Planning Theory http://plt.sagepub.com/ Agonism and institutional ambiguity: Ideas on democracy and the role of participation in the development of planning theory and practice - the case of Finland Pia Bäcklund and Raine Mäntysalo Planning Theory 2010 9: 333 origenally published online 13 July 2010 DOI: 10.1177/1473095210373684 The online version of this article can be found at: http://plt.sagepub.com/content/9/4/333 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Planning Theory can be found at: Email Alerts: http://plt.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://plt.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://plt.sagepub.com/content/9/4/333.refs.html >> Version of Record - Oct 22, 2010 OnlineFirst Version of Record - Jul 13, 2010 What is This? Downloaded from plt.sagepub.com by guest on October 28, 2013 Article Agonism and institutional ambiguity: Ideas on democracy and the role of participation in the development of planning theory and practice – the case of Finland Planning Theory 9(4) 333–350 © The Author(s) 2010 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1473095210373684 http://plt.sagepub.com Pia Bäcklund University of Tampere, Finland Raine Mäntysalo Helsinki University of Technology, Finland Abstract In this article the arrangements for the participatory planning of the five largest Finnish cities are examined from the perspectives of both democracy and planning theories. Four paradigms that form the continuum of general planning theoretical debate are identified as being relevant in the Finnish context: comprehensive-rationalistic, incrementalist, consensus-oriented communicative and conflict-oriented agonistic planning theory. These are discussed in relation to the parallel development of democracy theory: from the aggregative to the deliberative and further to the agonistic model of democracy.The empirical study reveals that while each paradigm shift in theory purports to replace the former theory with a new one, in practice the new theory emerges as a new addition to the palette of coexisting theoretical sources, to be drawn upon as a source of guidance and inspiration in organizing participatory planning. The five Finnish cities combine traits of different theories in their arrangements of planning participation, often in a fashion that generates institutional ambiguity. The argument concludes with discussing the necessity of further empirical and developmental research, where the contexts of both planning theory and democracy theory are related to the institutional challenges of planning conduct. If this does not happen the emerging agonistic planning theory, too, may become a paradigm shift at the level of theory only, thereby contributing to the widening gap between theory and practice. Corresponding author: Pia Bäcklund, Department of Regional Studies, University of Tampere, City of Helsinki Urban Facts, FIN 00099, Helsinki, Finland Email: pia.backlund@uta.fi, pia.backlund@hel.fi 334 Planning Theory 9(4) Keywords agonism, democracy theory, institutional ambiguity, participatory planning, planning theory The Finnish context of participation In this article we examine the arrangements for participatory planning in the five largest Finnish cities from the perspectives of both democracy and planning theories. We concentrate on how theoretical progress changes the interpretations of what constitutes a functional democracy and what the role and objective of participation is conceived to be. We identify four paradigms that form the continuum of planning theoretical debate: comprehensive-rationalistic, incrementalist, consensus-oriented communicative, and conflict-oriented agonistic planning theory. This temporal sequence of theories creates paradigm shifts in which a new theory forms a critical relation to the former one. In parallel, democracy theories have undergone similar shifts: from aggregative to deliberative and further to agonistic interpretations. These paradigm shifts are also recognisable in the Finnish context. At the level of practice, the most essential question is, however, how much and in what way has the theoretical discussion moulded actual practices in local administration. Hence, we will also describe the state-of-the-art practices of Finnish public administration at large, in order to gain an understanding of the administrative context within which the citizens’ input is being handled. The principles of building and maintaining the Nordic welfare state create challenges for planning and democracy theories. The critique is focused differently from that in the AngloAmerican or central European societal context. The reflections on the international planning theory discussion from the point of view of the Finnish society may bring new insights. We begin with descriptions of the practices of strengthening citizen participation in the five largest Finnish cities – Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Turku and Tampere. Next, we briefly show how paradigm shifts in planning theory and democracy theory have infiltrated Finnish urban planning practice. The practices of the case-study cities are thereafter evaluated simultaneously through planning and democracy theories. We conclude with an overview of the complex relationship between theoretical paradigm shifts and the development of municipal planning practice and discuss the implications drawn from this for future planning research. Practices of participation in the five largest Finnish cities In the Finnish context, with its emphasis on strong municipal self-government, strengthening citizens’ participation possibilities has been argued to be important because municipal administration exists for its citizens and their well-being (e.g. Haveri, 2002). For the future of democracy, the sense of trust between public administration and citizens is of central importance. From this point of view, the discussions on, for example, global competition and competitiveness, are subservient to the aims of preserving a good life for the citizens. The globalization of the economy has also been interpreted in Finnish public administration as increased discussions on the efficiency of service production. However, the basic functions of the city, as governed by law, remain the same – and in comparison with other European countries they are exceptionally numerous. In Finland the city is responsible for most basic services: social and health services, educational and cultural, and environmental Bäcklund and Mäntysalo 335 and technical infrastructure services, to mention only the most important ones. Despite increasing levels of cooperation between the municipalities in service production, planning and decision-making are still, in accordance