultures of participation and the advent of the citizen expert in modern democracies

该研究项目涉及现代民主国家公民专家的出现，即普通公民，他们被认为是专家和社会代表的双重角色，被称为“服务使用者”、“基于经验的专家”或“公民科学家”。公民专业技能实践承诺利用闲置的知识资源，同时让“实地”的人们参与进来，从而潜在地使知识和决策“民主化”。该项目回应了对这一问题所做的研究很少，而这一现象普遍受到了极大的热情。它需要从政治学的角度来审视这些实践的民主合法性和知识质量。主要问题是：仔细观察与公民专业知识相关的高期望在多大程度上能保持住？在什么条件下，这些做法既能赋予权力和包容性，又能启发和解决问题？该项目研究了三个在公众参与和民主复兴方面存在实质性差异的国家(挪威、德国和英国)的公民专门知识做法。经验分析包括探索不同的参与文化和民主创新的使用，对公众参与的理由进行框架分析，更具体地说，对公民专家参与的理由进行框架分析，并根据访谈和文件分析对气候变化和卫生政策领域的案例进行业绩检查。在理论方面，民主理论、知识方法社会学以及制度和决策理论主要建立在这些理论的基础上。

The research project deals with the advent of citizen experts in modern democracies, i.e. ordinary citizens that are attributed the double role of an expert and a societal representative and are addressed as ‘service users’, ‘experience-based experts’ or ‘citizen scientists’. Citizen expertise practices promise to tap into idle knowledge resources and involve the people ‘on the ground’ at the same time, thus potentially ‘democratising’ knowledge and decision-making.The project responds to the little research done on the issue and the utter enthusiasm the phenomenon is generally met with. It takes a political science perspective that scrutinizes the democratic legitimacy and knowledge quality of these practices.The leading questions are: In how far do the high expectations associated with citizen expertise hold at closer look? Under which conditions can these practices be both empowering and inclusive as well as enlightening and problem-solving? The project studies citizen expertise practices in three countries that differ substantively in their approaches to public participation and democratic renewal (Norway, Germany and the UK). The empirical analysis comprises an exploration of the different participatory cultures and uses of democratic innovations, a frame analysis of justifications given for public participation, and for citizen expert involvement more specifically, as well as a performance check of cases operating in the climate change and health policy field that is based on interviews and document analysis. In theoretical terms, democratic theories, sociology of knowledge-approaches and institutional and decision-making theories are built on primarily.