Participation Justice in Generative Relational Being - Toward a Theory of Legitimate Participation in Relational Production and Reproduction 【（Preliminary）Draft】

ENGLISH

Abstract

Theories of participation ask who should take part in collective decisions, by what procedures, and with what authority. This paper asks whether the question has been posed at the appropriate level. Decisions are episodes within a longer process by which relational structures are produced, sustained, transformed, and dissolved, and the paper considers the possibility that participation in that longer process is what carries the normative weight, with access to the episodes as one form it takes. The paper surveys what the existing literature appears to have settled: the taxonomies of participation from the ladder onward, the three-dimensional decomposition of participatory design, the differentiation of rule levels in commons governance, the principles of democratic inclusion and the boundary problem, and the trilemma that no participatory arrangement escapes. It concedes that much of what a relational theory would seek to establish about who participates, how, and at which stage appears to have been established already, and it attempts to locate the residue. Against that residue it sets a generative relational reading, on which standing to participate may derive from occupying a position within a relational structure whose reproduction is at stake, and on which the sufficiency of participation at any stage may be assessed by a single criterion: whether the arrangement preserves the capacity of the affected relations to generate a further determination. The criterion is offered as a proposal and is stated with its costs. It supplies no allocation formula, it leaves the trilemma unresolved, and it requires a judgement about generative capacity that the paper is unable to operationalize. The closing questions are held to be the more valuable half of what is offered.

Keywords: participation; justice; legitimacy; relational ontology; governance; inclusion; social reproduction; generativity.

A note on the standing of this paper. This is a discussion paper. It identifies a structure, surveys what existing theory has made of it, marks where each account runs out, and proposes a direction. It does not complete a theory. The survey is conducted in an unusually conceding register, because the central questions of this subject are old and well worked, and a paper that failed to say so would be worth less than one that says so first. Where a claim entered here as open is in fact occupied, or where a source has been read wrongly, correction is welcome at huangwanhong@serendip.ngo.

§1 Introduction

Arrangements for taking part in the shaping of common conditions have become a standard feature of institutional design. Public authorities consult before deciding, firms report to those they call stakeholders, development agencies require the involvement of affected populations, research funders convene panels of lay members, and constitutional reform is increasingly attempted through assemblies of citizens selected by lot. The vocabulary is now common across domains that share little else, and an extensive literature has grown around the question of what such arrangements are worth. That literature has served two purposes. It has supplied instruments of design, by which a body intending to involve others may determine what involving them requires, and it has supplied instruments of criticism, by which arrangements that describe themselves as participatory may be examined and, in a substantial number of cases, found to confer very little. Both achievements are real, and the present paper takes them as its starting point.

Three difficulties nevertheless recur, and together they motivate what follows. The first concerns the level at which the subject is posed. Participation is ordinarily treated as a relation between persons and decisions: there is a body that decides, there are persons upon whom the decision bears, and participation comprises the arrangements by which the second acquire some purchase on the first. Decisions, however, are episodes. They occur within structures of relations that precede them and persist after them, and those structures are sustained by a volume of ordinary activity occurring at a remove from any decision point, so that whether an account pitched at the level of the decision reaches what matters is a question worth posing. The second difficulty concerns a question that is seldom asked. Every arrangement for participation settles three matters before it can operate: who takes part, in what manner and with what weight, and what it is they take part in. The first two have been examined at length, while the third is ordinarily settled by the institutional setting and passed over, so that arrangements are compared by their intensity while the objects over which that intensity is exercised go unexamined. The third difficulty concerns the absence of a criterion of sufficiency. A designer choosing among arrangements faces a question the literature addresses obliquely, namely how much participation, of what kind, at which point, is enough; and since no arrangement admits everyone to everything, some principle is required for judging when a given selection is defensible, where the available principles tend either toward a maximum that cannot be met or toward a description of practice that carries no normative weight.

Five bodies of work bear on these difficulties, and each is treated at length below. Typologies of participation, beginning with the ladder of citizen participation and continuing through several successors, order arrangements by the degree of control they confer, and establish that participation is graded and that low grades may be counterfeit (Arnstein 1969; Pretty 1995; White 1996). A three-dimensional account of participatory design decomposes arrangements by the scope of participation, the mode of communication and decision, and the extent of authority conferred (Fung 2006). Institutional analysis of common-pool resources distinguishes operational, collective-choice, and constitutional levels of rules, and associates enduring self-governance with arrangements connecting them (Ostrom 1990, 2005). Democratic theory has examined at length the ground on which standing to participate rests, canvassing affected interests, subjection to a governing structure, and more recently the relations standing between the parties (Goodin 2007; Fraser 2008; Bengtson 2026). A body of work on the scale of participatory institutions establishes, finally, that political equality, deliberation, and mass participation cannot be jointly maximized (Dahl and Tufte 1973; Fishkin 2009). These literatures settle a considerable proportion of the subject, and one purpose of this paper is to record how much; the survey below accordingly proceeds by conceding first and locating what remains afterwards.

The account offered here is developed within a framework the author has set out elsewhere, and which may be stated in a sentence:

Generative Relational Being. A theory of how subject, meaning, value, creation, and normativity co-emerge through generative relational processes.

Two features of the framework bear on participation. Relations are treated as prior to the terms they relate, so that what a party is within a given field is constituted by the relations in which it stands; and relations are treated as generative, in that a relation in working order produces further determinations of meaning, of value, and of what the relation itself requires, that productive capacity being the framework’s central concern. Applied to the present subject, these features suggest a reformulation. Participation may be understood as contribution to the production and reproduction of relational structures, with access to decisions as one form such contribution takes, and governance, on that understanding, as the institutional organization of participation so conceived. The reformulation is advanced as a working thesis and is stated with its provenance in §11, where the substantial debt it owes to existing social ontology is also recorded. The framework carries, further, a methodological commitment that governs how the claims below are advanced: its keynote is historical dialectics, so that propositions are entered as revisable within a historical frame, the finitude of knowledge and of practice is acknowledged as a standing condition, and philosophical argument is joined to operable formulation where the subject admits of it. A paper written under that commitment states its claims so that they may be given up.

This is a discussion paper, and its role is correspondingly limited. It identifies a structure, surveys what existing theory has made of it, marks where each account appears to run out, and proposes a direction for work; it does not complete a theory of participation justice, and several of its central propositions are entered as hypotheses awaiting examination. The survey is conducted in a conceding register, because the questions at issue are old and well worked, and a substantial proportion of what a relational account might wish to claim has been claimed already, in vocabularies that the participation literature and the social-ontology literature do not always share; where a claim that might have been advanced here appears to be occupied, the relevant section says so and names the occupant. Three matters lie accordingly outside the undertaking. The paper offers no allocation formula, and §17 explains why none follows from the account; it does not adjudicate among deliberative, aggregative, and agonistic conceptions of democratic politics; and it leaves aside the empirical literature on participatory institutions, which would require methods the paper does not employ.

What the paper offers in their place may be set out as four contributions, claimed with differing degrees of confidence. The first is a mapping: the survey locates, with some precision, which questions in this area appear to be settled and which appear to remain open, and that mapping retains its value independently of whether the proposals below are accepted. The second is a hypothesis about the dimensions of participatory design, namely that the object of participation may constitute a dimension distinct from scope, mode, and authority, such that arrangements coinciding on the received dimensions may differ in ways bearing on their justice; §5 states the hypothesis and distinguishes it from the received three-dimensional account. The third is a proposed criterion, on which an arrangement may be assessed by whether it preserves the capacity of the affected relations to generate a further determination of the matter at issue; the proposal is advanced in §14 with its costs stated, and the paper’s substantive contribution depends upon it. The fourth is an observation about form: the criterion proposed here shares its structure with criteria advanced in two companion papers on adjacent subjects, and the recurrence is offered as weak evidence for the form, with an alternative explanation of the convergence recorded alongside it. The questions set down in §18 are held to be the more valuable half of what is offered.

§2 Scope and Method

2.1 The Containment Device

The literature bearing on participation is extensive, and a survey of it conducted without a principle of selection would amount to a bibliography. The device used here is the same one that organizes the discussion itself. Three questions are named at the outset, and material earns its place by discharging one of them:

(i) Who participates. On what ground does a party hold standing to take part.

(ii) How they participate. In what manner, at what intensity, and with what weight.

(iii) What they participate in. What is the object of the participation, and what determines it.

A fourth question emerges from the third and is treated separately from §11 onward: what it is that a participatory arrangement is supposed to protect, and by what criterion a given arrangement is judged sufficient.

2.2 The Conceding Register

The register in which the survey is conducted was stated in §1 and its rationale belongs here. A theory whose components are individually unoriginal may still contribute through the manner in which it joins them, and the joining becomes visible only where the components are correctly attributed. The argument of this paper is architectural, and an architectural argument is weakened by any claim to have quarried its own stone.

One exclusion belongs with the others recorded in §1. The account does not extend to the question of whether non-human entities hold standing. That question is live, it bears directly on a relational ontology, and it is entered among the open questions of §18 for treatment there.

2.3 A Note on Sources

The survey draws on political theory, social ontology, development studies, public administration, environmental justice, and the literature on the commons. These fields cite one another unevenly, and one of the incidental findings of the survey is that the same structural point has been reached independently within several of them. Where that has occurred it is recorded, since convergence from unconnected directions is evidence of a kind.

§3 The Received Picture of Participation

The picture this paper works against is not the position of any particular theorist. It is the default shape of the subject, visible in how participatory arrangements are designed and evaluated.

On that shape, participation is a relation between persons and decisions. There is a body that decides, there are persons upon whom the decision bears, and participation is the set of arrangements by which the second are given some purchase on the first. The arrangements vary in strength, from being told what has been decided, through being asked before it is decided, to deciding jointly. The evaluative question is how much purchase the arrangements afford, and the reformist impulse is to afford more.

Three features of this picture matter for what follows.

It is episodic. Participation occurs at moments, and the moments are decision points. Between them there is implementation, which is treated as execution, participation being regarded as complete by then, and there is ordinary institutional life, which the picture passes over.

It is person-centred. The unit is the individual or the group, characterized by interests, by being affected, or by holding a stake. The question of who participates is a question about which persons, and the answers are principles for sorting persons.

The picture is, thirdly, decision-terminal. The value of participation is realized in the decision it influences. An arrangement that gave people extensive involvement in a process which then had no bearing on any decision would be judged, on this picture, a failure and possibly a manipulation.

Each feature is defensible and each has been defended. The paper’s argument is that the three together confine the subject to a level at which the most consequential settlements have already been made.

§4 The Taxonomic Tradition and the Grading of Participation

The question of how parties participate has been answered more thoroughly than either of the others, and the answers take the form of typologies ordered by intensity.

4.1 The Ladder and Its Successors

Arnstein (1969) supplies the founding statement, an eight-rung ladder grouped into three bands. The lowest band is not participation at all but manipulation and therapy, arrangements whose function is to secure assent. The middle band is tokenism, comprising informing, consultation, and placation, in which parties are heard without their being able to determine anything. The upper band is citizen power, comprising partnership, delegated power, and citizen control. The ladder’s polemical force lies in its lower rungs: it names as non-participation a set of arrangements that describe themselves as participatory.

Later typologies preserve the ordering and refine the criteria. Pretty (1995) distinguishes passive participation, participation in information giving, participation by consultation, participation for material incentives, functional participation, interactive participation, and self-mobilization, ordered by the degree to which those participating control the agenda and the resources. White (1996) sorts arrangements by the interests they serve, distinguishing nominal participation, which confers display, from instrumental, representative, and transformative forms. The spectrum maintained by the International Association for Public Participation gives a five-level scale from informing through consulting, involving, and collaborating to empowering, and is widely used in administrative practice.

Cornwall (2008) supplies the critical survey of this family and makes an observation the present paper takes up. The typologies order intensity, and intensity is meaningless without an object. To ask how much control a party exercises is to invite the question control of what, and the typologies do not answer it.

4.2 The Three-Dimensional Turn

Fung (2006) breaks the single-scale form by decomposing participatory design into three dimensions, which he presents as a space within which any particular arrangement may be located. The dimensions are the scope of participation, concerning who takes part and how they are selected; the mode of communication and decision, concerning what participants do when assembled and how their contributions are aggregated; and the extent of authority, concerning how far the outcome of the process is linked to policy or public action.

The decomposition is a considerable advance on the ladder, and it addresses this paper’s second question more fully than any other single source examined here. It also bears directly on the paper’s framing, and the relation requires care. §5 states it.

4.3 Findings and Residue

Source	Ordering principle	What it settles and leaves
Ladder of citizen participation	Degree of citizen power over the outcome	Settles that participation is graded and that low grades may be counterfeit; leaves the object unspecified
Typology by control of agenda and resources	Control over process and means	Settles the material conditions of intensity; leaves the object unspecified
Typology by interests served	Whose interests the arrangement serves	Settles that intensity and purpose are separable; leaves the object unspecified
Five-level administrative spectrum	Commitment made by the convening body	Settles a practicable operational scale; leaves the object unspecified
Three-dimensional decomposition	Scope, mode, and authority jointly	Settles that design is multidimensional; treats the object as given

The family establishes that participation is graded, that the grades are separable from the purposes an arrangement serves, and that a single scale is insufficient to characterize a design. What it leaves is what Cornwall (2008) named: every ordering presupposes an object, and the object is treated throughout as given by the institutional setting.