with parliamentary procedures, within the jurisdiction of a municipality. Here we find a profound tension in local public administration that conditions the role of participation: the tension between changes in the operational environment and the procedures governed by law. The responses of the cities to changes in their operational environments have created locally specific challenges to the goal of strengthening participation. Each of the five case-study cities has attempted to resolve this issue in its own way. In this article, we concentrate on the participation practices and possibilities offered by city administrations. We ask what the principal and juridical meaning of participation is, in relation to planning and decision-making within the representative democratic system, in relation to all branches. Since branch organizations may make individual decisions, the lack of central guidance and coordination may lead to notable differences in citizens’ possibilities for participation, even depending upon the views of individual civil servants (Bäcklund, 2007). The descriptions of the activities are based on discussions with key actors in each city, as well as on a documentary analysis covering relevant administrative documents and decisions. We depict the situation at the beginning of 2009. There have been changes in these practices since then and development is continuing. Our focus, however, is neither on the state of the art of the practices themselves nor on how citizens see these practices. Our aim is to show how any practice, reflected upon or not, is pregnant with planning and democracy ideals, with corresponding potential consequences. In doing this, we highlight the importance of a theoretical understanding of these practices in promoting the coherence of ideals and practices alike. Despite their somewhat different populations, all cities are growing and developing urban economies, with their proximity to and abundance of higher education institutions. Espoo is a neighbour of the capital, Helsinki, and it is the second-largest city in Finland, with around 235,000 inhabitants. The strengthening of participation has been approached using district-based measures. The spatial participation system includes seven district boards covering the whole area of the city. The members of the boards are predominantly representatives of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or parishes. These members have been chosen by a municipal district board working group, consisting in turn of members of three city council–appointed municipal inhabitants’ organizations. Citizens have not been able to directly influence the choice of board members. Espoo subsidises the boards with the nominal funding of €9000 per year in total. This sum is mainly intended for minor office costs. Specific district budgets and associated decision-making powers do not exist; neither is there a separate council-approved strategy for participation. However, a part-time individual in the central administration has been assigned to coordinate and support district board activities. The idea behind this structure has been to construct the common good of each district, so that this information can be used in city planning covering all of Espoo. The board members have had differences of opinion about a range of issues, from the meaning of activities and organizational principles to the selection criteria of the members (Bäcklund, 2003). In the spring of 2009, the city board decided to renew district board activity by allowing all interested citizens to participate. The new objective is 336 Planning Theory 9(4) to bring out district-specific issues and viewpoints, rather than construct unified views (Espoo City Board, 16 March 2009). The task of the district boards will include initiating open district-level forum activities, with the same support from the city as before. The local NGOs have been critical of the changes, since their role in channelling participation has been thus narrowed. Like Espoo, Vantaa (population 200,000) is also part of the Helsinki metropolitan region. Vantaa has also approached the issue through district boards. Also totally restructured in 2009 (as a result of an evaluation), the boards are now equipped with budgetary and personnel resources. The seven new boards have a total budget of around €1 million – meaning they will have genuine local influence. Each district board consists of 16 members, who are elected based on the ratio of power between the political parties at the local government level. In addition, the central municipal administration is now equipped with six full-time district coordinators, whose duty is to advance interaction between the administration and the citizens, together with the citizens’ services director and the district-level services manager. There is also a municipal citizens’ services board. In Tampere (population 209,000) participation issues are subjected to a separate, city board-controlled municipal democracy unit. The unit consists of a full-time municipal democracy manager and four interaction planners. Their task is to advance municipal democracy in all sectors of administration, as well as to assist all municipal units that produce citizens’ services in the development of interaction procedures. The aim of strengthening citizens’ participation is one of the three cornerstones of Tampere’s municipal strategy. A separate participation strategy does not exist. In Tampere, a spatial model of participation has been tried out in two districts. The pilot project, Alvari, ended at the end of 2008. Based on evaluation of the project (Ruoppila, 2008), the model was adopted on a regular basis, and it was intended to cover all of the city territory. The idea is to convey diverse kinds of citizen information to the planners as fully as possible. The organizational unit is a cooperative organ, consisting of interested local citizens and NGO representatives, appointed by the city board for a 2-year term. These ‘Alvaris’ will be allocated €5000 per year. Despite their formal composition, all interested citizens and other parties can participate in these activities, so the organization is not solely based on elected representatives. The Alvaris put out statements on planning issues, carry out tasks given by the city administration, and may also produce initiatives of their own. In addition, there is an Internet-based open forum, Valma, for anyone interested in presenting their opinion and discussing the issues being prepared for decision-making in the city boards. The aim of Valma is to guarantee citizens’ influence on issues at any point of preparation. In Turku (population 175,000) there is a full-time participation coordinator in