International Journal of Market Research Vol.

48 Issue 3

Ladders, stars and triangles

Old and new theory for the practice of public
participation

John May
Middlesex Business School and the Metropolitan Police Authority

The practice of public participation has remarkably little theory it can call its
own. This paper considers the best-known theory – the Ladder of Participation –
and updates it to reflect changes in thinking since the original ladder was
published. The paper then introduces a new theory, based on the perspective of
the participants rather than the practitioners and applies the theory to the
notorious problem of the ‘usual suspects’.

Introduction
The practice of public participation has remarkably little theory it can call
its own. There is, of course, the whole body of statistical survey theory on
which practitioners regularly call, and – rather less often used – there are
the theories underlying qualitative research. But in terms of theory that has
been developed specifically for and from the practice of public
participation there is very little. This paper looks at the best known such
theory, Sherry Arnstein’s classic Ladder of Participation (Arnstein 1969),
and reformulates it to take account of developments since it was originally
devised (the Star of Participation).
A new theory for the practice of public participation (the Triangle of
Engagement) is then introduced, supplementing the Ladder and the Star by
focusing on the participants themselves instead of on the motivations and
objectives of the practitioners. The relevance of the new theory is
demonstrated by applying it to the real-life problem of the ‘usual suspects’
– the individuals who (depending on your point of view) either clog up
much public participation and prevent the voices of the real community

Received (in revised form): 6 December 2005

© 2006 The Market Research Society 305

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from being heard, or else are the best hope we practitioners have of
engaging the public in meaningful dialogue about policy issues.

Why do we need theory?

Increasing the numbers of people who take part in public consultation and
community engagement is regarded by many as a desirable aim of public
policy. This may be for political reasons – to develop democracy by
empowering more citizens – or for marketing reasons to do with
understanding customers and aligning public services with customers’
needs and wants.1
The role of theory in this context is to guide practice in such a way as to
increase the quantity and/or the quality of public participation. Theory
needs to be aligned with practice if it is to succeed in doing this, otherwise
it becomes an academic abstraction and – ultimately – irrelevance.

Customer surveys, consumers and citizens

Many public agencies (such as local councils, healthcare trusts and police
authorities) have established policies and practices for consulting and
engaging with the public. A recent paper from the Local Government
Association has re-emphasised that research and consultation are not
optional. There are statutory requirements on local councils to do research
into at least 30 different areas, and that total excludes Best Value research/
consultation and the Best Value Performance Indicator surveys (Solesbury
& Grayson 2003).
Public agencies use social and market research methods such as quanti-
tative surveys and focus groups, and increasingly they use deliberative
methods such as citizens’ juries and deliberative conferences. The most
widely used and longest-established technique, apart from complaints and
suggestion schemes, is the public attitude/customer satisfaction survey. In
fact, according to a survey conducted by the Office of the Deputy Prime
Minister (ODPM 2002, cited in Aspden & Birch 2005) service satisfaction
surveys are now almost universally used by local councils.
The same survey also showed that there has been increasing interest in
experimenting with more innovative and deliberative approaches. In 1997,
only 55 local councils (18%) used citizens’ panels, compared with 153
local councils (71%) in 2001. Similarly, the percentage of local councils

1 For a further discussion of the role of marketing in local government in particular see May and Newman (1999).

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using focus groups has increased from 47% to 81%. This suggests that
many councils are finding the more deliberative approaches effective in
engaging the public.
However, this paper is concerned not so much with the range of
techniques that the agencies use as with the perspective that underlies the
way they use them in the cause of public participation.
Lowndes et al. (2001a) have described this perspective as ‘consumerist’,
which is a significant choice of terminology. It is true that the agencies
have borrowed and adapted consumer research techniques from
commercial market and social research, and that they make extensive use
of these techniques. But they have taken over something else as well,
namely an attitude towards the people we now call ‘consumers’, and used
to call ‘citizens’.
As Ewen put it:
we are witnessing the swift debasement of the concept of ‘citizen’ – the person
who actively participates in shaping society’s destiny – to that of ‘consumer’,
whose franchise has become his or her purchasing decisions.
(Ewen 1992, cited in Gabriel & Lang 1995)

This is a debatable point of view, and one that perhaps underestimates

the power that consumers have over public service providers through their
ability to influence such factors as service design, quality and evaluation –
if not wider issues of public service delivery. Perhaps the change from
citizen to consumer has meant a change in the nature of power rather than
a decrease in it. The important point for this paper is to recognise that
there is a power dimension, and that the nature and possibly the amount
of power possessed by the people receiving services has changed. Either
way, one of the most powerful and useful features of the original Ladder
of Participation is that it makes this power dimension explicit.