§5 The Three-Dimensional Decomposition and Its Third Member

This paper organizes its subject around three questions, and the organization requires a defence, because a reader familiar with Fung (2006) will observe that a three-dimensional decomposition of participation already exists.

5.1 The Relation to the Three-Dimensional Decomposition

The two decompositions agree on their first two members. Fung’s scope of participation is the question of who takes part; his mode of communication and decision is the question of how. On these the present paper adds nothing and takes what that work established.

The third members differ, and the difference is the paper’s occasion. Fung’s third dimension is the extent of authority: how far the conclusions of a participatory process are linked to what is actually done. This is a question about the weight a contribution carries, and weight is a property of the manner of participating. A process whose conclusions bind and a process whose conclusions advise differ in how their participants participate, and the two arrangements may be identical in every other respect. On the classification used here, the extent of authority belongs to the second question.

The third question asked here is different. It concerns the object: what it is that participation is participation in. Two arrangements may be identical in scope, in mode, and in authority, and differ in that one confers binding authority over the selection of a contractor while the other confers binding authority over the definition of the problem the contract is meant to address. The second is a more consequential arrangement, and no combination of the three received dimensions distinguishes them, because the difference lies in the object over which the authority is held.

Hypothesis on the dimensions of design. The object of participation is a dimension of participatory design independent of scope, mode, and authority. Arrangements that coincide on the received dimensions may differ in what they are arrangements about, and the difference bears on the justice of the arrangement.

5.2 Findings and Residue

This section has argued that the three questions organizing this paper differ from the three dimensions of the received decomposition, that the difference lies in the third member, and that the received third member appears to belong analytically to the second question. It leaves for §6 the question of whether the object has been theorized elsewhere under another description, and the answer given there is that it has been named repeatedly and theorized once, in a literature the participation typologies do not cite.

§6 The Object of Participation

6.1 The Question Named

That the object matters has been observed by careful readers of the typologies. Cornwall (2008) makes the observation directly, holding that attention must be paid to who is participating, in what, and to whose benefit, and noting that the ladder invites the question of what exactly is being controlled. The observation is correct and it is made in passing, as a caution about the use of typologies, leaving the dimension itself unopened.

6.2 Upstream Engagement

One literature has pursued the question with sustained attention. Work on public engagement with science and technology has argued that engagement conducted at the point of regulatory approval arrives too late, since by then the research trajectory, the framing of the risks, and the range of alternatives under consideration have been settled. Wilsdon and Willis (2004) give the argument its slogan: engagement must move upstream, to the setting of research agendas and the framing of questions, and engagement confined to the assessment of finished proposals is engagement about the wrong object.

The argument concerns the object of participation directly, and it supports the point at issue here: that arrangements identical in intensity may differ in value according to what they are arrangements about, and that the objects available at a given moment are constrained by settlements already made upstream of it.

Two limits attend it for present purposes. It is developed for a particular institutional domain and generalizes only by analogy. It distinguishes upstream from downstream without supplying a general account of what the stream consists of, so that the number and character of the objects remain undetermined.

6.3 The Policy Cycle and Its Uses

Public administration supplies a standard sequence of agenda-setting, formulation, decision, implementation, and evaluation, and participatory practice has been mapped onto it. The mapping is useful and it is descriptive: the sequence records the stages an administrative process passes through, and it carries no claim about which stages bear the greater normative weight or about what determines the sequence.

6.4 Findings and Residue

The object of participation has been named as a question, pursued seriously within one domain, and mapped descriptively by another. What has not been supplied is a general account of the objects, of their ordering, and of why the ordering matters normatively. §7 takes up the one body of work that comes closest, and §13 states the account this paper offers.

§7 Levels of Rules and Stage-Differentiated Participation

The claim that different parties may legitimately participate at different points, and that the points differ in kind as well as in sequence, has been made with precision in the study of common-pool resource governance. This section concedes that priority and states what remains.

7.1 The Three Levels of Rules

Ostrom (1990, 2005) distinguishes three levels at which rules operate and at which choices about rules are made. Operational rules govern day-to-day activity: who may take what, when, under what conditions, and with what monitoring. Collective-choice rules govern how operational rules are made and altered, and by whom. Constitutional rules govern how collective-choice rules are made and altered. The levels are nested, each supplying the terms within which the level below is settled.

The design principles that accompany this framework include one that bears directly on the present subject. Among the conditions associated with enduring self-governed commons is that most of the individuals affected by the operational rules can participate in modifying those rules. The principle states a stage-differentiated participation requirement: standing at the operational level does not by itself confer standing at the collective-choice level, and the enduring arrangements are those in which the two are connected.

7.2 The Concession

The consequence for this paper should be stated plainly. The claim that participation must be differentiated by the level of the object, that participation in rule-application and participation in rule-making are different things with different requirements, and that the legitimacy of an arrangement depends on how the levels are connected, is established. It is established with an empirical base this paper does not have, and in a form that has been tested against a large body of cases.

Any account that presented stage-differentiation as a discovery would be mistaken, and a reviewer would be right to say so.

7.3 The Residue

Three things are left, and they are what §13 takes up.

The three levels are levels of rules. They differentiate the object by its position in a hierarchy of rule-making authority, which is the correct differentiation for a framework whose subject is institutional analysis. It is not obviously the correct differentiation for a subject whose object includes activities that are not rule-making at all: the formation of a shared purpose, the identification of what is at stake, the framing of a problem, the assessment of what has occurred. These are objects of participation and they are not levels of rules.

The framework is descriptive and diagnostic. The design principle records a condition associated with endurance, which is a finding about what survives. Whether an arrangement lacking that condition is unjust, as distinct from fragile, is a question the framework does not pose, and the inference from endurance to legitimacy is one this paper declines for reasons given in §14.

The framework further takes the boundary of the resource system and its appropriator community as broadly given. The question of who counts as affected, which §8 shows to be the hardest question in the vicinity, is not the question institutional analysis of the commons was designed to answer.

7.4 Findings and Residue

This section records that stage-differentiated participation is settled ground, that the nesting of rule levels supplies its most developed form, and that the connection between levels is associated with the endurance of self-governed arrangements. It leaves the differentiation of objects that are not rules, the question of whether the associated conditions are conditions of justice, and the determination of the affected community.

§8 Principles of Inclusion and the Boundary Problem

The first question, who participates, has a literature of its own in democratic theory, and it is the literature this paper’s thesis most nearly touches. The concession made in this section is the largest in the paper.

8.1 The Problem of the Boundary

A democratic procedure decides matters for a body of persons, and the procedure cannot itself determine who belongs to that body without presupposing an answer. Any vote on the composition of the electorate must be taken by some electorate. The difficulty is structural and it has been recognized as the boundary problem, or the problem of constituting the demos.

The difficulty is not merely technical. Where the boundary falls determines what the procedure can decide and whose situation is registered within it, so a procedure impeccable by every internal standard may produce systematically defective outcomes because it was drawn around the wrong set.

8.2 All Affected Interests

The most widely canvassed answer holds that those whose interests are affected by a decision hold a claim to take part in it. Goodin (2007) gives the principle its most careful modern statement and draws out its difficulty: taken strictly, the set of persons whose interests are affected by a given decision is indefinitely large and remains indeterminate in advance of the decision, since what is decided determines whom it affects. The principle as stated tends toward either enfranchising everyone in everything or requiring a prior determination that the principle was introduced to supply.

8.3 All Subjected

Fraser (2005, 2008) advances a different ground. Standing derives from being jointly subject to a governance structure, so that those who are ruled by a given structure hold a claim to participate in its determination, whether or not they are members of the polity that formally administers it. The argument is developed against a background claim that this paper’s §16 takes up separately: that the question of the frame is prior to questions of distribution, and that misframing is a distinct form of injustice.

8.4 Relational Grounds

A recent line of work grounds inclusion in relational egalitarianism. Anderson (1999) and Kolodny (2014) develop accounts on which the point of equality concerns the character of the relations in which persons stand to one another, and on which democratic arrangements are justified by the relational condition they constitute. Building on that ground, Bengtson (2026) argues directly that neither being affected nor being subjected is the fundamental basis of democratic inclusion, and that what explains inclusion is standing in a relation.

This paper must record that the move it makes in §13, from asking which persons are affected to asking which relations are at stake, has been made in the democratic inclusion literature on independent grounds, and made recently and explicitly. Any presentation of that move as novel would be incorrect.

8.5 Findings and Residue

This section records that the ground of standing is contested and well worked, that the all-affected principle faces a determinacy difficulty, that subjection to a structure is a developed alternative, and that a relational ground has been advanced and defended. What is left for this paper is narrower than the thesis of §1 might have suggested, and §12 narrows it further before §14 states what survives.

§9 The Trilemma of Participation

An account of participation justice must say something about the conditions under which participation is organized, and the conditions include an obstruction that no arrangement escapes.

9.1 The Obstruction Stated

Arrangements that admit everyone to everything are unavailable at any scale beyond the smallest. Arrangements that select a subset introduce a distinction between those who take part and those on whose behalf they take part, which is a hierarchy however it is constituted. Arrangements that assign determination to those with the competence to determine well purchase quality at the cost of the standing of everyone else.

9.2 The Concession

The obstruction is named and theorized. Fishkin (2009) presents it as a trilemma among political equality, deliberation, and mass participation, holding that arrangements securing any two will characteristically sacrifice the third. Dahl and Tufte (1973) establish the underlying tension between the scale of a unit and the effective participation available within it. Michels (1911) states the tendency of representative organizations toward oligarchy as a law of their operation. The contemporary literature on selected mini-publics is a sustained argument about the same obstruction, with Landemore (2020) defending arrangements built on random selection and Lafont (2020) objecting that empowering a selected few short-circuits the deliberation of the many.

No claim to have discovered this obstruction is available.

9.3 The Residue

What the trilemma literature settles is that the obstruction is real and that the three desiderata cannot be jointly maximized. What it does not settle is what follows normatively. A trilemma is a constraint on design, and a constraint on design does not by itself yield a criterion for judging designs. The question that remains is what a participatory arrangement is required to preserve, given that it cannot admit everyone to everything, and that question is the paper’s, taken up in §14.

§10 Participation as an Object of Justice

Two prior usages must be distinguished before the paper’s own term is introduced.

10.1 The Restorative Usage

Participatory justice is an established term in the theory of restorative practices, where it names arrangements in which those affected by a wrong take part in determining its resolution, in contrast with arrangements in which professionals determine it on their behalf. Christie (1977) supplies the founding argument, on which conflicts are a form of property that professional institutions take from the parties to whom they belong. This usage is well established and a reader encountering the phrase will ordinarily assume it.

10.2 The Environmental Usage

In environmental justice, participation figures as one of several dimensions. Schlosberg (2007) sets out an account on which distribution, recognition, and participation are interdependent, each implicated in the others, and none reducible to the rest. Participation on this account is a dimension of justice coordinate with the others.

10.3 The Term Used Here

The term used in this paper differs from both. It does not concern the resolution of particular wrongs, and it does not name one dimension among several coordinate dimensions. It concerns the standing to contribute to the reproduction of relational structures, and §16 argues that it stands in a particular relation to the other dimensions of justice. Where the phrase is used below it carries that sense, and the two prior usages are not intended.

§11 The Ontological Turn

The survey to this point has conceded much of what a relational account might have claimed. The typologies settle the second question, the levels of rules settle the differentiation of rule-objects, the inclusion literature has already reached a relational ground, and the trilemma is named. This section states the reformulation from which the paper’s contribution follows, and §12 immediately states how much of it is owed to others.

11.1 The Generative Relational Framework

The framework was stated in §1 and its two relevant features may be recalled. Relations are treated as prior to the terms they relate, so that what a party is within a given field is constituted by the relations in which it stands. Relations are treated, further, as generative, in that a relation in working order produces further determinations of meaning, of value, and of what the relation itself requires.

The second feature carries the weight in what follows. If the productive capacity of a relation is the framework’s central concern, then arrangements bearing on relations will be assessed by what they do to that capacity, and §14 draws out the consequence.

11.2 The Reformulation

On the received picture set out in §3, participation is a relation between persons and decisions. The reformulation proposed here is that participation is a relation between positioned parties and the ongoing production of the structure that positions them.

A structure of relations does not persist of its own accord. It is produced and reproduced by the activity of the parties within it: by the occupancy of positions, by the performance of the activity those positions carry, by the application of categories to cases until the categories settle, by the meeting or disappointing of expectations, and by the transmission of all of this to those who occupy the positions next. A field of relations is therefore continually being remade, and the remaking is done by activity distributed across every position in it.