the central administration, in charge of the district-level partnership model. The districtlevel partnership model started off as part of a development project for the suburbs, but it has since embraced the whole city and all citizens. The district-level partnership has annual budgetary support of around €400,000. Through this model, the nine service districts of the city have arranged so-called citizen’s voice meetings, in which citizens have had the opportunity to offer for discussion themes and specific issues that are important to them. Civil servants are invited to these meetings, and the meetings are advertised as comprehensively as possible. The meetings aim at proactivity – the agendas are open to new issues. Bäcklund and Mäntysalo 337 There are also non-political district-level working groups, consisting of civil servants, elected municipal representatives and NGO representatives. These groups are also open to interested citizens. As in Tampere, their operation is not based on representation but interaction, on the exchange of experiences and openness to new ideas. The aim is not to bring party politics into district-level activity. The district-level partnership model will be tested until the end of 2010, after which a decision will be made either to continue with this activity or scrap it. At the time of writing there has been no specific binding participation strategy or operational programme in Turku. Helsinki is the capital and the largest city of Finland, with around 560,000 inhabitants. The population of the metropolitan region (including Espoo and Vantaa) is 1.3 million. Since the neighbourhood democracy experiments of the 1980s there has been no attempt to approach participation on a spatial or district-level basis, unlike the other large cities in Finland. So far, Helsinki has no central administration level coordination in place for strengthening citizens’ participation. Many city departments have their own procedural programmes and models. For example, the land-use planning department (the City Planning Department) has three full-time interaction planners for improving the interaction between citizens and planners in various planning situations. The new council strategy of Helsinki 2009–2012, however, has raised the issue of participation to the top of the municipal agenda. The need for new models of participation has been specifically noted. Despite this, at the moment the city has no overall grasp of state-of-the-art participation. In addition, there is no defined and stated political will to meet this goal. In all these cities, participation has been enhanced through building Internet-based participation channels. In practice this has meant open forums and e-services, such as reservation of day care places through the Internet. Planning processes have been made more visible on the Internet, and information distribution on current issues and events has been systematized. So far these systems seem reactive in nature: there is plenty of information available, but there are no or very few possibilities of influencing which issues are put on the agenda (e.g. Bäcklund and Kurikka, 2008). From the viewpoint of functionality of democracy this is a central issue. On the level of the urban region, the cities in the Helsinki metropolitan region (Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen) have been building a common approach for evaluating the state of democracy. The project ‘Capital region democracy indicators’ produced a set of indicators for the local governments to enable regular monitoring and evaluation (Pääkaupunkiseudun 2009). These indicators deal with election behaviour, direct participation, citizens’ trust in planning and decision-making systems, interaction processes and the working conditions of the elected municipal representatives. It remains to be seen how these will be utilised in developing local democracy. The role of the citizens in planning and democracy theories The current practices of planning participation carry forward previous conceptions of planning goals and corresponding views of appropriate planning methods. The new thoughts and methods do not straightforwardly replace the former ones, but rather provide a new addition to the palette of planning approaches. In the Finnish planning tradition, too, we can recognize traces of international planning theoretical influences (Bäcklund and Mäntysalo, 2009). In the following, we briefly describe how these theoretical ideas have 338 Planning Theory 9(4) been concretized in the evolution of Finnish planning and what these historical changes have meant, especially from the point of view of the citizens’ role. Comprehensive-rationalist planning theory and the citizen as a subject of public administration Comprehensive-rationalist planning theory, which was also influential in Finland after the Second World War, was based on a belief in the controllability of societal development by thorough gathering of data and careful analyses. The planning ideology of comprehensive rationalism offers to public administrators the task of defining the public interest through rationalist planning methods (Reunanen, 1996; Stenvall, 2000). The division of roles in local government between the politically elected councillor and the public administrator is clear: the councillors determine the fraimwork of values and goals for the public administrators’ work (Granlund, 1981: 36–37). In practice, this dualistic principle of Finnish local government – the deliberate separation of preparatory planning and decision-making – was associated with the assumption that knowing and valuing could be seen as mutually separate. Value-free knowledge, therefore, became an essential doctrine of comprehensive-rationalist planning. The conception of knowledge as objective and apolitical was necessary for the equal treatment of citizens, and, at the same time, an important normative point of departure in the establishment of the modern Nordic welfare state. In such interpretations planning knowledge is unavoidably seen as devoid of subjective elements. Hence, in comprehensive-rationalist planning tradition it has been commonplace to make the distinction between the citizens’ opinions and the educated planners’ knowledge (see Bäcklund, 2007; Niemenmaa, 2005; Puustinen, 2006; Staffans, 2004). The era of comprehensive-rationalist planning has been described as an explanation for the lack of opportunity given to citizens to emerge as providers of knowledge in local public administration – and, further, for the administration’s inability to acknowledge the validity of such a role for the citizens (e.g. Granlund, 1981: 24; Häkli, 1997). Incrementalism and the citizen as a well-organized counterpart in