‘Classic’ theory: the Ladder of Participation

The classic formulation of the power relationships underlying consultation
and participation in practice was Sherry Arnstein’s original Ladder of
Participation (see Figure 1).
Although the Ladder is largely self-explanatory, David Wilcox’s
elaboration of it highlights the underlying control dimension (see Table 1).
Wilcox also updated the Arnstein Ladder and made it more relevant to
present-day consultation and engagement practice in this country, with his
model of Five Participation Stances (Table 2).

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8 Citizen control

7 Delegated power Degrees of citizen power

6 Partnership

5 Placation

4 Consultation Degrees of tokenism

3 Informing

2 Therapy
Non-participation
1 Manipulation

Source: Arnstein 1969

Figure 1 Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation

Table 1 Wilcox’s elaboration of the Arnstein Ladder of Participation

1 Manipulation Both are non-participative. The aim is to cure or educate the participants.
2 Therapy The proposed plan is best and the job of participation is to achieve public
support by public relations.
3 Informing A most important first step to legitimate participation. But too frequently
the emphasis is on a one-way flow of information. No channel for feedback.
4 Consultation Again a legitimate step in attitude surveys, neighbourhood meetings and
public enquiries. But Arnstein still feels this is just a window-dressing ritual.
5 Placation For example, co-option of hand-picked ‘worthies’ onto committees. It
allows citizens to advise or plan ad infinitum but retains for power-holders
the right to judge the legitimacy or feasibility of the advice.
6 Partnership Power is in fact redistributed through negotiation between citizens and
power-holders. Planning and decision-making responsibilities are shared,
e.g. through joint committees.
7 Delegated power Citizens holding a clear majority of seats on committees with delegated
powers to make decisions. The public now has the power to assure
accountability of the programme to them.
8 Citizen control Have-nots handle the entire job of planning, policy making and managing
a programme, e.g. neighbourhood corporation with no intermediaries
between it and the source of funds.
Source: Wilcox 2004

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Table 2 Five participation stances

1. Information
The least you can do is tell people what is planned.
2. Consultation
You offer a number of options and listen to the feedback you get.
3. Deciding together
You encourage others to provide some additional ideas and options, and join in deciding the best
way forward.
4. Acting together
Not only do different interests decide together what is best, but they form a partnership to carry it
out.
5. Supporting independent community initiatives
You help others do what they want – perhaps within a framework of grants, advice and support
provided by the resource holder.
Source: Wilcox 1995

I recently adapted this model for use with the Metropolitan Police
Authority (MPA), as shown in Figure 2. The context was a briefing on
community engagement, and the purpose was to show how useful a tool
the ladder metaphor is for thinking about the community engagement
process. In particular, the ladder can be used to guide the practitioner into
an appropriate choice of technique2 to suit the objective of the
participation exercise (and, I would add, the power reality behind that
objective).
One benefit of the ladder model is that it helps to explain the
disillusionment and cynicism that arise all too frequently in the wake of
public participation exercises. This is not because of a lack of commitment
or interest on the part of the public. There is plenty of evidence that the

Community Supporting
Who has control?

Acting together

Deciding together

Consultation

MPA Information

Figure 2 What level of participation are you operating at?

2 Worcestershire County Council’s website has an excellent mapping of participation techniques on to an

abbreviated version of the Wilcox ladder (Worcestershire County Council 2004).