Participation, on this account, is contribution to that remaking. It occurs wherever a party’s activity bears on whether and how a relation is sustained, altered, or ended, and it is accordingly wider in extent than access to decisions. A teacher conducting a class contributes to the reproduction of an educational relation. An officer applying a category to a case contributes to the reproduction of the category. A party who declines to contest a determination contributes to the settling of it.

Working definition. A party participates in a relational structure to the extent that its activity bears on the production, maintenance, transformation, or dissolution of the relations composing that structure.

11.3 A Qualification the Account Requires

The formulation invites a misreading that must be closed off. To say that parties participate in the production of relations is not to say that any party produces a relation, since a relation is not the sort of thing an individual makes. Relations emerge from interaction and are sustained by it, and what a party contributes is activity that enters the interaction.

The qualification matters because it locates where the normative question arises. If relations were made by parties severally, the question would be one of ownership. Because they emerge from interaction, the question is one of access to the interaction: which parties are positioned to contribute to the emergence, in what manner, with what weight, and with what capacity to alter what emerges. Institutions determine these things, and that determination is the object of participation justice.

11.4 The Consequence for Governance

Governance follows from this as a special case, having been the primary subject on the received picture.

Working definition, consequent on the above. Governance is the institutional organization of participation in relational production and reproduction.

Laws, markets, associations, professional bodies, and constitutions are on this reading different mechanisms for organizing who may contribute to the reproduction of which relations, in what manner, and with what authority. The vocabulary of decisions and procedures describes one family of such mechanisms and describes it well. What it does not describe is the larger volume of relational reproduction that occurs outside decision points, which determines what the decisions can be about.

§12 Relation to Prior Relational and Structurational Ontologies

The reformulation of §11 is, considered as ontology, substantially the property of others. This section says whose, and states what is left.

12.1 Positioned Practice

The closest prior account is the transformational model of social activity developed within critical realism. Bhaskar (1979) holds that a society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of the relations within which individuals stand, that social structure consists of internally related positions which persons come to occupy, and that society is at once the ever-present condition of human activity and its continually reproduced outcome. The positions are illustrated by paired relational terms of exactly the kind this paper has in view.

Set beside the claims of §11, the overlap is close to total on the ontological side. That structures consist of positions, that persons participate by occupying and performing them, and that structures are reproduced and transformed through that performance, is stated there.

12.2 Structuration and Its Critics

Giddens (1984) advances the duality of structure, on which structure is both the medium and the outcome of the practices it recursively organizes, so that the same activity by which agents act is the activity by which the structural conditions of action are reproduced. Archer (1995) objects that the formulation conflates structure and agency by treating them as inseparable moments, and proposes an analytical dualism in which structural conditioning, social interaction, and structural elaboration are separated in time, distinguishing reproduction from transformation as morphostasis from morphogenesis.

That dispute matters to the present subject in one respect. If reproduction and transformation are temporally separable, then a participatory arrangement may be assessed by which of the two it makes possible, and the assessment can be made without deciding the dispute.

12.3 Relational Sociology

Emirbayer (1997) argues for taking relations as the units of social analysis in place of substances, and Donati and Archer (2015) develop an account on which relations possess emergent properties and causal powers of their own, and on which parties within a relation may act as a collective subject. The latter connects relational ontology to the analysis of associations and civil society, which is the nearest existing approach to the institutional questions of this paper.

12.4 Reproduction as a Critical Category

A distinct tradition treats reproduction as its central category. Work in social reproduction theory examines the activity by which the conditions of a social order are continually remade, much of it unremunerated and institutionally unregistered, and argues that its exclusion from the categories of political economy is itself a structural feature (Bhattacharya 2017). The relevance here is direct: the claim that participation in reproduction occurs largely outside the sites that institutions recognize as participatory has been argued at length within that literature, on different grounds and with a different object.

12.5 Self-Reproducing Systems

Luhmann (1995) treats social systems as reproducing themselves through the recursive production of their own elements, so that a system’s continuation is an achievement of its own operations. The account supplies a rigorous statement of self-reproduction and locates the reproducing operations in communication, and it is entered here because any claim about relational reproduction stands in its shadow.

12.6 The Residue Stated Exactly

The ontology of §11 is not the paper’s contribution. What is left, after the above is conceded, is a conjunction that the survey did not find made:

The residue, stated as a conjecture. The ontology of positioned practice has not been joined to a normative theory of standing to participate. The accounts that supply the ontology do not ask who legitimately contributes to reproduction, and the accounts that ask who legitimately participates do not ground the answer in positioned practice. The joining is what this paper attempts.

The gap can be stated more precisely by taking the four nearest positions in turn. The transformational model supplies positions and reproduction and advances no principle of inclusion. The relational ground for democratic inclusion advanced in Bengtson (2026) supplies a principle of inclusion and grounds it in relational egalitarianism, which concerns the quality of relations among persons, leaving aside the occupancy of positions within a reproducing structure. The all-subjected principle grounds standing in being ruled by a structure, which is a relation of subjection to a structure, distinct from a position within its production. Relational sociology, for its part, supplies emergent relational properties and a collective subject without a theory of who holds standing to determine what the relation becomes.

Whether the joining is of value is a question for the reader, and §17 enters the reasons for doubt.

§13 The Reformulation of Standing, Mode, and Object

With the ontology in place the three questions may be restated. Each restatement modifies an existing answer.

13.1 The Ground of Standing

The received question asks which persons hold a claim to take part. The reformulated question asks which relational positions are implicated in the reproduction at issue, and treats persons as holding standing in virtue of occupying such a position.

The difference from the all-affected principle is that affectedness is an outcome of a determination while occupancy of a position is a condition obtaining before it, which addresses the determinacy difficulty Goodin (2007) identifies without resolving it. The difference from the all-subjected principle is that subjection is a relation to a governing structure while occupancy is a location within the structure being reproduced, so that parties whose activity sustains a relation hold standing in respect of it even where they are not governed by the body in question.

The reformulation carries a cost stated here and returned to in §17. Determining which positions a given structure comprises is itself an interpretive act, performed by somebody, and the account supplies no procedure for it. The determinacy difficulty is thereby displaced, and it survives the displacement.

13.2 The Forms of Contribution

The received question asks at what intensity parties participate, and the received answers order intensities on a scale. The reformulated question asks what forms of contribution to relational reproduction an arrangement admits.

The intensity scale is retained, since intensity is a real property of arrangements and the typologies of §4 order it well. What is added is that contribution takes forms the scale does not register, because the scale was built for decision access. Sustaining a relation by performing its ordinary activity is a contribution. Withholding performance is a contribution. Transmitting a category to those who will apply it next is a contribution, and one that no participatory instrument addresses.

13.3 The Moments of Reproduction

The received question is not asked, and where it is asked the object is taken as given by the institutional setting. The reformulated question asks which moment of relational reproduction the participation bears upon.

The moments proposed are these: the formation of a shared purpose; the framing of what is at issue; the identification of what is at stake and for whom; the construction of the rules and equivalences by which the field is ordered; determination in particular cases; the carrying out of what is determined; the assessment of what has occurred; and the revision of the ordering in light of it.

Three cautions attend the list. It is offered as a proposal awaiting examination. The ordering carries no temporal implication, since the moments recur and overlap and a field is ordinarily engaged in several at once. The ordering carries no implication of relative importance either, since a defect at any moment appears to propagate to the others.

13.4 Findings and Residue

This section proposes reformulations of the three questions and states the cost of the first. It leaves the criterion by which an arrangement is to be judged sufficient, which is the subject of the section following, and the operationalization of position-identification, which is entered among the open questions.

§14 Generativity as the Criterion of Sufficient Participation

The survey established that participation is graded, that its objects differ, that standing is contested, and that no arrangement admits everyone to everything. What none of it supplies is an answer to the question a designer actually faces: given that a choice must be made, how much participation, of what kind, at which moment, is enough. This section proposes an answer. It is the paper’s contribution and it is stated with its costs.

14.1 The Criterion

Proposed criterion of generative sufficiency. A participatory arrangement is sufficient in respect of a given moment of relational reproduction when it preserves the capacity of the affected relations to generate a further determination of that moment. It is unjust when it extinguishes that capacity, whether or not any party was excluded from any decision.

The criterion asks a question about capacity, treating access as instrumental to it. An arrangement may admit every affected party to every decision and still fail it, if what results is a determination that no party can subsequently reopen. An arrangement may admit few and still satisfy it, if the determinations it produces remain open to a further determination by the relations they bear upon. What is protected is the continuing productive capacity of the relational structure, and access is instrumental to that.

14.2 The Ground of the Criterion

The criterion derives from the framework, and its ground lies there. If relations are generative, and if what a relation produces includes the determinations by which it is itself ordered, then a relation whose capacity to produce further determinations has been extinguished has been damaged in the respect most essential to it. The wrong so identified attaches to the structure, which has been rendered unable to continue producing what it exists to produce. A party’s exclusion from a particular proceeding is a distinct matter, and on this account a lesser one.

One consequence follows, and it explains why the criterion is not a proxy for inclusion. A party excluded from a determination retains standing to reopen it, provided the arrangement leaves the question open. Exclusion from an episode admits of recovery, whereas extinction of the capacity to reopen appears to admit of none. The criterion accordingly ranks the two harms in a way that access-based accounts appear unable to, and it offers an explanation of why some highly inclusive arrangements may be worse than some sparse ones.

14.3 The Relation to the Trilemma

The criterion does not resolve the trilemma of §9 and it changes what the trilemma requires. On an access-based account, every departure from universal participation is a shortfall to be justified, and the trilemma is accordingly a permanent embarrassment. On the criterion offered here, a departure from universal participation is unobjectionable in itself, and what must be shown is that the arrangement leaves the relations able to generate a further determination. Selection is compatible with that. What is incompatible is a selected arrangement whose determinations are final in the strong sense, since the selection has then fixed the field’s ordering beyond the reach of those it orders.

The criterion yields a design orientation, stated as a corollary: the intensity of participation required at a moment rises with the finality of what is determined there. Moments whose determinations are readily revisited require less; moments whose determinations settle the terms of subsequent moments require more.

14.4 The Relation to Endurance

§7 noted that the commons literature associates connected rule levels with the endurance of self-governed arrangements, and declined the inference from endurance to legitimacy. The ground of that refusal can now be given.

Endurance is a property of a configuration’s capacity to absorb disturbance, and it carries no evaluative content. An arrangement that has extinguished the capacity of its relations to generate further determinations may endure for a long time and may endure longer than one that has not, since it has fewer live claims to answer. The criterion offered here is therefore not a prediction of stability and must not be read as one. It states a condition on the relation, and the relation between that condition and the persistence of the arrangement is contingent and is treated in the companion work on historical dynamics.

14.5 The Family of Criteria

The criterion has a sibling. In a companion paper on the interpretation of organizational rules, an interpretation is held unjust when it extinguishes the capacity of the relation between interpreter and interpreted party to generate a further interpretation of the same question (Huang, in preparation, a). In a companion paper on value conversion, a conversion is held unjust when the party against whom an equivalence is asserted can no longer contest that the equivalence holds (Huang, in preparation, b).

The three criteria share a form. In each, an act is assessed by what it does to the capacity of a relation to produce a further determination of the matter the act settled. The recurrence is offered as weak evidence for the form, on the ground that a criterion reached independently in three domains is more likely to be tracking something than one constructed for a single case. It is weak evidence because the three were developed by one author within one framework, and a shared origin is an alternative explanation of the convergence.

14.6 Findings and Residue

This section states the criterion, grounds it in the framework, distinguishes it from access, relates it to the trilemma without resolving it, refuses the inference from endurance, and records its siblings. What it leaves is the largest of the paper’s debts: no procedure is offered by which the generative capacity of a relation may be assessed in a given case, and §17 enters this as the account’s principal weakness.

§15 The Matrix of Participation

The criterion applies moment by moment, and applying it yields a table. The table is offered as an illustration of the criterion’s use.

Moment	Positions implicated	Mode indicated	What generative sufficiency requires
Formation of purpose	The full range of positions the structure will order	Deliberative	That the purpose remain open to restatement by those it comes to order
Framing of the issue	Positions whose situation the framing renders visible or invisible	Co-framing	That an unregistered situation retain a route into the frame
Identification of stakes	Positions holding the values at issue	Dialogue	That plural statements of stake survive without premature unification
Construction of orderings	Positions the ordering will bind, with those competent in its operation	Co-construction	That the ordering remain revisable by those it binds
Determination in cases	Positions party to the case	Reasoned determination	That the determination not close the question for later cases
Carrying out	Positions performing and receiving	Execution with report	That performance discrepancies reach the ordering
Assessment	Positions bearing the effects	Feedback with standing	That an adverse assessment be capable of reaching revision
Revision of orderings	The full range of bound positions	Participatory review	That revision be reachable without the consent of those it would constrain

Three observations follow from the table.

First, the fourth column carries the section’s contribution. The first three columns restate distinctions available in the literature surveyed above. The fourth states, for each moment, what the criterion of §14 requires there, and it appears to be the only column that could not be filled from the received accounts.

Second, the requirements in the fourth column are conditions on capacity, expressed without thresholds of inclusion. None of them specifies a quantity of participation. Each specifies something that must remain possible.