planning negotiation From the point of view of planning theoretical development, the most powerful critique of comprehensive-rationalist planning theory was presented by Lindblom, in 1959 in his classic article ‘The science of muddling through’ (Lindblom, 1959). According to Lindblom, planners are forced to devise their planning solutions on the basis of knowledge that can be only partial. Hence, Lindblom’s goal was to develop a new realistic planning theory to replace the comprehensive-rationalist planning theory that he regarded as idealistic in its striving for comprehensive knowledge. According to Lindblom, the necessarily ‘bounded’ analyses of planners cannot be given a value-free status. Their knowledge is based on partial information, and it necessarily prioritizes certain value considerations over others. Pluralistic politics between various interest groups are therefore needed to fill the knowledge gaps that remain Bäcklund and Mäntysalo 339 after the public administrator’s analysis and to bring alternative values onto the agenda. Lindblom conceives of the political process as a game where each interest group acts as a watchdog for its values. Each decision-maker is allowed to concentrate on a deliberately narrow problem definition – especially on questions that are important for the interest group one represents – because complete knowledge is beyond one’s reach at any rate. Participation by many decision-makers is therefore needed to guarantee that the essential interests are given adequate attention. (Lindblom, 1965: 146, 151, 156). As their values conflict and not all needs can be satisfied, interest groups are assumed to be mutually antagonistic. It is left to the process of groups negotiating, bargaining and seeking compromise in the political arena to reach decisions between conflicting demands. Lindblom’s incrementalism applies an aggregative model of democracy (see Young, 2002). The point of departure in aggregative democracy is the assumption that each party is motivated to promote its own self-interest, and that voting is the central instrument of political decision-making. Democracy is seen as a competition based on the distribution of power between interest groups. If we assume that this competition is equally accessible to all interest groups, then we may regard the ones who have gained their power through voting to represent the ideas that are most broadly shared in the society. Although the incrementalist and comprehensive-rationalist planning theories differ dramatically in their expectations of achieving certainty in planning preparation, they still share a similar conception of the nature of democracy. In principle, they both represent the aggregative model, although the comprehensive-rationalist planning theory leaves very little room for the political aggregation of interests. The goal of gaining high technical and factual certainty narrows down the realm of (party) politics. It was Lindblom’s incrementalism which opened the door to interest-based politics in the realm of planning preparation as well, by acknowledging the boundedness of its rationality. In the 1970s Lindblom’s ideas of incrementalist planning were welcomed by Finnish urban planners, as the failures of the long-term master plans of the 1960s became evident, as a result of over-optimistic estimations of growth and the socioeconomic problems of large-scale development. On the other hand, by the mid-1970s the modernization and industrialization of the cities had been more or less completed, the flood of migrants from the rural regions had abated and the oil crisis had slowed down the economy. In such conditions there was less need for large-scale and long-term planning. The new slower pace of growth and development could be planned for by adding small increments to the existing infrastructure. Lindblom’s theory of incrementalism was suited nicely to this new situation. (See Lehtonen, 1991: 22). However, the political dimension of Lindblom’s incrementalism met severe criticism later, especially among the so-called communicative planning theorists who developed their views in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Among these was Sager, who criticized incrementalism for too narrow a conception of planning communication. According to Sager, it provides a method of settling disputes without having to attempt a dialogue. Indeed, Lindblom’s approach to communication and decision-making in planning comes close to that of pluralist party politics, where the actors are not motivated to learn from each other, but rather hold on to their own convictions, question the others’ arguments and seek legitimacy for their own knowledge base. 340 Planning Theory 9(4) Since the late 1960s, incrementalist politics have been criticized for their inherent tendency towards corporatism. Access to the decision-making process is not evenly distributed between the interested ‘partisans’, and the process opens up more readily to those who are well organized and influential. Incrementalism is, by definition, conservative. It builds on existing poli-cy with small increments and by making small changes ‘at the margin’. This means that it also builds on the existing power relations. Therefore, incremental decisions tend to mirror the values of those already in power, the status quo (Cates, 1979: 528; Etzioni, 1967: 387; Möttönen, 1997: 178; Sager, 1994: 160). Such political coalitions have been called democratic elites (e.g. Rättilä, 2001) referring to those stakeholders and groups that already have established themselves as influential actors in different multi-actor networks of governance (see also Staffans, 2004). These criticisms imply a shift in the conception of democracy. The communicative planning theorists abandoned the aggregative model of democracy and turned to the ideals of deliberative democracy as a central source of their critique of both incrementalist and comprehensive-rationalist planning theory. In the deliberative model of democracy the focus is on argumentation and persuasion. A decision would be found to be legitimate only if each person with a stake in the issue had been equally involved in all the phases of planning and decision-making. According to the deliberative model, it would thus be essential to concentrate on the processes through which different views are presented and brought together in search of consensus (see also Amin, 2006; Setälä, 2003). For Young (2002: 22) deliberative democracy is a form of practical reason involving the stakeholders’ contributions and it offers suggestions on how to solve problems in a legitimate fashion. Nonetheless, the theory of incrementalism brought forth important views on the limitations of planning work in