Looking inside public involvement: how is it made so ineffective and can we change this?

Communities and community groups across Britain are faced with ever-increasing opportunities to ‘participate’, yet such engagement is widely viewed as ineffective and the motives behind it viewed with suspicion. This article suggests that ineffectiveness is often at least partly the result of decisions that are taken within the wider policy-making processes that develop and surround public involvement, and presents a way of analysing such management. This analysis also points to a strategy for being more effective, through attempting to become more active players in the larger policy-making ‘game’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]