Third, the moment of determination in particular cases occupies a single row. The interpretation of rules in particular cases, which the companion paper treats at length, is one moment among eight. That paper’s subject is therefore a specialized case of the present one, and the relation between the two is stated in the section following.

§16 The Place of the Account in the Generative Relational Corpus

16.1 The Cycle

The account completes a circuit that the companion papers enter at different points. Relational structures position parties. The arrangements by which those parties may contribute to reproducing the structure are the subject of this paper. What the structure produces includes values, which are generated within relations. Heterogeneous values require ordering if collective action is to be possible, and the terms on which they are ordered are the subject of the companion work on value conversion. The application of those terms to particular cases is the subject of the companion work on interpretation. What is determined issues in action, and action remakes the relations from which the circuit began.

Figure 1. The circuit within which the account sits. Participation justice governs the terms on which positioned parties contribute to the reproduction of a relational structure; the structure generates values; the ordering of heterogeneous values is the subject of the companion work on conversion; the application of that ordering to cases is the subject of the companion work on interpretation; and the resulting action remakes the structure. The figure records the relations among the papers and asserts no temporal sequence, since the moments recur and overlap.

16.2 The Priority Claim and Its Standing

The circuit invites a conclusion that participation justice is foundational and that the other dimensions of justice presuppose it. That conclusion should be resisted in its strong form and stated carefully in its weak one.

The strong form would hold that questions of distribution, procedure, and interpretation cannot be posed until standing to participate has been settled. That claim is close to an argument already in the literature. Fraser (2005, 2008) holds that the question of the frame is prior to questions of what is owed within it, that misframing is a distinct injustice, and that theories of justice have lacked the resources to reflect on the frame. A relational restatement of that argument would be a restatement, and it would inherit the objections the original has attracted.

The weak form is what this paper asserts. The moments are interdependent, and a defect at any of them propagates to the others, which is the position taken on the analogous question in environmental justice by Schlosberg (2007). What the circuit adds is the specific direction of propagation: a defect in participation at the moment of ordering appears downstream as an interpretive question that no party can raise, and the interpretive injustice is then the visible form of a participatory defect that occurred earlier and elsewhere. This is a claim about how the moments connect, leaving the question of priority open.

16.3 Findings and Residue

This section sets out the circuit, states the relation among the companion papers, and declines the strong priority claim while advancing a weaker one about propagation. It leaves the strong claim to those willing to defend it against the objections that the framing argument has already met.

§17 The Limits of the Account

The account is now complete enough to be priced.

No operational form. The criterion turns on the capacity of a relation to generate a further determination, and no procedure is offered by which that capacity may be assessed. What would count as evidence that a moment remains open, who would assess it, and against what baseline, are unsettled. A criterion in that condition is a proposal for work, and this is the account’s principal weakness.

No allocation formula. The criterion states a condition and does not distribute participation. Told that an arrangement must preserve generative capacity, a designer with a fixed budget of attention and a large field of positions still has every practical question before them. The matrix of §15 illustrates the criterion and does not decide such questions.

The determinacy difficulty is displaced. Standing derives from occupying a position in a structure, and which positions a structure comprises is settled by an interpretive act performed by somebody. The account thereby reproduces at one remove the difficulty it identified in the all-affected principle, and it has no better answer than that literature does.

The ontology is borrowed. As §12 states, the ontological content of the reformulation belongs to the tradition of positioned practice. What is offered here is a joining, and a reader who judges the joining insubstantial will find little else.

The relational ground has been reached already. The move from affected persons to implicated relations has been made within democratic theory on independent grounds. This paper’s version grounds the relation in positioned practice, where the prior account grounds it in relational equality, and whether that difference carries weight is a question this paper cannot settle in its own favour.

The breadth of the objects exceeds their treatment. The eight moments of §13 are proposed, and their establishment is outstanding. A different analysis would yield a different list, and nothing here shows the list to be complete or the divisions to be at the joints.

Against this the paper claims two things. The criterion of §14 states, first, a condition on participatory arrangements that the surveyed accounts appear not to state, and it does so in a form that offers an explanation of why inclusive arrangements can be worse than sparse ones. The survey, second, locates with some precision where the residue appears to lie, which retains its value independently of whether the criterion is accepted, since it spares a subsequent inquiry the same reconnaissance.

§18 Open Questions

This paper identifies a neglected structure. It does not complete a theory of it, and the questions below are held to be the more valuable part of what is offered.

If the structure is real, the following questions arise immediately.

The first group concerns standing.

Q1. By what procedure are the positions comprising a structure identified? The account grounds standing in occupancy and supplies no method for determining what is occupied. Whether the determination can be made by any party other than one already positioned, and what follows if it cannot, is open.

Q2. Does occupancy admit of degrees? A party whose activity bears heavily on the reproduction of a relation and a party whose activity bears on it faintly both occupy positions, and whether standing varies with the weight of the bearing, or is a threshold property, is unsettled.

Q3. What standing attaches to positions that no living party occupies? Positions that have been vacated, positions that will be occupied by parties not yet existing, and positions from which the occupants were removed by the ordering at issue, are all implicated in reproduction, and the account as stated does not address them.

The second group concerns modes and objects.

Q4. Are the moments of relational reproduction enumerable? The eight proposed here are a proposal. Whether a principled enumeration exists, whether the divisions fall at joints, and whether the set is domain-invariant, are open.

Q5. What forms of contribution does the intensity scale fail to register? The account holds that sustaining a relation by ordinary performance is a contribution, and no participatory instrument addresses it. What an instrument addressing it would look like is unknown.

Q6. Can withholding be treated as participation without absurdity? Declining to perform, declining to contest, and exiting are all contributions to what a relation becomes, and whether a theory of participation justice should carry them is unsettled.

The third group concerns the criterion, and the questions here are the sharpest because the claims are the strongest.

Q7. What evidence bears on whether a moment remains open? The criterion is applied with confidence in retrospect, once a question has visibly failed to be reopened over a long period. Applying it prospectively, at the time an arrangement is designed, is what would be useful, and it remains unsupplied.

Q8. Can generative capacity be traded across moments? Whether a deficit at one moment may be compensated by surplus at another, or whether the criterion applies moment by moment without offset, determines how much practical guidance the account can carry, and it remains unsettled here.

Q9. Does the criterion have a lower bound? Preserving the capacity to generate a further determination is compatible with arrangements that preserve it barely. Whether the criterion requires more than bare preservation, and if so on what ground, is open.

The last question is the one the account is directed toward, and it is placed last because everything above bears on it.

Q10. Under what institutional and relational conditions does a structure retain the capacity to reproduce itself generatively across changes of occupancy? Positions turn over, categories settle into usage, and arrangements drift toward finality under the ordinary pressure that decision-making generates. An arrangement that satisfied the criterion when designed may fail it a generation later with no act of foreclosure by anyone. What sustains generative capacity across time is the question on which the practical value of the account depends, and it is entirely open.

A closing observation about the shape of the list. The questions of the first two groups could be pursued within existing disciplines, and several are being pursued there under other descriptions. The questions of the third group could not, since they concern a criterion advanced here. A reader who finds the survey useful and the criterion unpersuasive may take the first and leave the second, since the survey’s findings about where the residue lies do not depend on the criterion being correct. The reverse is not available: the criterion is a proposal about what participation is for, and it requires the reformulation of §11 to say what it is a criterion about.

---

A note on method. No formal apparatus has been used. The criterion of §14 could be written in the notation of dynamical systems, with a relational structure answering to a configuration and generative capacity to a property of its trajectory, and the companion work on historical dynamics does something of this kind. Written out here, such a model would derive nothing the prose does not state and would supply an appearance of precision the argument has not earned. The conditions under which the notation would become honest are set out in Q7 through Q9, and they have not been met.

A note on the survey. The literatures drawn on here cite one another unevenly, and several of the convergences recorded above were found in the course of the survey and were not known at the outset. Where a source has been read at second hand this has been avoided in the claims that bear weight, but the risk of misattribution in a survey of this width is real, and correction is welcome.

References

Anderson, Elizabeth S. (1999). What Is the Point of Equality? Ethics, 109(2), 287–337.

Archer, Margaret S. (1995). Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Arnstein, Sherry R. (1969). A Ladder of Citizen Participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), 216–224.

Bengtson, Andreas (2026). Finding a Fundamental Principle of Democratic Inclusion - Related, not Affected or Subjected. Inquiry, 69(2), 179–198.

Bhaskar, Roy (1979). The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences. Brighton: Harvester Press.

Bhattacharya, Tithi, ed. (2017). Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression. London: Pluto Press.

Christie, Nils (1977). Conflicts as Property. British Journal of Criminology, 17(1), 1–15.

Cornwall, Andrea (2008). Unpacking ‘Participation’: Models, Meanings and Practices. Community Development Journal, 43(3), 269–283.

Dahl, Robert A., and Edward R. Tufte (1973). Size and Democracy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Donati, Pierpaolo, and Margaret S. Archer (2015). The Relational Subject. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Emirbayer, Mustafa (1997). Manifesto for a Relational Sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 103(2), 281–317.

Fishkin, James S. (2009). When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fraser, Nancy (2005). Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World. New Left Review, 36, 69–88.

Fraser, Nancy (2008). Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World. New York: Columbia University Press.

Fung, Archon (2006). Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance. Public Administration Review, 66(s1), 66–75.

Giddens, Anthony (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Goodin, Robert E. (2007). Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its Alternatives. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 35(1), 40–68.

Huang, Wanhong (in preparation, a). Interpretive Justice in Organizations: A Preliminary Discussion of Problems and Open Questions.

Huang, Wanhong (in preparation, b). Conversion Injustice: A Generative Relational Account of Value Conversion.

Huang, Wanhong (in preparation, c). Generative Relational History: Historical Generativity under Constraints.

Kolodny, Niko (2014). Rule Over None II: Social Equality and the Justification of Democracy. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 42(4), 287–336.

Lafont, Cristina (2020). Democracy Without Shortcuts: A Participatory Conception of Deliberative Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Landemore, Hélène (2020). Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Luhmann, Niklas (1995). Social Systems. Trans. John Bednarz, Jr., with Dirk Baecker. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Michels, Robert (1911). Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. Trans. Eden and Cedar Paul. New York: Free Press, 1962.

Ostrom, Elinor (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ostrom, Elinor (2005). Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Pretty, Jules N. (1995). Participatory Learning for Sustainable Agriculture. World Development, 23(8), 1247–1263.

Schlosberg, David (2007). Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

White, Sarah C. (1996). Depoliticising Development: The Uses and Abuses of Participation. Development in Practice, 6(1), 6–15.

Wilsdon, James, and Rebecca Willis (2004). See-Through Science: Why Public Engagement Needs to Move Upstream. London: Demos.

中文

摘要

诸参与理论问谁应参加集体决定、经由什么程序，以及带什么权威。本文问那个问题是否曾在恰当的层次被提出。诸决定是一个更长过程内的诸插曲，关系结构经由那个过程被生产、被维系、被转变，并被消解，而本文考量这样一个可能性：在那个更长过程中的参与是那个承载规范分量之物，而对那些插曲的接触是它所采取的一个形式。本文概览既存文献显得已安定之物：从那道阶梯往后的诸参与分类法、参与式设计的三维分解、公地治理中诸规则层级的分化、民主包容的诸原则与那个边界问题，以及那个没有任何参与安排逃脱的三难。它让步一个关系理论会寻求就谁参与、如何参与，以及在哪个阶段参与所确立之物中甚多显得已被确立，而它试图定位那个残余。对着那个残余它安置一个生成性关系读法，在其之上参与的站位可源自占据一个其再生产处于利害之中的关系结构内的一个位置，而在其之上参与在任何阶段的充分性可由一个单一判据被评估：那个安排是否保全受影响诸关系产生一个进一步裁定的能力。那个判据作为一个提议被供出并带它的诸代价被陈述。它供不出分配公式、它把那个三难留下未解决，而它要求一个关于生成能力的判断，本文无法把它操作化。那些收尾的问题被持为所供出之物中更有价值的一半。

关键词： 参与；正义；正当性；关系本体论；治理；包容；社会再生产；生成性。

关于本文站位的一则附记。 这是一篇讨论文。它辨认一个结构、概览既存理论对它所作之物、标记每一个说明在何处用尽，并提议一个方向。它不完成一个理论。那次综述以一个异常让步的语域被进行，因为这个主题的中心诸问题是古老且被充分耕耘的，而一篇未能如此说的论文会比一篇率先如此说的论文更少价值。在一个此处作为开放被引入的主张事实上已被占据之处，或在一个来源被读错之处，改正被欢迎至 huangwanhong@serendip.ngo。

§1 引论

参加共同条件之塑造的诸安排已成为制度设计的一个标准特征。诸公共当局在决定之前咨询、诸企业向它们称为利益相关者者报告、诸发展机构要求受影响人口的涉入、诸研究资助者召集非专业成员的诸小组，而宪法改革日益通过以抽签选出之公民的诸集会被尝试。那套语汇如今跨诸领域是共同的，那些领域别的共享甚少，而一个广泛的文献已围绕这样的诸安排值什么这个问题生长。那个文献服务了两个目的。它供出了诸设计工具，一个意图涉入他人的机体可借之判定涉入他们要求什么，而它供出了诸批评工具，描述自己为参与式的诸安排可借之被审查，并在相当数目的情形中被发现授予极少。两个成就都是真实的，而当下这篇论文取它们为它的起点。