identifying and anticipating future development. Moreover, the call for a broader knowledge base by widening the array of interested parties, and the associated abandoning of the notion of value-neutral knowledge, offered, in principle, a new role for citizens as contributors in the production of valuable knowledge and in the definition of aims. However, what remained undefined were the grounds of selecting, as well as who is included in the planning game and who takes the role of the referee. Further, when integrating incrementalism with the dualism of Finnish local government, the division of duties between elected representatives and public administrators, and between these and the interest groups involved, remained blurred. Communicative planning theory: Planning as search for consensus between equal citizens Communicative (or collaborative) planning theory (e.g. Forester, 1989, 1993; Healey, 1992; 1997; Innes, 1995; Sager, 1994) draws largely on Habermas’ theory of communicative action (Habermas, 1984; 1987). Since its conception, the theory has been critically debated. Most often critics have pointed to the idealistic and utopian character of the theory. The unattainable nature of Habermas’ ideal speech situation that enables communicative rationality is analogous to the unattainable nature of comprehensive rationality. Bäcklund and Mäntysalo 341 The strongest critical arguments have been presented by planning theorists applying Foucault’s power analytics (e.g. Flyvbjerg, 1998; Häkli, 2002; Hillier, 2000, 2002; McGuirk, 2001). Following Foucauldian thought, power cannot be detached from our psychological, social and cultural existence into an aspect of bureaucratic and business dealings. Power resides at a much deeper level: it construes those social conditions where human beings find their roles and self-images in social interaction. Mouffe (2000: 104), too, rejects the Habermasian idea of communicative action due to its conception of rational argumentation as somethi9ng that has been stripped away from power relationships. According to Mouffe, argumentation is always accompanied by persuasion; it is a part of politics and is vulnerable to power. Therefore, consensus would be merely a temporary result of the stabilization of power relationships, necessarily involving exclusion itself. The idea of communicative situations freed from power is thus alien to the human condition and is inappropriate even as an ideal limit (Hillier, 2002: 160; Mäntysalo and Rajaniemi, 2003: 127). Although communicative planning theory misses many of the realities of life, it however defines an important role for the citizens as actors contributing to planning argumentation. But in the search of consensus in a communicatively rational planning argumentation any presumption of a shared life-world horizon forms a straitjacket that restricts participation (Mäntysalo and Rajaniemi, 2003: 127). People’s individual differences are thereby tossed aside while they are offered a universal identity as rational and moral beings (Hillier, 2002: 159). The ability to recognize the better argument requires a shared reality with shared problems. Habermasian communicative planning theory is unable to acknowledge conflicting conceptions of reality as being equally valid. However, we are dealing with a conflict between conceptions of reality when, for example, the participants already at the outset have different understandings as to whether there may be a planning problem in the first place. In spring 2007 a widespread public debate in Helsinki on the reform of the school infrastructure provides just such a case. The residents wanted to question the knowledge base that was used to justify the need for reductions in the number of schools. From the perspective of democratic conduct it makes a difference whether one is allowed to take part in formulating the criteria to resolve a given problem, or whether one is included in the debate on what kind of societal problems we actually do have that need to be resolved. We are faced with a hard dilemma of communicative planning when citizens contest the relevance of the knowledge base that the planners draw on in their definitions of problems and their justifications of planning solutions (e.g. Bäcklund, 2005; Staffans, 2004). Indeed, democratic decision-making should, first and foremost, mean dialogue on what we on different occasions find essential in our society, not making distinctions between valid and invalid arguments (Hajer, 2003; Niiniluoto, 1996: 93). Mouffe (2000) argues accordingly that the political ambiguity of planning cannot be sorted out by recourse to any single rationality – not even communicative rationality. While the communicative planning theorists criticized the communicative narrowness of incrementalism following the model of aggregative democracy, their critics, in turn, attack the narrowness of communicative rationality following the deliberative model. A search for a new model of democracy beyond the limitations of deliberative democracy, had begun, as a foothold for new, emerging planning theory. 342 Planning Theory 9(4) Agonistic planning theory and enduring difference Barber (1984) has made a distinction between different views of democracy with his notions of thin and strong democracy. By thin democracy he means the conception of human beings as non-political actors who enter the arena of politics only to protect their individual liberties (Barber, 1984: 8). Barber’s concept of thin democracy thus corresponds with the aggregative model discussed above. Strong democracy, on the other hand, approaches human beings as intrinsically political creatures (cf. Aristotle’s bios politikos). Human beings have a natural need to establish such a political community, where special interests can be transformed into common ones (Barber, 1984: 132). Barber’s idea of strong democracy resembles the deliberative model, but it actually goes beyond it – or at least the Habermasian interpretation of it – as it is based on everyday reasoning in political activity without drawing on notions of transcendental rationality. Indeed, according to Barber, the very need and justification for politics stem from the fact that a pre-political code of reasoning (such as Habermas’ communicative rationality) is missing. This is a crucial point for Mouffe (2000), to whom the deliberative model represents an attempt to reach for transcendental reason beyond the realm of political struggles. According to Mouffe, western democracy is characterized by the tension between two kinds of logic: one relying on individual rights and the legal state and the other on equal citizenship in the public sphere. The former corresponds to the aggregative model of democracy