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的方面之一，比几乎任何其他地方政策问题产生的政治热度都要高。新一届英国政府打算在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看似矛盾的承诺，即更多的地方控制和更多的放松规划。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措施。社区规划是政府让市民参与规划的旗舰模式，是公众参与政策/决策的国际趋势的一个突出例子。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，2400多个社区计划覆盖了近1200万人。它允许社区团体制定自己的法定规划政策，并被描绘成一个过于复杂、技术性和排他性的规划系统的解毒剂。它声称通过扩大声音和知识来源的范围来促进民主，这些声音和知识来源可以对规划产生影响，使了解和关心一个地方的人能够对该地方的变化做出自己的决定。我的研究考察了这些说法，借鉴了科学技术研究（STS）的理论和方法，探索了“民主实验”在特定地点的工作方式。国民党依靠参与性实践，而不是正式的代议制民主，来巩固其合法性。不同的实践利用不同的权威来源来产生不同类型的合法性。这些权威来源有时似乎是相互矛盾的。理解它们是如何结合和冲突的需要新的分析和评估形式，我的研究提供了这一点。我展示了某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社区最关心的方面的能力。这在一定程度上削弱了国民党提出的民主主张，同时使真正的差异得以实现。我的分析表明，为国民党提出的民主主张可以得到加强。该奖学金建立在我的博士研究成果的基础上，以增加他们对从业者和政策制定者的影响，并发展和扩展我对跨学科学术的理论贡献。通过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、从业者和利益相关者，他们将共同努力，改变NP参与者的现实生活实践和管理它的政策框架。这项工作也将对新兴的STS参与奖学金领域作出创新贡献。它将使不同领域的研究对新的思维方式、代表性和合法性的研究更加敏感，在这些领域，这些实践正日益补充和/或破坏对民主的标准描述。它将加深和多样化我已经拥有的利益相关者和研究网络，通过强大的出版物和影响记录来发展我的形象，并使我在以影响为导向的学术生涯的下一步处于有利地位。总而言之，该奖学金旨在发展社区规划者和支持机构的实践，为国家政策的变化提供信息，为规划研究和STS带来新的见解，为涉及新兴参与式和地方主义治理和民主形式的跨学科领域的研究提供信息。最终，它旨在更好地使人们对他们所了解和关心的地方的变化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.