三个困难尽管如此复现，而它们一起推动随之而来之物。第一个关乎那个主题被提出所处的层次。参与通常被当作一个人与决定之间的关系：有一个决定的机体、有那个决定关系着的诸人，而参与包含那些第二者借之在那些第一者之上获得某种抓力的诸安排。然而诸决定是插曲。它们发生在先于它们并在它们之后持续的诸关系结构之内，而那些结构被一个在离任何决定点有一段距离处发生之寻常活动的体量所维系，以致一个被投于那个决定层次的说明是否够到要紧之物是一个值得提出的问题。第二个困难关乎一个鲜少被问的问题。每一个参与的安排在它能运作之前安定三件事：谁参加、以什么方式并带什么分量，以及他们所参加之物是什么。前两个已被长篇审查，而第三个通常被那个制度设定所安定并被略过，以致诸安排被由它们的强度比较，而那个强度被行使于其上的诸对象未受审查。第三个困难关乎一个充分性判据的缺席。一个在诸安排之间选择的设计者面对一个文献间接致意的问题，即多少参与、什么种类的、在哪个点，是足够的；而由于没有安排把每一个人接纳于每一件事，某个原则被要求以判断一个给定的选择何时可辩护，而那些可得的原则倾向于要么朝向一个无法被满足的最大值，要么朝向一个不承载规范分量的实践描述。

五个工作之体关乎这些困难，而每一个在下面被长篇处理。诸参与类型学，始于那道公民参与的阶梯并延续经过若干后继者，按它们所授予之控制的程度为诸安排排序，并确立参与是分级的且低的诸级可能是假冒的（阿恩斯坦 1969；普雷蒂 1995；怀特 1996）。一个参与式设计的三维说明按参与的范围、沟通与决定的模式，以及被授予权威的程度分解诸安排（冯 2006）。共池资源的制度分析区分操作、集体选择与宪制的诸规则层级，并把持久的自治同连接它们的诸安排相关联（奥斯特罗姆 1990, 2005）。民主理论已长篇审查参与之站位所停靠的根据，遍览受影响的诸利益、对一个治理结构的受制，以及较近来立于诸方之间的诸关系（古丁 2007；弗雷泽 2008；本特森 2026）。一个关于参与式制度之尺度的工作之体最终确立，政治平等、审议与大众参与无法被共同最大化（达尔与图夫特 1973；菲什金 2009）。这些文献安定这个主题的一个可观比例，而本文的一个目的是记录多少；下面的综述相应地通过先让步、而后定位剩下之物来进行。

此处所供出的说明在一个作者已在别处铺陈的框架之内被发展，而它可被以一句话陈述：

生成性关系存在。 一个关于主体、意义、价值、创造与规范性如何通过生成性关系过程共同涌现的理论。

那个框架的两个特征关乎参与。诸关系被当作先于它们所关联的诸项，以致一方在一个给定场域内所是之物由它立于其中的诸关系所构成；而诸关系被当作生成性的，即一个处于运作秩序中的关系产生意义的、价值的，以及那个关系本身所要求之物的诸进一步裁定，那个生产能力是那个框架的中心关切。被应用于当下主题，这些特征暗示一个重述。参与可被理解为对关系结构之生产与再生产的贡献，而对诸决定的接触是这样的贡献所采取的一个形式，而治理，在那个理解上，是被如此设想之参与的制度组织。那个重述作为一个工作论题被推进并带它的出处在§11被陈述，在那里它欠既存社会本体论的实质债务也被记录。那个框架进一步携带一个支配下面诸主张如何被推进的方法论承诺：它的基调是历史辩证法，以致诸命题作为在一个历史框架内可修订的被引入、知识与实践的有限被承认为一个常在状况，而哲学论证在那个主题容许它之处被连到可操作的表述。一篇在那个承诺之下被书写的论文陈述它的诸主张以致它们可被放弃。

这是一篇讨论文，而它的角色相应地有限。它辨认一个结构、概览既存理论对它所作之物、标记每一个说明显得用尽之处，并提议一个工作的方向；它不完成一个参与正义的理论，而它的若干中心命题作为等待审查的假说被引入。那次综述以一个让步的语域被进行，因为成问题的诸问题是古老且被充分耕耘的，而一个关系说明可能希望主张之物的一个实质比例已被主张，以那些参与文献与社会本体论文献并不总是共享的诸语汇；在一个可能已在此处被推进的主张显得被占据之处，相关的节如此说并命名那个占据者。三个事项相应地躺在这项承担之外。本文供出没有分配公式，而§17解释为什么无一从那个说明随之而来；它不裁断审议的、聚合的与竞胜的诸民主政治设想之间；而它把关于参与式制度的经验文献搁置一旁，那会要求本文不采用的诸方法。

本文在它们的位置所供出之物可被铺陈为四个贡献，以不同程度的信心被主张。第一个是一次绘图：那次综述以某种精确定位这个领域中哪些问题显得被安定、哪些显得保持开放，而那次绘图保有它的价值，独立于下面诸提议是否被接受。第二个是一个关于参与式设计之诸维度的假说，即参与的对象可能构成一个区别于范围、模式与权威的维度，以致在诸既得维度上重合的诸安排可能以关乎它们正义的诸方式不同；§5陈述那个假说并把它同那个既得的三维说明区分开来。第三个是一个被提议的判据，在其之上一个安排可由它是否保全受影响诸关系产生一个对成问题之事项之进一步裁定的能力被评估；那个提议在§14带它的诸代价被陈述而被推进，而本文的实质贡献依赖于它。第四个是一个关于形式的观察：此处所提议的判据同两篇关于相邻主题之姊妹论文中所推进的诸判据共享它的结构，而那个复现作为那个形式的弱证据被供出，带一个那个趋同的替代解释在它旁边被记录。在§18所记下的诸问题被持为所供出之物中更有价值的一半。

§2 范围与方法

2.1 那个容纳手法

关乎参与的文献是广泛的，而一次不带一个选择原则被进行的对它的综述会等同于一份书目。此处所用的手法是那个组织那次讨论本身的同一个。三个问题在一开始被命名，而材料通过履行它们之一赢得它的位置：

（i）谁参与。 一方在什么根据上持有参加的站位。

（ii）他们如何参与。 以什么方式、在什么强度，并带什么分量。

（iii）他们参与于什么之中。 那个参与的对象是什么，而什么判定它。

一个第四个问题从那第三个涌现并从§11往后被分开处理：一个参与安排被设想去保护之物是什么，而一个给定的安排由什么判据被判为充分。

2.2 那个让步的语域

那次综述被进行所处的语域在§1被陈述，而它的道理属于此处。一个其诸组件在个别上不具原创性的理论仍可通过它连接它们的方式作出贡献，而那个连接仅在那些组件被正确地归属之处变得可见。本文的论证是建筑性的，而一个建筑性的论证被任何采过它自己石料的主张所削弱。

一个排除同§1中所记录的其他一起属于此处。那个说明不延伸到非人实体是否持有站位的问题。那个问题是活的、它直接关乎一个关系本体论，而它在§18的诸开放问题中被引入以在那里处理。

2.3 关于来源的一则附记

那次综述汲取政治理论、社会本体论、发展研究、公共行政、环境正义，以及关于公地的文献。这些场域不均地相互援引，而那次综述的偶然发现之一是同一个结构点已在它们中的若干内被独立地抵达。在那已发生之处它被记录，因为来自不相连方向的趋同是一种证据。

§3 参与的既得图景

本文对着工作的那个图景不是任何特定理论家的立场。它是这个主题的默认形状，可见于参与式安排如何被设计与评估。

在那个形状上，参与是一个人与决定之间的关系。有一个决定的机体、有那个决定关系着的诸人，而参与是那些第二者被给予在那些第一者之上某种抓力的那组安排。诸安排在强度上变化，从被告知已被决定之物、经由在它被决定之前被询问，到共同决定。那个评价性问题是那些安排给予多少抓力，而那个改革冲动是给予更多。

这个图景的三个特征对随之而来之物要紧。

它是插曲式的。参与发生于诸时刻，而那些时刻是决定点。在它们之间有实施，它被当作执行，参与到那时被视为完成，而有寻常的制度生活，那个图景略过它。

它是以人为中心的。那个单位是个体或群体，被利益、被被影响，或被持有一个利害所刻画。谁参与的问题是一个关于哪些人的问题，而那些答案是分拣诸人的诸原则。

那个图景第三是以决定为终点的。参与的价值在它所影响的决定中被实现。一个给予诸人对一个而后对任何决定没有关系之过程的广泛涉入的安排，会在这个图景上被判为一个失败并可能一个操纵。

每一个特征是可辩护的而每一个已被辩护。本文的论证是那三个一起把这个主题限制到一个层次，在其上最有后果的诸安定已被作出。

§4 分类学传统与参与的分级

诸方如何参与的问题已比另两个中的任一个被更彻底地回答，而那些答案采取按强度排序的诸类型学的形式。

4.1 那道阶梯及其后继者

阿恩斯坦（1969）供出那个奠基陈述，一道被分组为三个带的八级阶梯。那个最低的带根本不是参与，而是操纵与治疗，其功能是确保赞同的诸安排。那个中间的带是象征主义，包含告知、咨询与安抚，在其中诸方被听闻而它们无法裁定任何东西。那个上面的带是公民权力，包含伙伴关系、被授予的权力与公民控制。那道阶梯的论战力量在于它较低的诸级：它把一组描述自己为参与式的安排命名为非参与。

较晚的诸类型学保全那个排序并精化那些判据。普雷蒂（1995）区分被动参与、在信息给予中的参与、经由咨询的参与、为物质激励的参与、功能性参与、互动性参与，与自我动员，按那些参与者控制那个议程与那些资源的程度排序。怀特（1996）按诸安排所服务的诸利益分拣它们，把授予展示的名义参与，同工具性的、代表性的与转化性的诸形式区分开来。国际公众参与协会所维持的那个谱系给出一个五级尺度，从告知经由咨询、涉入与协作到赋权，而在行政实践中被广泛使用。

康沃尔（2008）供出这一家族的批评性综述并作出一个当下这篇论文接手的观察。那些类型学为强度排序，而强度没有一个对象是无意义的。问一方行使多少控制是招来控制什么的问题，而那些类型学不回答它。

4.2 那个三维转向

冯（2006）通过把参与式设计分解为三个维度打破那个单一尺度的形式，他把它们呈现为一个空间，任何特定安排可在其内被定位。那些维度是参与的范围，关乎谁参加以及他们如何被选出；沟通与决定的模式，关乎参与者被聚集时做什么以及他们的贡献如何被聚合；以及权威的程度，关乎那个过程的结果被连到政策或公共行动多远。

那个分解是对那道阶梯的一个可观进展，而它比此处所审查的任何其他单一来源更充分地致意本文的第二个问题。它也直接关乎本文的定框，而那个关系要求谨慎。§5陈述它。

4.3 诸发现与残余

来源	排序原则	它所安定与所留下之物
公民参与的阶梯	公民对结果的权力程度	安定参与是分级的且低的诸级可能是假冒的；把对象留下未规定
按议程与资源之控制的类型学	对过程与手段的控制	安定强度的物质条件；把对象留下未规定
按所服务利益的类型学	那个安排服务谁的利益	安定强度与目的是可分开的；把对象留下未规定
五级行政谱系	那个召集机体所作的承诺	安定一个可行的操作尺度；把对象留下未规定
三维分解	范围、模式与权威共同地	安定设计是多维的；把对象当作被给定

这一家族确立参与是分级的、那些级同一个安排所服务的诸目的是可分开的，而一个单一尺度不足以刻画一个设计。它所留下之物是 康沃尔（2008）所命名之物：每一个排序预设一个对象，而那个对象自始至终被当作由那个制度设定所给定。

§5 三维分解及其第三成员

本文围绕三个问题组织它的主题，而那个组织要求一个辩护，因为一个熟悉冯（2006）的读者会注意到一个参与的三维分解已经存在。

5.1 同那个三维分解的关系

那两个分解在它们头两个成员上一致。冯的参与范围是谁参加的问题；他的沟通与决定模式是如何的问题。在这些上当下这篇论文什么也不添加并取那个工作所确立之物。

那些第三成员不同，而那个差别是本文的缘由。冯的第三维度是权威的程度：一个参与式过程的诸结论被连到实际所做之物多远。这是一个关于一个贡献所承载之分量的问题，而分量是参与之方式的一个性质。一个其诸结论有约束力的过程与一个其诸结论仅供咨询的过程在它们的参与者如何参与上不同，而那两个安排可能在每一个其他方面相同。在此处所用的分类上，权威的程度属于那第二个问题。