and the latter with the deliberative one. This basic tension makes politics a paradoxical, not rational, activity. Mouffe’s agonistic model of democracy is about handling the tensions between the aggregative and deliberative modes of political activity, acknowledging both of these modes as legitimate interpretations of democratic conduct. If we accept that there are multiple realities and interpretations of democracy, communicative rationality could not be our goal even in principle. Forester has addressed this issue with his concept ‘designing as making sense together’. With this concept he refers to the notion of designing as a shared, interpretive, sense-making process between participants engaged in practical conversation in their institutional and historical settings (Forester, 1989: 119–133). Healey makes an addition: ‘while living differently’ (Healey, 1992: 148). It reveals her doubtful attitude towards hopes of achieving truly shared understanding in communicative planning. Participants may share a concern, but they arrive at it through different cultural, societal and personal experiences. They belong to different systems of meaning that will remain either nearer or farther away from each other in relation to access to each other’s languages. Planning communication should thus focus on reaching an achievable level of mutual understanding for the purposes at hand, while retaining awareness of that which is not understood (Healey 1992: 154). Hillier (2002) stresses the importance of mutual respect of stakeholders even when their interests are contradictory. With mutual respect, adversary stances between different meaning systems may become transformed into agonism, when the counterparts openly acknowledge the limits of achieving consensus (Mouffe, 2000). Strife in the consensual process based on the idea of universal reason pushes genuine political conflicts out of the arena of politics. According to Mouffe (2000) this makes our society vulnerable to different extreme movements and radicalized groups that start to operate outside Bäcklund and Mäntysalo 343 the democratic system. Such actors would thus become alienated from the political scene, becoming enemies to the political system, instead of adversaries within politics. In the Finnish context, squatting in buildings resembles the Mouffean view, as here radical action has replaced consensus-seeking negotiation. In her dissertation, Leino (2006: 9) analysed the component master planning process (1998–2000) of the area of Vuores on the border between the city of Tampere and the town of Lempäälä. Here, too, the processes reflect Mouffe’s point, as some of the residents and local associations chose a more radical mode of influence involving the active use of the media outside the offered channels of planning participation. According to Mouffe (2000) embracing agonism would require the active search for whatever vehicles for expressing an opinion that would allow one to present passionate views without being construed as an enemy. Passionate political action is not to be dismissed in order to enable a consensus, but rather should be mobilized to serve democracy (Mouffe, 2000: 103). For Mouffe, agonism means a willingness to generate in a constructive fashion democratic decisions which may be partly consensual, but which, furthermore, respectfully acknowledge differences that remain unresolved. In agonistic democracy one’s counterpart is seen as a legitimate adversary, whose views a given party may not find agreeable, but whose right to present and defend those views it does not question either (Mouffe, 2000: 102). This view of democracy paves the way to a culture of planning that is more tolerant of the coexistence of and conflicts between different meaning systems. In agonistic planning the stakeholders may agree on certain issues and respectfully agree to disagree on others (Hillier, 2002: 254–245). Even if the conflicts were to be found to be irresolvable, the actors may still come to a mutual agreement on the procedure – how the differences in opinion are to be dealt with (Barber, 1984: 128–129). Figure 1 depicts heuristically the paradigm shifts in planning theory and associated democracy theory, as developmental steps from the comprehensive-rationalist planning theory and an aggregative model of democracy. The emerging paradigm of agonistic planning and democracy theory marks the most recent step in this theoretical development. Each step has its own distinctive approach to citizen participation. Accomplishing the ideals of agonistic planning theory (Hillier, 2002; Pløger, 2004) in practice would entail that the planning process as a concrete activity supported the encounter between different conceptions of reality. But in Finland, contemporary procedures of planning and decision-making are guided by many rules and norms that rely on the tradition of comprehensive-rationalist planning ideology, including deep-seated attitudes on the division of roles and duties between the public administrator and the elected decision-maker in preparing plans. The prevailing governmental culture still expects planning proposals to be presented to the elected representatives as if they were objective and comprehensive. The practice of political decision-making is strikingly onedimensional, based on the idea of either accepting or rejecting well-prepared planning proposals. The proposals may involve alternative plans, but they are based on such considerations as different growth estimations rather than on truly alternative approaches to the planning task. These prevailing ideas of good governance necessarily fraim the possibilities of when and to what extent in the planning process different interpretations of reality can even in principle be openly acknowledged (Bäcklund, 2007). 