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public do want to be involved and to make their voices heard. For

example, the Electoral Commission conducted an audit of political
engagement. The audit found that ‘three quarters [of the population] say
that they “want to have a say in how the country is run”’ (Electoral
Commission 2004).
Similarly, at the local level, research for the DETR on public perceptions
of local government reported that:
55% said they would definitely be interested in being involved in the decisions
their council makes, with 16% saying it would depend on the issue. 45% would
be interested in taking part in important decisions about their council’s budget.
(DETR 2000)

Both these reports, and others, conclude that people are indeed
interested in the issues that affect them, their families and the wider world,
and that they want a say in the way decisions are made and to know their
voices have been heard. Far from indicating an apathetic public, these
reports suggest that there is a solid majority who want to get involved –
albeit on their terms and with regard to ‘their’ issues. This proviso is very
important, as the Triangle of Engagement will shortly make clear. Despite
the apparent desire for engagement and participation, it is only a small
proportion of the total population who actually want to get seriously
involved.
One problem that frequently arises is that, in a typical consultation or
engagement situation, the public sees itself as being on one rung of the
ladder (generally some way above the bottom in Figure 1 and Tables 1 and
2), while the agency behaves as if it were one or two rungs lower than the
public. In other words the public tend to think that they have more power
or control over the process than they actually do.
The resultant mismatch between the two parties’ perceptions goes a long
way to explain the frustration, cynicism, disillusionment and consequent
reluctance to sustain or repeat involvement that is familiar to most
practitioners of public participation.

New theory 1: the Star of Participation

Despite health warnings about not assuming that the top of the ladder of
participation is somehow ‘better’ than the bottom, many practitioners and
social policy makers do in fact believe that there is an underlying power or
control continuum running from bottom to top in Figures 1 and 2, and
that the top of the ladder is morally superior, ideologically more

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comfortable, more desirable or more socially acceptable than the bottom.

Is this something inherent in the choice of metaphor? Partly no doubt, but
the model would not have survived as well as it has, had it not also
embodied a key theoretical insight into the nature of public participation,
namely that there is an underlying political ideology – direct democracy –
with which its practitioners are often associated, even if they don’t always
admit to it publicly. On this reading, the ladder represents a continuum of
approaches that feature ever greater degrees of direct democracy.
The ladder metaphor is a powerful one, and has real value. No wonder
variations on the theme keep appearing. ‘Public Choice theory’ for
instance is currently under discussion in both academic and political
circles, and there is a close connection between public choice and
community engagement. Charles Leadbeater has summarised the main
thrust of public choice theory in this way:
There are four different ways to engage with users in services and creating public
goods: choice, personalisation, self-management and co-creation.
(Leadbeater 2005, p. 2)

There is an implicit hierarchy (or continuum) in this formulation, with

co-creation seen as the ultimate expression of public choice and direct
democracy. Intriguingly, whether one’s starting-point is the collectivist
worldview underlying Arnstein/Wilcox, or the individualist view of public
choice described by Leadbeater, it seems that the destination at the top of
the ladder is the same.
In similar vein, Williams argues that official UK government policy
refers to a

‘ladder of community involvement’ in which participation in community-based

groups (formal community involvement) is seen as an expression of a more
mature participatory culture, whilst one-to-one acts of good neighbourliness
(informal community involvement) are seen as ‘simple’ acts characteristic of
immature cultures of engagement.
(Williams 2003, p. 532)

The normative nature of the ladder is seen very clearly here, with ascent
of the ladder now being linked to ‘maturity’. (Conspiracy theorists will not
be surprised to hear that this ‘ladder of community involvement’ also
manages to characterise the north of England as ‘immature’ and the south-
east as ‘mature’!)
Not everyone subscribes to the hierarchy of values conveyed by the
ladder metaphor. For Rowe and Shepherd, for example, the idea of

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progress up the ladder is an illusion, at least in the National Health

Service:

The public’s apparent reluctance to play a greater role in collective decision

making, together with the fact that health service managers are paid precisely to
assume this decision-making responsibility, suggests that Arnstein’s (1969) vision of
citizen control is both an unlikely and an undesired goal of public participation.
(Rowe & Shepherd 2002, p. 288)

