Experiments in democracy: Knowing, caring and acting in neighbourhood planning and beyond

土地利用规划是当地生活中最具争议性的方面之一，比几乎任何其他地方政策问题都会引发更多的政治热潮。英国新政府打算在2020年发布关于规划和权力下放的白皮书，阐述他们打算如何解决他们关于加强地方控制和更多放松规划监管的看似自相矛盾的承诺。这提供了在新立法通过之前影响政策制定的机会，使这项建议成为特别及时的干预。邻里规划是政府在地方参与规划方面的旗舰模式，这是国际上增加公众参与决策/决策的显著趋势。2020年3月承诺继续提供资金，但与规划系统的其他部分一样，它可能面临根本性的变化。这是2011年《地方主义法案》授予的一系列社区权利中最受欢迎的一项，2400多项邻里计划覆盖了近1200万人。它允许社区团体制定自己的法定规划政策，并被描绘成对过于复杂、技术性和排他性的规划体系的解药。它声称通过扩大可能对规划产生影响的声音和知识来源的范围来促进民主，使了解并关心一个地方的人能够就它如何变化做出自己的决定。我的研究借鉴了科学和技术研究(STS)的理论和方法，探讨了如何在特定的地方进行“民主实验”。国家党依靠参与性做法，而不是正式的代议制民主来巩固其合法性。不同的做法利用不同的权威来源来产生不同类型的合法性。这些权威的来源有时似乎彼此不一致。理解它们如何结合和冲突需要新的分析和评估形式，我的研究提供了这一点。我展示了一些类型的合法性如何支持或破坏其他类型的合法性，以及这如何限制社区代表和规划他们最关心的邻里方面的能力。这在一定程度上削弱了对国家党的民主主张，同时也使真正的不同得以实现。我的分析指出了为NP提出的民主主张可以得到加强的方法。这一奖学金建立在我的博士研究成果的基础上，以增加它们在实践者和政策制定者中的影响力，并发展和扩大我对跨学科学术的理论贡献。根据对合法性和民主的分析，我将创建一个网络，包括来自不同学科的学者、实践者和利益攸关方，他们将共同努力，改变国家警察参与者的现实做法和管理它的政策框架。这项工作还将对STS参与研究这一新兴领域作出创新贡献。它将使不同领域的研究敏感于新的思维方式和代表性和合法化，这些做法正在日益补充和/或破坏对民主的标准描述。它将深化和多样化我已经拥有的利益相关者和研究网络，通过稳健的出版物和影响记录发展我的个人资料，并使我处于有利地位，可以在以影响为导向的学术生涯中迈出下一步。总而言之，该奖学金旨在-发展邻里规划者和支持机构的做法-为国家政策的变化提供信息-从新颖的分析到规划研究和STS-为跨学科领域的研究提供信息，这些领域关注新兴的参与性和地方主义治理和民主形式，最终，它旨在使人们能够更好地对他们所了解和关心的地方将发生变化的方式产生真正的影响。

Land use planning is one of the most controversial aspects of local life, generating more political heat than almost any other local policy issue. The new UK Government intends to publish White Papers on planning and devolution during 2020, setting out how they intend to resolve their apparently paradoxical promises of more local control and more deregulation of planning. This provides an opportunity to influence policy development before new legislation is passed, making this proposal a particularly timely intervention.Neighbourhood planning (NP) is the Government's flagship model for local engagement with planning, a striking case of the international trend towards increased public participation in policy / decision-making. Continued funding was committed in March 2020, but as with the rest of the planning system, it could be facing radical changes. It is the most popular of a raft of 'community rights' granted by the 2011 Localism Act, with nearly 12 million people covered by more than 2,400 neighbourhood plans. It allows community groups to write their own statutory planning policies, and is portrayed as an antidote to a planning system that was too complex, technical and exclusive. It claims to promote democracy by widening the range of voices and sources of knowledge that can be influential in planning, enabling the people who know and care about a place to make their own decisions about how it changes.My research examines these claims, drawing on theories and methods from Science and Technology Studies (STS) that explore how 'experiments in democracy' work in particular locations. NP relies on participatory practices, rather than formal representative democracy, to underpin its legitimacy. Different practices draw on different sources of authority to produce different types of legitimacy. These sources of authority sometimes appear to be at odds with each other. Understanding how they combine and conflict requires new forms of analysis and evaluation, which my research provides. I show how some types of legitimacy support or undermine others, and how this constrains communities' abilities to represent and plan for the aspects of neighbourhood that concern them most. This partially undermines the democratic claims made for NP, while simultaneously enabling real differences to be made. My analysis indicates ways that the democratic claims made for NP could be strengthened.This fellowship builds on the findings of my PhD research to increase their impact among practitioners and policy-makers, and to develop and extend my theoretical contributions to interdisciplinary scholarship. Informed by this analysis of legitimacy and democracy, I will create a network including scholars from different disciplines, practitioners and stakeholders that will work together to change the real-life practices of participants in NP and the policy framework that governs it. The work will also make an innovative contribution to the emerging field of STS scholarship on participation. It will sensitise research in diverse fields to new ways of thinking and doing representation and legitimation, where these practices are increasingly complementing and/or undermining standard accounts of democracy. It will deepen and diversify the stakeholder and research networks that I already have, develop my profile with a robust publications and impact record, and put me in a strong position to take the next step on an impact-oriented academic career.In summary, the fellowship aims to- develop the practices of neighbourhood planners and support agencies- inform changes to national policy- bring new insights from a novel analysis to planning studies and STS- inform research across inter/disciplinary fields that are concerned with emerging forms of participatory and localist governance and democracyUltimately, it aims to better enable people to have real influence over the ways in which the places they know and care about will change.