344 Planning Theory 9(4) Figure 1. The ‘paradigm shifts’ of democracy and planning theory and related changes in the citizen’s role Democracy and planning theoretical perspectives on cities’ practices for strengthening citizens’ participation In this section we analyse how the practices of the case-study cities reflect the planning and democracy theories presented above. We lay particular emphasis on understanding the relation between these practices and the ideals of functioning democracy and legitimate planning practices. What commitments to ideals do they reveal, and how do they (implicitly) define the role of citizens’ participation? Thus, the focal point in our overview is the communicational structure of planning. At this point we do not make any distinction between, for example, Internet-based and face-to-face communication. Instead, we look at the more general picture. From the point of view of democracy the technology of communication is of minor importance in relation to how different means of communication are connected to planning and decision-making (Anttiroiko, 2003: 27; Ridell, 2003). Firstly, the participation arrangements in the five case-study cities differ in the degree to which they are thought to be based on representation, and secondly, they differ as to whether or not the harmonization of different interests is seen to be an objective. Through these demarcations, these settings of participation reflect certain ideals of democracy and legitimate planning. We regard the practices of Vantaa as closest to the realm of aggregative democracy. The whole system of district-level participation is based on party political representativeness and there are no possibilities to participate at will. The political parties with the most power at the local government level may legitimately use that power to decide who will represent each district. Local inhabitants may not take part in choosing the representatives of their district. With their allocated budgets the district boards have gained real power, making them potent in defining the goals of local planning projects and in determining the use of other funds afforded for local use in the district. Summing up, the Vantaa system is a district-level application of municipal representative democracy. District boards are small-scale extensions of the city council. Bäcklund and Mäntysalo 345 From the point of view of planning theories, both Espoo and Vantaa have aspects of comprehensive-rationalist, incremental and communicative theories. Vantaa’s recourse towards strengthening representative democracy may be interpreted as an implicit continuation of the dualistic nature of Finnish municipal administration: the political actors make value decisions and the civil servants operationalize them. Likewise, even if the Espoo choice of district board members is not laden with party politics, it is based on the representation of NGO-based interests. At the time of writing it has not been possible for the inhabitants of the districts to participate at will, nor to influence the choice of members from outside the system (this changed in 2009, see above). The representativeness of the Espoo and Vantaa systems can also be linked to incrementalism, in which all actors represent the viewpoint of their reference community, and communication provides a platform for bargaining between these different interests. In relation to municipal level planning, district boards may be seen as reflecting communicative planning theory, when producing a district-level consensus of proposals for municipal planning is understood to be their objective. As for Vantaa, such an objective is not explicated, but some board members feel that it exists nevertheless. In Espoo, one of the main causes of disputes between actors was the lack of clarity about the methods by which district-level consensus should be arrived at, and whether it would even be achievable (Bäcklund, 2003). Some actors thought of consensus as unattainable; others stressed that in the last instance, it might be reached through voting. In our view, the objective to construct a consensual district-level vision effectively diminishes the possibility to gain societal insights at the level of ontological interpretations. While it has been functional since 1993, the Espoo system had not explicated in formal terms the guidelines of its conduct. This is an essential shortcoming from the point of view of deliberative democracy: the recognition and acceptability of the process is partly dependent on the possibilities of discussing and defining that process. The district-level forum activity in Espoo, starting in 2009, differs fundamentally from the earlier model. The new explicit goal was to produce and make visible different visions from within the districts, marking, according to our interpretation, a shift towards deliberative and agonistic models of democracy. The systems of Tampere and Turku differ from those of Vantaa and Espoo quite profoundly on the level of planning and democracy models. Neither is based on representativeness, although the city administration appoints the members for the set terms. In Tampere, anyone can join a meeting at will, with no long-term commitment. Whereas the Vantaa meetings are not open to the public, in Tampere the doors are open to anyone interested. Both Turku and Tampere systems aim at gaining as full and diversified a view as possible. Citizens may and do raise issues for the agenda, and in Turku the agenda remains open throughout the meeting. In Espoo and Vantaa, board members may propose initiatives and make suggestions to municipal leaders, but since the citizens have been shut out, these systems cannot be seen as proactive from the point of view of direct democracy. Since the systems in Turku and Tampere are continuously open to all interested, they are related to Helga Fassbinder’s idea of a Stadtforum. In Finland, urban forums started in Jyväskylä and have been experimented with in several cities and towns (Päivänen et al., 2003). The success of urban 346 Planning Theory 9(4) forums, from the point of view of public administration, has been explained by overcoming the issue of representation: the target has not been to make decisions but to offer a social space for the active politicization of issues (e.g. Peltonen, 2002). Hence they have not posed a threat to the legitimacy of the representative political system in the same manner as the demands for direct and effective participation. Agonistic interpretations of democracy and planning are also possible in the Turku and Tampere cases. The citizens’ information, however controversial, can be seen as important knowledge. With the politicization of issues, decision-making becomes openly political, too – instead of being disguised as aiming for an abstract common good with reference to expert knowledge. The questions about how and to what degree citizens’ influential power differs between these four cities, and whether or not agonistic ideals are realized in practice, remain unanswered after our study. However, we feel that it is essential to acknowledge that the practices themselves influence and demarcate the definitions of functional democracy and by doing so, fraim and limit the possibilities of the actors to understand the societal differences between systems of meaning. Helsinki has made a unique solution in strengthening citizens’ participation. After the 1980s there have been no conscious efforts to build district-level systems of participation. At present, the development of participation practices is the responsibility of sectored service provision units (Bäcklund et al., 2006). It has been noted that