Attempts have been made to get round the hierarchical nature of the
ladder by linking participation not to degrees of direct democracy but to
the managerial needs of public officials (Bishop & Davis 2002; Shand &
Arnberg 1996, cited in Bishop & Davis 2002; Thomas 1990, 1993, cited
in Bishop & Davis 2002). This has the desired effect of decoupling the
ladder from ideology, and of aligning theory more closely with practice.
However, whether decoupled from ideology or not, the continuum
remains just that – continuous. Bishop and Davis (2002) have proposed a
different view, one that recognises the discontinuous nature of the
interactions between public and agencies. In this formulation there is no
natural progression from one rung of the ladder to the next. The approach
to engagement depends on the needs of the situation in hand, not on an
ideological stance.
It is difficult, and ultimately pointless, to imagine a ladder that is both
decoupled from ideology and discontinuous. A new metaphor is needed
for a new theory, one that represents a decoupled, discontinuous typology.
I propose a five-pointed star, as in Figure 3. Unlike the ladder, there is no
‘natural’ way to orientate the star – it can be rotated so that any of the
points is at the top. Thus there is no hierarchy here (it is decoupled), and

Supporting

Acting
Information together

Deciding
Consultation together

Figure 3 Decoupled and discontinuous: the Star of Participation

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no continuum either (it is discontinuous). On the contrary, the natural way

to read this diagram is to position oneself in the centre, being offered a
choice of five equally valid options.

New theory 2: the ‘usual suspects’ and the Triangle of

Engagement
Most thinking about participation focuses on the needs of the agency, and
not on the needs and desires of the participants themselves. Consequently
attempts to move an agency’s participation policy and practice up the
ladder, without regard to the needs of the participants, will never succeed
in driving up participation rates or improving the quality of participation.
The five-pointed star is in the same tradition and will have the same effect.
The way to reach new levels of usefulness and quality is to change
perspective totally, and consider the needs of the participants themselves.
Whether practitioners and agencies choose the ladder or the star as their
conceptual framework for thinking about participation, the majority of
them will be thinking from within the box of the agency’s needs. If they
give any real thought to the participants, the chances are they will
denigrate or dismiss them. This is especially true of the most committed,
the most engaged members of the public: the ‘usual suspects’. Rowe and
Shepherd are writing in the extract below about the NHS, but the basic
attitude can be found in any large public agency.
Health authorities have recognised the political capital to be gained from public
involvement in health needs assessment and priority-setting exercises but have
been able to limit public influence over service planning by using the issue of
representation to delegitimise user views. User-group representatives have been
labelled as ‘activists’ and their views have been dismissed as not being typical of
‘normal users’ … public engagement activities have thus been used to enhance the
credibility of commissioning organisations without devolving decision-making
power to users.
(Rowe & Shepherd 2002, p. 279)

Similarly, an Australian contributor to a local government online

discussion forum has commented that
[denigrating] the members of the community that regularly provide local
governments with unwanted feedback is a universal problem … A few years back
I made a video about the ‘faithful few’ who regularly attend meetings of Council,
ask hairy questions and instigate special electors’ meetings from time to time.
Most of my colleagues couldn’t understand why I would want to find out about
why these people did this. Clearly they ‘didn’t have a life’ etc ... [and] they are

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labelled ‘the minority’ because clearly, by their silence, the rest of the community
is fine with what their council is doing.
(Piasecka 2005)

There is a kind of Catch 22 in operation here: public services want to

engage with you if you are ‘ordinary’, but if you show interest in engaging
with them then you must be ‘extraordinary’ … and therefore they needn’t
listen to you.
Underlying this Catch 22 is a particular, and unnecessarily restrictive,
view of ‘representativeness’. The empirical paradigm that governs most
quantitative market and social research, and that is the dominant
paradigm in the formation of many public-sector managers, holds that
truth can emerge only from large numbers. Therefore ‘genuine’ community
engagement has to involve large numbers of people, and conversely a small
group of people cannot possibly represent the public at large. Supporters
of the qualitative paradigm would of course disagree, and the future
development of the theory of participation will need to take the
quantitative versus qualitative argument on board.
Meanwhile, there is an essentially pragmatic argument regarding the
availability (or even existence) of large numbers of people willing to
engage at high levels. If, as is argued later on, they do not exist in the kinds
of numbers required by the quantitative paradigm, then discussions about
representativeness are ultimately pointless.
The ‘faithful few’ or ‘usual suspects’ have two important characteristics
that are key to a new understanding of public participation. These
characteristics are number and engagement. The usual suspects are few in
number, and have a high degree of engagement, as opposed to most
members of the public who have a relatively low degree of engagement.
Plotting levels of engagement against the numbers involved (the
prevalence) gives rise to a new model, the Triangle of Engagement (see
Figure 4).
The shape of the Triangle of Engagement is determined by two
important properties. First, there is the obvious fact that it rises from base
to apex. Similarly, there are different ways for the public to participate, as
shown in Figure 4, and each requires a different degree of engagement –
the higher up the triangle the greater the demands on the participant’s time
and energy.
This is partly under the control of the participants, who may or may not
choose to do all the homework associated with gaining a greater
understanding of the issues, who may or may not attend all possible public
meetings, engage in all possible lobbying opportunities, meet with all

