A Ladder of Citizen Participation (Sherry R. Arnstein)

Arnstein starts off talking about how the topic of Citizen participation is a heated one, as she then goes on to compare citizen participation to eating spinach, 'no one is against it in principle because it is good for you', which is quit cleverly said as most things are good in principle but harder to implement to the citizens. The real question that Arnstein is trying to raise is what is Citizen Participation and what is its relationship to the social imperatives if our time?

Arnstein believes that citizen participation means citizen power, according to her it redistributes the power from so that the 'have not' citizens can have an input into what is happening in the future. Arnstein describes participation as, "citizen participation is arranged in a ladder pattern with each rung corresponding to the extent of citizens' power in determining the plan and/or program.". This is a clever way of describing her thoughts on the issue.

In the text there is a diagram of a ladder with rungs that perfectly sums up the whole text. each rung demonstrating the powers that are involved. These rungs are as follows:

8   Citizen Control

7   Delegated Power          Degree of citizen power

6   Partnership

5   Placation

4   Consultation                 Degree of tokenism

3   Informing

2   Therapy                        Non-participation

1   Manipulation

Arnstein then goes on to describe each one of these rungs on the ladder in detail, giving the reader a full understanding of the thoughts throughout the text.