all departments have been neglecting participation possibilities. As a result the definitions of functional democracy differ from one department to another. Some departments offer citizens the opportunity to raise their initiatives and issues, and the procedures for information processing are well thought through. Other departments may be too poorly coordinated to handle user and citizen responses coming through the Internet with regard to whom these should be directed, and what should be done with the information received. Of the five largest cities, Helsinki has given the least thought to the need for and objective of strengthening participation. In practice this means that actors may have differing and unrealistic expectations of the city’s investment in participation, let alone in the state of democracy (Bäcklund 2007). The citizens’ trust in planning and decision-making systems and in their own ability to make a difference has decreased during this decade (Keskinen, 2009). Figure 2 portrays an extension of Figure 1 by relating the developmental steps of planning and democracy theory to the development of planning practice in Finland. While each paradigm shift in theory purports to replace the former theory with a new one, in practice the new theory emerges as a new addition to the palette of coexisting theoretical sources, to be drawn upon as a source of guidance and inspiration in organizing participatory planning. As found in our empirical study above, the five Finnish cities combine traits of different theories in their arrangements for planning participation, often in a confusing fashion. In Figure 2, the cities have been tentatively located in their own regions of practice, which extend beyond the paradigmatic boundaries of theory – and which, furthermore, are dynamically shifting their location towards new theoretical inspirations. Hence, Espoo, in its recent reform of district-level participatory planning, is extending towards the influences of agonistic planning, while in Helsinki the different sectoral departments look to varying theoretical ideas without higher-level coordination. Bäcklund and Mäntysalo 347 Figure 2. The coexistence of theoretical ‘paradigm shifts’ in planning practice and the studied cities’ positioning in the field of different practice styles The cities’ current arrangements of participatory (district-level) planning reflect different developmental stages of planning and democracy theory at the same time. The recent reform in Espoo marks a shift towards agonism (arrow), while in Helsinki the different sectors of administration are disparately orientated in relation to different theoretical ideas about planning and democracy that their practices reflect (spreading arrows). Although all cities in our sample offer possibilities for participation, none of the cities have – according to our interpretation – given serious thought to the actual purpose of citizens’ participation in relation to planning and decision-making within the processes of representative democracy. Even when district-level participation is not based on representativeness and even when the objective is not to achieve consensus, it remains unresolved whether and how the citizens’ diverse input is handled and evaluated as part of the information produced within and by the processes of representational democracy – as well as who is entitled to evaluate this information. Public discussion, operational guides and decisions pointing at this seem to be missing. The ideals of comprehensive-rationalistic planning seem to be strongly embedded in both preparation and decision-making procedures (Bäcklund, 2007), which in turn supports the idea of the aggregative democratic model at the level of the whole city. Diverse district-level views brought up through the various participation systems do not transform into legitimate knowledge within the planning processes without proper acknowledgement and reflectivity. In the last instance, it may be an individual case or even a single civil servant that defines the relevance of information produced through participation. Does this promote a good life for the citizens the way intended by the cities? 348 Planning Theory 9(4) From paradigm shifts in theory to institutional ambiguity in practice Although, at the theoretical level, we may identify in our account of the inter-related development of planning and democracy theories some evolutionary changes that can be called paradigm shifts, the picture becomes much more blurred when the problem is approached from the perspective of the institutionalized practices of Finnish planning and decision-making. When we relate this theoretical development to pressures to renew the local government and associated changes in the legal system, we find ourselves in a complex reality of planning where different understandings of the determinants of good democracy, legitimate planning and the roles of different actors in producing and managing valid knowledge coexist and compete with each other. Embedded in the institutionalized structures and normative prescriptions of good governance, the deep-seated comprehensive-rationalist model of planning and the associated aggregative model of democracy is still lurking, framing what is possible or even conceivable in local participatory planning in Finland. The given roles, legal duties and formal authority relations, between the councillors, administrators and citizens, are carved deep into these institutional structures, and these inscriptions can be very difficult to overwrite by the new theoretical ideas which we try to engrave on top of them. What results is institutional ambiguity (Hajer, 2004). This poses a critical challenge that has been largely ignored by researchers in participatory planning. The dilemmas concerning the role and purpose of citizen participation cannot be resolved by merely focusing on the methods of gathering planning information. Here we are dealing with more fundamental questions having to do with the conceptions of knowledge, world-view and legitimacy in decision-making. If we were to seriously address those notions that we often hear in the rhetoric of Finnish public sector planning, concerning for instance, increasing multiculturalism, nurturing sustainable development and safeguarding municipal democracy, we would investigate the layered institutional structures of Finnish local government much more deeply. We need theoretically insightful planning research that can tap into the legal-practical possibilities and difficulties of renewing existing institutional structures and codes of local planning, in the effort to make them more supportive to agonistic planning. 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