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Prevalence decreases
as engagement increases:
‘the higher the fewer’

The highest level of public participation, e.g. Metropolitan Police Authority

Establishment member, local Councillor, School Governor, non-executive director of an NHS
Trust, lay member of a Non-Departmental Public Body (‘quango’)
Chair/Vice Chair/Secretary/Treasurer of a community group such as a
Office holder Community Police Consultative Group, residents’ association, patients’ forum
or a non-locality-based interest group such as a minority ethnic association
Engagement

As the name implies, but without taking on the executive responsibilities

Activist of office

Engaged enough to attend more than one event or take more than one
Semi-regular
opportunity to have their say
The majority of the public, who will engage if and when the issue is
Ad hoc sufficiently pressing and/or it is on their doorstep; may or may not also
engage in passive continuous monitoring of the service

Prevalence

Figure 4 The Triangle of Engagement

possible stakeholders, etc. However, the way the agencies treat engaged
members of the public also affects the degree of engagement required.
Agencies are used to a bureaucratic culture, which is characterised by
formal procedures, committees, meetings, extensive internal dialogue,
consensus building, and so on. These processes are above all else time-
consuming. To be treated as an equal requires that the member of the
public play by the bureaucratic culture rules, and this requires a
considerable commitment of time and energy.
Take, for example, Mrs Karen Clark (a real person who has agreed to
being used as a case study for this paper), who is very active as a volunteer
in various capacities in the sphere of police–community relations,
including being Chair of the Kensington & Chelsea Police Community
Consultative Group and Vice Chair of the Holland Park Sector Working
Group. In these two capacities Karen finds herself invited or co-opted onto
numerous other bodies in the local area (and is beginning to be drawn into
pan-London activities as well). These other bodies are generally run by,
and largely composed of, agency staff. Karen’s contribution – as a
volunteer let us not forget – is equivalent to about two-thirds of a full-time
post, much of which time is outside office hours. Add in reading and
replying to emails, studying papers for meetings and so on, and full-time
equivalence is soon reached. It is hardly surprising that there are so few

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people at the office-holder level of the triangle if this is what they can
expect!
The second important property of a triangle is that the width of each
successive layer decreases as the height increases. Similarly, the number of
potential participants, of people able and willing to engage, shrinks with
each ascending layer. Indeed the phrase ‘the higher the fewer’ could have
been coined with the triangle model in mind.
The general point is borne out by a number of empirical studies. The
Electoral Commission (2004), for example, found that three-quarters of
those surveyed wanted ‘to have a say in how the country is run’, but only
around one in seven were politically active; 58% of the respondents to a
MORI survey would like to know what their council is doing, but only
20% wanted more say in what it does (Page 2005); 82% of the
respondents in the same survey were in favour of extending Community
Partnerships to a wider area, but only 26% said they would personally be
interested in getting involved (and only 2% did actually get involved).
West (2003) estimates the proportions as 10% ‘activists’, 60–70%
‘ordinary local people who might get interested if directly asked’ and
20–30% ‘refuseniks’ who simply don’t want to get involved.
I do not propose in this paper to estimate the proportions in each layer
of the Triangle of Engagement – what counts is that prevalence decreases
as engagement increases: the higher the fewer.
In terms of the earlier discussion about decoupling from ideology, and
continuous versus discontinuous, the Triangle of Engagement is both
decoupled and discontinuous. Triangles have gradients, but not
hierarchies. There is no implied ascent up the triangle. We should not
expect the public to regard ascent through the layers as a kind of career
progression. Neither should we assume that one layer is somehow more
virtuous, more worthy of respect and attention, than another.