此处所问的那第三个问题是不同的。它关乎那个对象：参与所参与于其中之物是什么。两个安排可能在范围、在模式，与在权威上相同，而不同在于一个授予对一个承包者之选择的约束性权威，而另一个授予对那个合同意在致意之问题的界定的约束性权威。第二个是一个更有后果的安排，而那三个既得维度的没有任何组合区分它们，因为那个差别在于那个权威被持有于其上的对象。

关于设计诸维度的假说。 参与的对象是一个独立于范围、模式与权威的参与式设计维度。在诸既得维度上重合的诸安排可能在它们所关乎之物上不同，而那个差别关乎那个安排的正义。

5.2 诸发现与残余

本节论证了组织本文的三个问题不同于那个既得分解的三个维度、那个差别在于那第三成员，而那个既得的第三成员显得在分析上属于那第二个问题。它把那个对象是否已在别处以另一个描述被理论化的问题留给§6，而那里所给的答案是它已被反复命名并被理论化过一次，在一个那些参与类型学不援引的文献中。

§6 参与的对象

6.1 那个问题被命名

那个对象要紧已被那些类型学的谨慎读者所观察。康沃尔（2008）直接作出那个观察，主张注意必须被付给谁在参与、参与于什么，以及为谁的利益，并注意到那道阶梯招来究竟什么正被控制的问题。那个观察是正确的而它被顺带作出，作为一个关于类型学之使用的告诫，把那个维度本身留下未开启。

6.2 上游涉入

一个文献已以持续的注意追寻那个问题。关于公众对科学与技术之涉入的工作已论证在监管批准之点被进行的涉入到达得太晚，因为到那时那个研究轨迹、诸风险的定框，以及被考量中之诸替代方案的范围已被安定。威尔斯登与威利斯（2004）给那个论证它的口号：涉入必须往上游移动，到诸研究议程的设定与诸问题的定框，而被限于对成品提议之评估的涉入是关于错误对象的涉入。

那个论证直接关乎参与的对象，而它支持此处成问题的那个点：在强度上相同的诸安排可能按它们所关乎之物在价值上不同，而在一个给定时刻可得的诸对象被在它上游已作的诸安定所约束。

两条界限为当下目的贴附它。它为一个特定制度领域被发展并仅凭类比一般化。它把上游同下游区分开来而不供出一个关于那条流由什么组成的一般说明，以致那些对象的数目与性质保持未被判定。

6.3 那个政策循环及其诸用途

公共行政供出一个议程设定、表述、决定、实施与评估的标准序列，而参与式实践已被映射到它之上。那个映射是有用的而它是描述性的：那个序列记录一个行政过程所穿过的诸阶段，而它不携带关于哪些阶段承载更大规范分量或关于什么判定那个序列的任何主张。

6.4 诸发现与残余

参与的对象已作为一个问题被命名、在一个领域内被严肃追寻，并被另一个描述性地映射。未被供出之物是一个关于那些对象、它们的排序，以及为什么那个排序在规范上要紧的一般说明。§7接手那个来得最近的工作之体，而§13陈述本文所供出的说明。

§7 规则的层级与阶段分化的参与

不同诸方可正当地在不同的点参与、而那些点在种类上一如在序列上不同这个主张，已在共池资源治理的研究中被以精确作出。本节让步那个优先并陈述剩下之物。

7.1 规则的三个层级

奥斯特罗姆（1990, 2005）区分诸规则运作于其上、且关于规则的诸选择被作出于其上的三个层级。操作规则支配日复一日的活动：谁可取什么、何时、在什么条件下，以及带什么监测。集体选择规则支配操作规则如何被作成与更改，以及由谁。宪制规则支配集体选择规则如何被作成与更改。那些层级是嵌套的，每一个供出下面那个层级被安定于其内的诸术语。

伴随这个框架的诸设计原则包括一个直接关乎当下主题的。在同持久的自治公地相关联的诸条件之中的是，大多数被那些操作规则影响的个体能参与修改那些规则。那个原则陈述一个阶段分化的参与要求：在操作层级的站位本身不授予在集体选择层级的站位，而那些持久的安排是那些其中这两者被连接的。

7.2 那个让步

那个对本文的后果应被直白地陈述。参与必须被那个对象的层级所分化、在规则应用中的参与与在规则制定中的参与是带不同要求的不同东西，而一个安排的正当性取决于那些层级如何被连接这个主张，是被确立的。它被以一个本文没有的经验基础确立，并以一个已对着一个大的案件之体被检验的形式。

任何把阶段分化呈现为一个发现的说明会是错的，而一个评审者会有理由如此说。

7.3 那个残余

三样东西被留下，而它们是§13所接手之物。

那三个层级是规则的层级。它们按对象在一个规则制定权威之层级体系中的位置分化它，那对一个其主题是制度分析的框架是正确的分化。它不明显地是对一个其对象包括根本不是规则制定之诸活动的主题的正确分化：一个共享目的的形成、什么处于利害之中的辨认、一个问题的定框、已发生之物的评估。这些是参与的诸对象而它们不是规则的层级。

那个框架是描述性与诊断性的。那个设计原则记录一个同持久相关联的条件，那是一个关于什么幸存的发现。一个缺乏那个条件的安排是否不义，区别于脆弱，是一个那个框架不提出的问题，而从持久到正当性的推论是一个本文谢绝的，出于§14中所给的诸缘由。

那个框架进一步把那个资源系统与它的取用者共同体的边界当作大体被给定。谁算作受影响的问题，§8显示它是那近旁最难的问题，不是共池的制度分析被设计去回答的问题。

7.4 诸发现与残余

本节记录阶段分化的参与是被安定的地面、诸规则层级的嵌套供出它最发达的形式，而层级之间的连接同自治安排的持久相关联。它留下那些不是规则之对象的分化、那些相关联的条件是否是正义之条件的问题，以及那个受影响共同体的判定。

§8 包容的诸原则与边界问题

那第一个问题，谁参与，在民主理论中有一个它自己的文献，而它是本文的论题最近乎触及的文献。本节中所作的让步是本文中最大的。

8.1 那个边界的问题

一个民主程序为一个诸人之体裁定诸事项，而那个程序无法在不预设一个答案的情况下自己判定谁属于那个体。任何关于那个选民体之构成的表决必须被某个选民体作出。那个困难是结构性的，而它已被承认为那个边界问题，或那个构成公民体的问题。

那个困难不仅仅是技术性的。那个边界落在何处判定那个程序能裁定什么以及谁的处境被在它之内登记，故一个按每一个内部标准都无可指摘的程序可能产生系统性地有缺陷的诸结果，因为它被绕着错误的那组划定。

8.2 全体受影响利益

那个被最广遍览的答案主张那些其利益被一个决定影响者持有一个参加它的主张。古丁（2007）给那个原则它最谨慎的现代陈述并引出它的困难：严格地取，其利益被一个给定决定影响的那组人是无定地大的，并在那个决定之前保持未定，因为被裁定之物判定它影响谁。如所陈述的那个原则倾向于要么使每一个人在每一件事上有权，要么要求一个那个原则被引入以供出的在先判定。

8.3 全体受制

弗雷泽（2005, 2008）推进一个不同的根据。站位源自共同受制于一个治理结构，以致那些被一个给定结构所统治者持有一个参与它之裁定的主张，无论他们是否是那个形式地施行它之政体的成员。那个论证被对着一个本文的§16分开接手的背景主张所发展：那个框架的问题先于分配的诸问题，而错误定框是一个独特形式的不义。

8.4 关系的诸根据

一个近来的工作之线把包容奠基于关系平等主义。安德森（1999）与 科洛德尼（2014）发展诸说明，在其之上平等的要点关乎诸人相互立于其中之诸关系的性质，而在其之上诸民主安排被它们所构成的关系状况所辩护。建立在那个根据之上，本特森（2026）直接论证既非被影响也非被受制是民主包容的根本基础，而解释包容之物是立于一个关系之中。

本文必须记录它在§13中所作的那个举动，从问哪些人被影响到问哪些关系处于利害之中，已在民主包容文献中以独立的根据被作出，并被近来且明确地作出。任何把那个举动呈现为新颖的呈现会是不正确的。

8.5 诸发现与残余

本节记录站位的根据是被争议且被充分耕耘的、那个全体受影响原则面对一个确定性困难、对一个结构的受制是一个发达的替代，而一个关系根据已被推进并被辩护。为本文所留下之物比§1的论题可能已暗示的更窄，而§12在§14陈述幸存之物之前进一步收窄它。

§9 参与的三难

一个参与正义的说明必须就参与被组织所处的诸条件说某样东西，而那些条件包括一个没有任何安排逃脱的障碍。

9.1 那个障碍被陈述

把每一个人接纳于每一件事的诸安排在任何超出最小的尺度上不可得。选出一个子集的诸安排引入一个在那些参加者与那些他们代其参加者之间的区分，那是一个层级体系，无论它如何被构成。把裁定指派给那些有能力好好裁定者的诸安排以其他每一个人之站位的代价购得品质。

9.2 那个让步

那个障碍被命名并被理论化。菲什金（2009）把它呈现为一个政治平等、审议与大众参与之间的三难，主张确保任何两个的诸安排将特征性地牺牲那第三个。达尔与图夫特（1973）确立一个单位的尺度与在它之内可得的有效参与之间的底层张力。米歇尔斯（1911）把代表性组织朝寡头的倾向陈述为它们运作的一条定律。当代关于被选出之小型公众的文献是一个关于同一个障碍的持续论证，带 朗德莫尔（2020）辩护建立在随机选择之上的诸安排，而 拉丰（2020）反对赋权一个被选出的少数使那个多数的审议短路。

没有发现了这个障碍的主张可得。

9.3 那个残余

那个三难文献所安定之物是那个障碍是真实的，而那三个所欲之物无法被共同最大化。它所不安定之物是什么在规范上随之而来。一个三难是一个对设计的约束，而一个对设计的约束本身不产出一个判断诸设计的判据。剩下的问题是一个参与安排被要求保全之物是什么，鉴于它无法把每一个人接纳于每一件事，而那个问题是本文的，在§14被接手。

§10 参与作为一个正义对象

两个在先的用法必须在本文自己的术语被引入之前被区分。

10.1 那个恢复性的用法

参与式正义是恢复性实践理论中一个既定的术语，在那里它命名那些被一个错误影响者参加裁定它之解决的诸安排，与专业者代他们裁定它的诸安排相对照。克里斯蒂（1977）供出那个奠基论证，在其之上诸冲突是一种财产，专业制度从它们所属的诸方那里取走它。这个用法是被良好确立的，而一个遇到那个短语的读者通常会假定它。

10.2 那个环境的用法

在环境正义中，参与作为若干维度之一出场。施洛斯伯格（2007）铺陈一个说明，在其之上分配、承认与参与是相互依赖的，每一个被牵连于其他之中，而无一可被还原为其余。参与在这个说明上是一个同其他并列的正义维度。

10.3 此处所用的术语

本文所用的术语不同于两者。它不关乎特定诸错误的解决，而它不命名若干并列维度之中的一个维度。它关乎对关系结构之再生产作出贡献的站位，而§16论证它同其他正义维度立于一个特定的关系。在那个短语于下面被使用之处它承载那个意义，而那两个在先的用法不被意指。

§11 那个本体论转向

到这一点的综述已让步一个关系说明可能已主张之物中的甚多。那些类型学安定那第二个问题、那些规则层级安定规则对象的分化、那个包容文献已经抵达一个关系根据，而那个三难被命名。本节陈述本文的贡献从中随之而来的那个重述，而§12立即陈述它欠他人多少。

11.1 那个生成性关系框架

那个框架在§1被陈述而它的两个相关特征可被回想。诸关系被当作先于它们所关联的诸项，以致一方在一个给定场域内所是之物由它立于其中的诸关系所构成。诸关系被进一步当作生成性的，即一个处于运作秩序中的关系产生意义的、价值的，以及那个关系本身所要求之物的诸进一步裁定。

那第二个特征在随之而来之物中承载分量。倘若一个关系的生产能力是那个框架的中心关切，那么关乎诸关系的诸安排将被由它们对那个能力所做之物评估，而§14引出那个后果。

11.2 那个重述

在§3所铺陈的那个既得图景上，参与是一个人与决定之间的关系。此处所提议的重述是，参与是一个被定位诸方与那个定位它们之结构的持续生产之间的关系。

一个诸关系的结构不凭它自己的意愿持续。它被它之内诸方的活动所生产与再生产：被诸位置的占据、被那些位置所携带之活动的施行、被诸范畴对诸案件的应用直到那些范畴安定、被诸期待的被满足或被辜负，以及被所有这一切向那些接下来占据那些位置者的传递。一个诸关系的场域因而持续地正被重制，而那个重制被一个分布跨它之中每一个位置的活动所做。

参与，在这个说明上，是对那个重制的贡献。它发生在任何一方的活动关系着一个关系是否以及如何被维系、被更改，或被终结之处，而它相应地在广度上比对诸决定的接触更宽。一个进行一堂课的教师对一个教育关系的再生产作出贡献。一个把一个范畴应用于一个案件的官员对那个范畴的再生产作出贡献。一个谢绝质疑一个裁定的一方对它的安定作出贡献。

