Politicians and interactive decision making: Institutional spoilsports or playmakers

In recent years interactive decision making has become quite popular in The Netherlands, especially at the level of local government. It involves new forms of participation of citizens, consumers of public services and intere st groups in the process of policy formation. Workshops, panels, internet d iscussions and a lot of other techniques are used to arrive at innovative a nd supported solutions for existing problems. The ambitions are high: these new forms of participation should result in better government both in the sense of providing better policies, but also in bridging the democratic gap between local government and citizens. However, these new forms of participation in local government are not witho ut problems. Recent experiences suggest that one of the major problems is t he challenge interactive decision making constitutes for the existing pract ice of representative politics. On the basis of two cases - the decision-ma king process concerning the expansion of the Rotterdam Harbour and the disc ussion about a new administrative structure for the Rotterdam region - this article illustrates that one of the barriers that stands in the way of the success of such processes is the ambiguous attitude of elected politicians . Although politicians often initiate interactive decision-making processes , they do not actively support these processes when they are in progress. T he outcomes of interactive decision-making progress are often not used in t he formal political procedures that follow. Because elected politicians fea r that these new forms of participation threaten their political primacy, t hey find it hard to play a constructive role in these processes. In this paper we suggest that if politicians are serious about interactive decision making, they should reflect on their own role in it. Building upon empirical insights of the cases and on a discussion of two possible approa ches to democracy, we suggest alternative roles for politicians. The prevai ling substantive definition of primacy of politics should be redefined in o rder to allow politicians to fulfil the role of catalyst and facilitator of the public debate. In this way the eroded role of politicians in societal decision making may gain a new meaning.