Greening governmentmobilise and which they can use to push new issues onto public agendas.
Referenda, for example, which are frequently used for specific decisions in
Switzerland and California, and for local planning decisions in many coun-
tries, allow groups to campaign and may raise public awareness about envi-
ronmental issues. Indeed, one outcome of the 1980 Swedish referendum on
its nuclear power programme was that activists involved in the ‘No’ cam-
paign went on to form the Green Party.
One drawback of big public inquiries and referenda, as with EIA, is that
theyare unique events that are designed to resolve a particular conflict; they
do not turn participation in decision-making into a regular routine. Even
where, asinBritain, the public inquiry is widely used within the land use
planning process, each decision is unique and discrete. Alternative dispute
resolution, increasingly employed in the USA, takes a step further by drawing
arange of affected interests into a mediation process. Again, this practice
usually addresses a specific environmental issue, but by absorbing political
conflict into the administrative process it allows the possibility for mutual
learning and compromise solutions that result in neither complete victory
nor defeat for either ‘side’ of a dispute (Lee 1993 ;O’Learyet al. 2004 ;Dryzek
2005 :103).
The sustainable development discourse envisages this kind of learning
through deliberation and dialogue becoming an ongoing, routine part of
theadministrative process, ‘by promoting citizens’ initiatives, empower-
ing people’s organisations and strengthening local democracy’ (WCED 1987 :
63). Thus many of the round-table and advisory initiatives associated with
Agenda 21 were designed to encourage such dialogue by providing a forum
in which representatives from a wide range of interest groups discuss envi-
ronmental problems and make recommendations for action (see above,
pp. 298 –9).
More radically, there is growing interest in a range of innovative tech-
niques, including citizen juries, consensus conferences and deliberative
opinion polls, which enhance citizen deliberations within the policy pro-
cess based on principles of green democracy (Ward 1999 ;Smith 2003 : 86–
93; Ward et al. 2003 ;Meadowcroft 2004 ;Niemeyer 2004 ). These particular
techniques share several features: citizens are brought together over three
tofour days; participants are given extensive information; they hear the
opinions of experts and concerned interests; and independent facilitators
ensure the fairness of the proceedings. They differ on the number of partic-
ipants, ranging from several hundred for a deliberative poll to just twelve to
twenty-five for the other techniques. Whilst all three techniques use forms
of random sampling to select participants, the small size of citizen juries
means that the sample is stratified, and applicants for a consensus confer-
ence are selected on socio-economic criteria. Finally, whilst citizen juries and
consensus conferences make a collective decision, the individual decisions of
citizens are recorded in a deliberative poll (Smith 2003 : 86–7). Although still