工作定义。 一方参与一个关系结构，到它的活动关系着组成那个结构之诸关系的生产、维持、转变，或消解的程度。

11.3 那个说明所要求的一个限定

那个表述招来一个必须被封闭的误读。说诸方参与诸关系的生产不是说任何一方生产一个关系，因为一个关系不是一个个体所制作的那种东西。诸关系从互动涌现并被它维系，而一方所贡献之物是进入那个互动的活动。

那个限定要紧，因为它定位那个规范问题生起之处。倘若诸关系被诸方各别地制作，那个问题会是一个所有权的。因为它们从互动涌现，那个问题是一个对那个互动之接触的：哪些方被定位去对那个涌现作出贡献、以什么方式、带什么分量，并带什么改变所涌现之物的能力。诸制度判定这些东西，而那个判定是参与正义的对象。

11.4 那个对治理的后果

治理从这个作为一个特殊情形随之而来，它在那个既得图景上曾是那个首要主题。

工作定义，承前而来。 治理是对关系生产与再生产之参与的制度组织。

诸法律、诸市场、诸社团、诸专业机体与诸宪法在这个读法上是不同的机制，用于组织谁可对哪些关系的再生产作出贡献、以什么方式，并带什么权威。那个决定与程序的语汇描述这样一个机制之家族并把它描述得好。它所不描述之物是那个发生于诸决定点之外的更大体量之关系再生产，它判定那些决定能关乎什么。

§12 同先前关系与结构化本体论的关系

§11的重述，作为本体论被考量，实质上是他人的财产。本节说是谁的，并陈述剩下之物。

12.1 定位实践

那个最近的在先说明是在批判实在论之内被发展的社会活动之转化模型。巴斯卡（1979）主张一个社会不由个体组成，而表达个体立于其中之诸关系的总和、社会结构由诸人前来占据的诸内在关联位置组成，而社会一举既是人类活动的常在条件又是它持续被再生产的结果。那些位置被恰恰是本文所着眼之种类的成对关系项所例示。

安置在§11的诸主张旁边，那个交叠在本体论一侧近乎全部。诸结构由诸位置组成、诸人通过占据并施行它们而参与，而诸结构通过那个施行被再生产与转变，被陈述在那里。

12.2 结构化及其批评者

吉登斯（1984）推进结构的二重性，在其之上结构既是它递归地组织之诸实践的媒介又是其结果，以致诸行动者行动所凭的同一个活动是行动的结构条件被再生产所凭的活动。阿彻（1995）反对那个表述通过把结构与能动性当作不可分开的诸环节而混淆它们，并提议一个分析性二元论，在其中结构条件化、社会互动与结构精化在时间中被分开，把再生产同转变作为形态维持与形态生成区分开来。

那场争论在一个方面对当下主题要紧。倘若再生产与转变在时间上可分开，那么一个参与安排可被由它使那两者中哪一个成为可能被评估，而那个评估能被在不裁定那场争论的情况下作出。

12.3 关系社会学

埃米尔巴耶（1997）论证取诸关系为社会分析的诸单位以替代诸实体，而 多纳蒂与阿彻（2015）发展一个说明，在其之上诸关系拥有它们自己的涌现性质与因果力量，而在其之上一个关系之内的诸方可作为一个集体主体行动。后者把关系本体论连到诸社团与公民社会的分析，那是通往本文诸制度问题的最近既存进路。

12.4 再生产作为一个批判范畴

一个独特的传统把再生产当作它的中心范畴。社会再生产理论中的工作审查一个社会秩序的诸条件被持续重制所凭的活动，其中甚多是无报酬且制度上未登记的，并论证它从政治经济学诸范畴的排除本身是一个结构特征（巴塔查里亚 2017）。此处的相关性是直接的：在再生产中的参与大体发生于诸制度承认为参与式的诸场所之外这个主张已在那个文献之内被长篇论证，以不同的诸根据并带一个不同的对象。

12.5 自我再生产的诸系统

卢曼（1995）把诸社会系统当作通过它们自己诸要素的递归生产而再生产它们自己，以致一个系统的延续是它自己诸运作的一个成就。那个说明供出一个关于自我再生产的严格陈述并把那些再生产的运作定位在沟通中，而它在此被引入，因为任何关于关系再生产的主张都立于它的阴影之中。

12.6 那个残余被精确地陈述

§11的本体论不是本文的贡献。剩下之物，在上面被让步之后，是一个那次综述未发现被作出的合取：

那个残余，作为一个猜想被陈述。 定位实践的本体论未曾被连到一个关于参与之站位的规范理论。供出那个本体论的诸说明不问谁正当地对再生产作出贡献，而问谁正当地参与的诸说明不把那个答案奠基于定位实践。那个连接是本文所尝试之物。

那个缺口可被通过依次取那四个最近的位置更精确地陈述。那个转化模型供出诸位置与再生产并推进没有包容原则。在 本特森（2026）中所推进的民主包容之关系根据供出一个包容原则并把它奠基于关系平等主义，那关乎诸人之间关系的品质，把在一个再生产结构内诸位置的占据搁置一旁。那个全体受制原则把站位奠基于被一个结构统治，那是一个对一个结构的受制关系，区别于一个在它的生产之内的位置。关系社会学，就它而言，供出诸涌现关系性质与一个集体主体而没有一个关于谁持有站位去裁定那个关系变成什么的理论。

那个连接是否有价值是一个为那个读者的问题，而§17引入怀疑的诸缘由。

§13 站位、模式与对象的重述

有了那个本体论到位，那三个问题可被重述。每一个重述修改一个既存的答案。

13.1 站位的根据

那个既得问题问哪些人持有一个参加的主张。那个被重述的问题问哪些关系位置被牵连于成问题的那个再生产之中，并把诸人当作凭占据这样一个位置而持有站位。

同那个全体受影响原则的差别是，被影响性是一个裁定的结果，而一个位置的占据是一个在它之前成立的条件，那致意 古丁（2007）所辨认的那个确定性困难而不解决它。同那个全体受制原则的差别是，受制是一个对一个治理结构的关系，而占据是一个在正被再生产之结构内的位置，以致其活动维系一个关系的诸方就它持有站位，即便他们不被成问题的那个机体所统治。

那个重述携带一个在此处被陈述并在§17被回到的代价。判定一个给定结构包含哪些位置本身是一个解释行为，被某人施行，而那个说明供不出它的程序。那个确定性困难因而被移置，而它在那次移置中幸存。

13.2 贡献的诸形式

那个既得问题问诸方在什么强度参与，而那些既得答案在一个尺度上为诸强度排序。那个被重述的问题问一个安排接纳什么形式的对关系再生产之贡献。

那个强度尺度被保留，因为强度是诸安排的一个真实性质而§4的诸类型学把它排序得好。所添加之物是，贡献采取那个尺度不登记的诸形式，因为那个尺度为决定接触被建造。通过施行一个关系的寻常活动而维系它是一个贡献。扣留施行是一个贡献。向那些接下来会应用一个范畴者传递它是一个贡献，而是一个没有参与工具致意的。

13.3 再生产的诸环节

那个既得问题不被问，而在它被问之处那个对象被当作由那个制度设定所给定。那个被重述的问题问那个参与关系着关系再生产的哪个环节。

被提议的诸环节是这些：一个共享目的的形成；成问题之物的定框；什么处于利害之中以及为谁的辨认；那个场域被排序所凭之诸规则与诸等值的建构；特定诸案件中的裁定；被裁定之物的执行；已发生之物的评估；以及那个排序鉴于它的修订。

三条告诫贴附那个清单。它作为一个等待审查的提议被供出。那个排序不携带时间蕴含，因为那些环节复现并交叠，而一个场域通常一次从事若干。那个排序也不携带相对重要性的蕴含，因为任何环节的一个缺陷显得传播到其他。

13.4 诸发现与残余

本节提议那三个问题的诸重述并陈述那第一个的代价。它留下一个安排被判为充分所凭的判据，那是随之一节的主题，以及位置辨认的操作化，那被引入诸开放问题之中。

§14 生成性作为充分参与的判据

那次综述确立参与是分级的、它的诸对象不同、站位是被争议的，而没有安排把每一个人接纳于每一件事。它无一供出之物是对一个设计者实际面对之问题的回答：鉴于一个选择必须被作出，多少参与、什么种类的、在哪个环节，是足够的。本节提议一个回答。它是本文的贡献而它带它的诸代价被陈述。

14.1 那个判据

被提议的生成性充分判据。 一个参与安排在它保全受影响诸关系产生那个环节之一个进一步裁定之能力时，就一个给定的关系再生产环节而言是充分的。它在它熄灭那个能力时是不义的，无论任何一方是否被排除于任何决定之外。

那个判据问一个关于能力的问题，把接触当作对它是工具性的。一个安排可能把每一个受影响之方接纳于每一个决定而仍失败于它，倘若所产生之物是一个没有一方能随后重开的裁定。一个安排可能接纳很少而仍满足它，倘若它所产生的诸裁定对一个由它们所关系着之诸关系作出的进一步裁定保持开放。所被保护之物是那个关系结构的持续生产能力，而接触对那个是工具性的。

14.2 那个判据的根据

那个判据从那个框架推导，而它的根据在那里。倘若诸关系是生成性的，而倘若一个关系所生产之物包括它自己被排序所凭的诸裁定，那么一个其产生进一步裁定之能力已被熄灭的关系已在对它最本质的方面被损害。如此被辨认的那个错误附着于那个结构，它已被弄得无法继续生产它存在以生产之物。一方从一个特定程序的排除是一个独特的事项，而在这个说明上是一个较小的。

一个后果随之而来，而它解释为什么那个判据不是包容的一个代理。一个被排除于一个裁定的一方保留重开它的站位，只要那个安排把那个问题留下开放。从一个插曲的排除容许恢复，而重开之能力的熄灭显得容许无。那个判据相应地以一种基于接触的诸说明显得无法的方式为那两种损害排序，而它供出一个关于为什么某些高度包容的安排可能比某些稀疏的更糟糕的解释。

14.3 同那个三难的关系

那个判据不解决§9的三难而它改变那个三难所要求之物。在一个基于接触的说明上，每一个对普遍参与的背离是一个待被辩护的短缺，而那个三难相应地是一个永久的窘迫。在此处所供出的判据上，一个对普遍参与的背离本身无可反对，而必须被显示之物是那个安排把那些关系留得能够产生一个进一步裁定。选择与那个相容。不相容之物是一个其诸裁定在那个强意义上是终局的被选出安排，因为那个选择于是已把那个场域的排序固定于它所排序者的够到之外。

那个判据产出一个设计取向，作为一个推论被陈述：一个环节所要求的参与强度随在那里被裁定之物的终局性上升。其诸裁定被轻易重访的诸环节要求较少；其诸裁定安定后续诸环节之诸术语的诸环节要求较多。

14.4 同持久的关系

§7注意到那个公地文献把被连接的规则层级同自治安排的持久相关联，并谢绝从持久到正当性的推论。那次谢绝的根据现在能被给出。

持久是一个构型吸收扰动之能力的一个性质，而它不携带评价内容。一个已熄灭它诸关系产生进一步裁定之能力的安排可能持续一个长时间并可能比一个不曾如此的持续更久，因为它有更少的活主张去回答。此处所供出的判据因而不是一个稳定的预测而不可被读为一个。它陈述一个关系上的条件，而那个条件与那个安排之持续之间的关系是偶然的，并在那篇关于历史动态的伴随作品中被处理。

14.5 那个判据的家族

那个判据有一个同胞。在一篇关于组织规则之解释的姊妹论文中，一个解释在它熄灭解释者与被解释一方之间关系产生同一问题之一个进一步解释的能力时被持为不义（黄，编写中，a）。在一篇关于价值转换的姊妹论文中，一个转换在那个对着其一个等值被断言的一方不再能质疑那个等值成立时被持为不义（黄，编写中，b）。

那三个判据共享一个形式。在每一个中，一个行为被由它对一个关系产生那个行为所安定之事项的一个进一步裁定之能力所做之物评估。那个复现作为那个形式的弱证据被供出，以那个根据，即一个在三个领域中被独立抵达的判据比一个为一个单一情形被建构的更可能正追踪某样东西。它是弱证据，因为那三个被一个作者在一个框架之内发展，而一个共享的起源是那个趋同的一个替代解释。

14.6 诸发现与残余

本节陈述那个判据、把它奠基于那个框架、把它同接触区分开来、把它同那个三难相关联而不解决它、拒绝从持久的推论，并记录它的诸同胞。它所留下之物是本文诸债务中最大的：没有程序被供出，一个关系的生成能力可借之在一个给定案件中被评估，而§17把这个作为那个说明的首要弱点引入。