Conclusions
The new theory represented by the Triangle of Engagement gives rise to an
unusual way of looking at the ‘usual suspects’. Far from blackguarding
them, practitioners and agencies alike need to recognise that these people
are rare, highly committed, valuable and in need of cherishing. The
argument that they are unrepresentative is disingenuous, because there
are no realistic alternatives to the usual suspects if agencies want high-
level, ongoing dialogue and engagement as opposed to one-off
consultations.

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Decrying the ‘unrepresentativeness’ of the people who actually put their

heads above their community parapet implies that there are in fact plenty
of other community members whose views are being wilfully drowned out
by the ‘activists’. If only, the argument runs, we could get through to them
directly. The reality, as the Triangle of Engagement shows, is that this
reserve army of community members whose voices are being muffled
simply doesn’t exist. Most people, most of the time, have better things to
do with their time than give considered views on public services. Surely
those who are willing to do so deserve better than to be called names. Even
the public themselves have a more generous attitude towards the usual
suspects than many agencies do:

Citizens commented that it was difficult to maintain participation efforts, and

that there was a tendency [on the part of members of the public] to rely on a few
committed individuals … Although … people often complained that ‘the same
people dominate everything’, it was clear that the efforts of local leaders and
activists were also appreciated.
(Lowndes et al. 2001b, p. 447).

But that is not to say that the usual suspects have to be accepted as they
are, without question or change. Many of them are in need of support,
both of a practical kind – the facilitation of attendance at meetings by
paying travel or carer expenses, for example, or the provision of paid
secretariat support for community groups – and also of a more personal
nature such as training in committee behaviour and procedure,
representational skills and public speaking. Indeed one could say that part
of the problem with the usual suspects is that, although they have the
passion and commitment needed to sustain engagement, many of them
lack the kind of ‘social capital’ that Robert Putnam has described in his
book Bowling Alone (Putnam 2001).
By the same token it now falls to the public agencies to supply the usual
suspects with the training in community participation, in the skills of
committee membership, of taking turns, negotiating, bargaining and other
interpersonal skills that previously might have been provided by churches,
trades unions, clubs and societies.
Building up communities’ stocks of this kind of social capital is not just
altruistic (although society as a whole can be expected to benefit). It is also
enlightened self-interest on the part of the agencies, because it will make it
far easier to find citizens who are both willing and able to engage with
them in a meaningful way. It will harness the passion and commitment to
mutual benefit.

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Table 3 A social capital checklist for public participation initiatives

• Which citizens are the focus of the activity?

• What practical support is being offered to citizens as individuals to enable their involvement?
• What practical support is being offered to groups of citizens to enable their involvement?
• What training will the agency provide to enable the participants to interact with it more
effectively?
• How far will any training be transferable to other situations in the lives of the participants or
their communities?
• In short: how will the initiative contribute to the creation of social capital?

Changing to this new way of looking at the usual suspects will require a
major shift in the thinking, attitudes and behaviour of practitioners and
agencies alike. A checklist for public participation initiatives, based on
Putnam’s idea of a ‘social-capital impact statement’ (Putnam 2001, p. 413)
and derived from the Triangle of Engagement, could be a useful tool to
help the change process along. A checklist such as that in Table 3 could be
used to ask important questions of each public participation initiative.
It is now up to us as practitioners to use the new theory, as applied in
checklists like this one, to drive up the quality of meaningful public
participation.

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cs-con/cs-con-toolkit/cs-con-toolkit-stage5-a.htm (accessed 3 June 2005).

About the author

Dr John May is a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Middlesex Business
School and a Community Engagement Consultant for the Metropolitan
Police Authority. He is a seasoned practitioner of public consultation and
community engagement, mostly in the public sector but with experience of
the commercial and voluntary sectors as well. He obtained his PhD in
marketing and local government from Middlesex University Business
School at the ripe old age of 56. His current research interests include the
development of more effective ways to harness the enthusiasm of that
minority of the population that wants a share in local governance.
Address correspondence to: John May, Community Engagement, Metro-
politan Police Authority, 10 Dean Farrar Street, London, SW1H 0NY,
United Kingdom.
Email: John.May@tesco.net

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