Can consultation ever be collaborative?

Abstract

Consultation may have the potential to be an effective mechanism of collaborative governance but only insofar as it is empowered. Empowerment in this context means that consultations are characterized by a degree of decision-making power or, at least, the power to directly influence decisions. This potential for empowered consultation is far from realized in policy processes. Not only is it a long road to consultations that go beyond merely justifying elites’ decisions, but there is even further to go toward entrenching empowered consultation in the formulation and implementation of public policy. In this paper, we identify categories of consultation, including their features and their ends, ranging from the disempowered to the empowered. We also make a normative argument for empowered consultation, while articulating the limitations of this mechanism.