§15 参与的矩阵

那个判据环节接环节地应用，而应用它产出一个表。那个表作为那个判据之使用的一个示例被供出。

环节	被牵连的诸位置	被指示的模式	生成性充分所要求之物
目的的形成	那个结构将排序的位置之全部范围	审议式	那个目的对那些它前来排序者的重述保持开放
议题的定框	其处境被那个定框弄得可见或不可见的诸位置	共同定框	一个未登记的处境保留一条进入那个框架的路
利害的辨认	持有成问题之诸价值的诸位置	对话	诸复数的利害陈述幸存而没有过早的统一
诸排序的建构	那个排序将约束的诸位置，连同那些在它运作中胜任者	共同建构	那个排序对它所约束者保持可修订
诸案件中的裁定	作为那个案件当事方的诸位置	被说理的裁定	那个裁定不为较晚诸案件闭合那个问题
执行	施行与接收的诸位置	带报告的执行	施行的诸差异够到那个排序
评估	承载诸效果的诸位置	带站位的反馈	一个不利的评估能够够到修订
诸排序的修订	被约束诸位置的全部范围	参与式复审	修订可在没有它会约束者之同意的情况下被够到

三个观察从那个表随之而来。

第一，那第四列承载本节的贡献。前三列重述上面所概览之文献中可得的诸区分。那第四列为每一个环节陈述§14的判据在那里所要求之物，而它显得是唯一无法从那些既得说明被填满的列。

第二，那第四列中的诸要求是能力上的诸条件，被在没有包容之诸门槛的情况下表达。它们无一规定一个参与的数量。每一个规定某样必须保持可能之物。

第三，特定诸案件中的裁定这个环节占据一个单一的行。特定诸案件中规则的解释，那篇姊妹论文长篇处理它，是八个之中的一个环节。那篇论文的主题因而是当下这个的一个专门化情形，而两者之间的关系在随之一节被陈述。

§16 该说明在生成性关系文集中的位置

16.1 那个循环

那个说明完成一个诸姊妹论文在不同点进入的回路。诸关系结构定位诸方。那些方可借之对再生产那个结构作出贡献的诸安排是本文的主题。那个结构所生产之物包括诸价值，它们在诸关系之内被生成。异质的诸价值要求排序，倘若集体行动要成为可能，而它们被排序所凭的诸术语是那篇关于价值转换之伴随作品的主题。那些术语对特定诸案件的应用是那篇关于解释之伴随作品的主题。被裁定之物发端于行动，而行动重制那个回路从中开始的诸关系。

图1。 那个说明坐落于其内的那个回路。参与正义支配被定位诸方对一个关系结构之再生产作出贡献所凭的诸术语；那个结构生成诸价值；异质诸价值的排序是那篇关于转换之伴随作品的主题；那个排序对诸案件的应用是那篇关于解释之伴随作品的主题；而那个随之而来的行动重制那个结构。那个图记录诸论文之间的诸关系并不断言时间序列，因为那些环节复现并交叠。

16.2 那个优先主张及其站位

那个回路招来一个结论，即参与正义是根基性的，而其他正义维度预设它。那个结论应在它的强形式中被抵抗并在它的弱形式中被谨慎地陈述。

那个强形式会主张分配、程序与解释的诸问题无法被提出，直到参与的站位已被安定。那个主张接近于一个已在文献中的论证。弗雷泽（2005, 2008）主张那个框架的问题先于在它之内什么被亏欠的诸问题、错误定框是一个独特的不义，而诸正义理论已缺乏反思那个框架的诸资源。那个论证的一个关系重述会是一个重述，而它会继承那个原初所招致的诸反对。

那个弱形式是本文所断言之物。那些环节是相互依赖的，而它们任何一个的一个缺陷传播到其他，那是 施洛斯伯格（2007）在环境正义中对那个类似问题所取的立场。那个回路所添加之物是那个传播的特定方向：在排序环节参与的一个缺陷在下游作为一个没有一方能提起的解释问题出现，而那个解释不义于是是一个更早且在别处发生之参与缺陷的可见形式。这是一个关于那些环节如何连接的主张，把优先的问题留下开放。

16.3 诸发现与残余

本节铺陈那个回路、陈述诸姊妹论文之间的关系，并谢绝那个强优先主张，同时推进一个关于传播的更弱的。它把那个强主张留给那些愿意对着那个定框论证已经遇到的诸反对辩护它者。

§17 该说明的界限

那个说明现在完整到足以被定价。

没有操作形式。 那个判据转在一个关系产生一个进一步裁定的能力上，而没有程序被供出，那个能力可借之被评估。什么会算作一个环节保持开放的证据、谁会评估它，以及对着什么基线，是未安定的。一个在那个状况中的判据是一个工作的提议，而这是那个说明的首要弱点。

没有分配公式。 那个判据陈述一个条件而不分配参与。被告知一个安排必须保全生成能力，一个带一个固定的注意力预算与一个大的诸位置场域的设计者仍有每一个实践问题在他们面前。§15的矩阵示例那个判据而不裁定这样的诸问题。

那个确定性困难被移置。 站位源自占据一个结构中的一个位置，而一个结构包含哪些位置由一个被某人施行的解释行为所安定。那个说明因而在一个隔层再生产它在那个全体受影响原则中所辨认的困难，而它没有比那个文献更好的答案。

那个本体论是借来的。 如§12所陈述，那个重述的本体论内容属于定位实践的传统。此处所供出之物是一个连接，而一个判断那个连接不实质的读者会发现别的甚少。

那个关系根据已被抵达。 从受影响诸人到被牵连诸关系的举动已在民主理论之内以独立的根据被作出。本文的版本把那个关系奠基于定位实践，而那个在先说明把它奠基于关系平等，而那个差别是否承载分量是一个本文无法以它自己之利被安定的问题。

那些对象的广度超出它们的处理。 §13的八个环节被提议，而它们的确立是未了的。一个不同的分析会产出一个不同的清单，而此处没有任何东西显示那个清单是完整的或那些划分在关节处。

对着这个本文主张两样东西。§14的判据首先陈述一个参与式安排上的条件，那些被概览的说明显得不陈述，而它以一个供出一个关于为什么包容的诸安排能比稀疏的更糟糕之解释的形式如此做。那次综述其次以某种精确定位那个残余显得躺在何处，那保有它的价值，独立于那个判据是否被接受，因为它使一次随后的探究免于同样的侦察。

§18 开放的问题

本文辨认一个被忽视的结构。它不完成一个关于它的理论，而下面的诸问题被持为所供出之物中更有价值的部分。

倘若那个结构是真实的，下列诸问题立即生起。

那第一组关乎站位。

Q1。 组成一个结构的诸位置由什么程序被辨认？那个说明把站位奠基于占据并供不出一个判定什么被占据的方法。那个判定能否被一个已经被定位者以外的任何一方作出，以及倘若它不能什么随之而来，是开放的。

Q2。 占据容许诸程度吗？一个其活动沉重地关系着一个关系之再生产的一方与一个其活动微弱地关系着它的一方两者都占据诸位置，而站位是否随那个关系着之分量变化，还是一个门槛性质，是未安定的。

Q3。 什么站位附着于没有活着的一方占据的诸位置？已被空出的诸位置、将被尚未存在之诸方占据的诸位置，以及其占据者被成问题之排序移除的诸位置，全部被牵连于再生产之中，而如所陈述的那个说明不处理它们。

那第二组关乎诸模式与诸对象。

Q4。 关系再生产的诸环节是可枚举的吗？此处所提议的八个是一个提议。一个有原则的枚举是否存在、那些划分是否落在关节处，以及那组是否是领域不变的，是开放的。

Q5。 那个强度尺度未能登记什么形式的贡献？那个说明主张通过寻常施行而维系一个关系是一个贡献，而没有参与工具致意它。一个致意它的工具会像什么样是未知的。

Q6。 扣留能被当作参与而无荒谬吗？谢绝施行、谢绝质疑与退出全部是对一个关系变成什么的贡献，而一个参与正义的理论是否应携带它们是未安定的。

那第三组关乎那个判据，而此处的诸问题是最尖锐的，因为那些主张是最强的。

Q7。 什么证据关乎一个环节是否保持开放？那个判据在回溯中被以信心应用，一旦一个问题在一个长时期内可见地未能被重开。前瞻地应用它，在一个安排被设计之时，是那个会有用之物，而它保持未被供出。

Q8。 生成能力能跨诸环节被交易吗？一个环节的一个赤字是否可被另一个的一个盈余补偿，还是那个判据环节接环节地应用而无抵销，判定那个说明能承载多少实践指引，而它在此保持未安定。

Q9。 那个判据有一个下界吗？保全产生一个进一步裁定的能力与勉强保全它的诸安排相容。那个判据是否要求多于勉强的保全，而倘若如此在什么根据上，是开放的。

那最后一个问题是那个说明被导向的一个，而它被置于最后，因为上面一切关乎它。

Q10。 在什么制度与关系条件下一个结构跨占据的诸变化保有生成性地再生产它自己的能力？诸位置更替、诸范畴安定入用法，而诸安排在决策所生成的寻常压力之下朝终局性漂移。一个在被设计时满足那个判据的安排可能在一代之后失败于它，而没有任何人的任何封锁行为。什么跨时间维系生成能力是那个说明之实践价值所依赖的问题，而它完全是开放的。

一个关于那个清单形状的收尾观察。前两组的诸问题能在既存学科之内被追寻，而若干正在那里以其他描述被追寻。第三组的诸问题不能，因为它们关乎一个在此处被推进的判据。一个发现那次综述有用而那个判据不能说服的读者，可取那第一个而留那第二个，因为那次综述关于那个残余躺在何处的诸发现不取决于那个判据是正确的。那个反面不可得：那个判据是一个关于参与是为了什么的提议，而它要求§11的重述去说它是关于什么的一个判据。

---

关于方法的一则附记。 没有形式装置被使用。§14的判据能被以动态系统的记号书写，带一个关系结构对应一个构型而生成能力对应它轨迹的一个性质，而那篇关于历史动态的伴随作品做某样这类之物。在此处被写出，这样一个模型会推导没有那个散文不陈述之物，并会供出一个那个论证不曾赢得的精确表象。那个记号会变得诚实所处的诸条件被在 Q7 到 Q9 中铺陈，而它们不曾被满足。

关于本次综述的一则附记。 此处所汲取的诸文献不均地相互援引，而上面所记录的若干趋同是在那次综述的过程中被发现的，并在一开始不曾被知道。在一个来源被二手地读之处这已在承载分量的诸主张中被避免，但在一个这个宽度之综述中错误归属的风险是真实的，而改正被欢迎。

References

Anderson, Elizabeth S. (1999). What Is the Point of Equality? Ethics, 109(2), 287–337.

Archer, Margaret S. (1995). Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Arnstein, Sherry R. (1969). A Ladder of Citizen Participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), 216–224.

Bengtson, Andreas (2026). Finding a Fundamental Principle of Democratic Inclusion - Related, not Affected or Subjected. Inquiry, 69(2), 179–198.

Bhaskar, Roy (1979). The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences. Brighton: Harvester Press.

Bhattacharya, Tithi, ed. (2017). Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression. London: Pluto Press.

Christie, Nils (1977). Conflicts as Property. British Journal of Criminology, 17(1), 1–15.

Cornwall, Andrea (2008). Unpacking ‘Participation’: Models, Meanings and Practices. Community Development Journal, 43(3), 269–283.

Dahl, Robert A., and Edward R. Tufte (1973). Size and Democracy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Donati, Pierpaolo, and Margaret S. Archer (2015). The Relational Subject. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Emirbayer, Mustafa (1997). Manifesto for a Relational Sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 103(2), 281–317.

Fishkin, James S. (2009). When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fraser, Nancy (2005). Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World. New Left Review, 36, 69–88.

Fraser, Nancy (2008). Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World. New York: Columbia University Press.

Fung, Archon (2006). Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance. Public Administration Review, 66(s1), 66–75.

Giddens, Anthony (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Goodin, Robert E. (2007). Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its Alternatives. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 35(1), 40–68.

Huang, Wanhong (in preparation, a). Interpretive Justice in Organizations: A Preliminary Discussion of Problems and Open Questions.

Huang, Wanhong (in preparation, b). Conversion Injustice: A Generative Relational Account of Value Conversion.

Huang, Wanhong (in preparation, c). Generative Relational History: Historical Generativity under Constraints.

Kolodny, Niko (2014). Rule Over None II: Social Equality and the Justification of Democracy. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 42(4), 287–336.

Lafont, Cristina (2020). Democracy Without Shortcuts: A Participatory Conception of Deliberative Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Landemore, Hélène (2020). Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Luhmann, Niklas (1995). Social Systems. Trans. John Bednarz, Jr., with Dirk Baecker. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Michels, Robert (1911). Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. Trans. Eden and Cedar Paul. New York: Free Press, 1962.

Ostrom, Elinor (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ostrom, Elinor (2005). Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Pretty, Jules N. (1995). Participatory Learning for Sustainable Agriculture. World Development, 23(8), 1247–1263.

Schlosberg, David (2007). Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

White, Sarah C. (1996). Depoliticising Development: The Uses and Abuses of Participation. Development in Practice, 6(1), 6–15.

Wilsdon, James, and Rebecca Willis (2004). See-Through Science: Why Public Engagement Needs to Move Upstream. London: Demos.