How Context Shapes Participation: A Comparative Analysis of NECPs’ Consultations (2018-2024).

Public participation in environmental governance has gained increasing attention from policymakers and scholars alike (OECD, 2020; Smith, 2024). This surge is driven by two concurring trends: the rise of governance frameworks such as the Rio Declaration (1992) and the Aarhus Convention (1998), and the proliferation of new participatory mechanisms, or “democratic innovations” (Smith, 2009). Participation is believed to address the limitations of representative democracy (Caluwaerts & Reuchamps, 2015) while enhancing the quality of decisions, especially in wicked problems like climate change (Levin et al., 2012; Pickering, 2023). However, empirical research reveals ambivalent environmental outcomes from the use of public participation (De Vente et al., 2016). This brings to light a fundamental question about the factors and their interactions that shape the quality of participation, its outputs, and its outcomes for its successful application in environmental governance. Most existing literature on public participation has focused on the effects of procedural criteria on the quality of participation. Therefore, we know that fair representation, transparency, and participants’ timely access to information are vital for achieving positive participation outputs (Reed, 2008; Newig et al., 2013). Yet, little attention has been given to the effect of factors external to the participation process driving or impeding its quality. The few existing research on contextual factors remain largely case-specific, limiting the replicability of findings (Drazkiewicz et al., 2016; Jager et al., 2020) but point towards complex interactions between contextual factors and process-related factors (Newig & Fritsch, 2009). This article seeks to address this research gap by examining how design features of public participation and specific contextual factors influence together the quality of participation. To this end, this analysis will focus on the public consultations conducted by member states during the elaboration of their National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) required under the European Union’s 2018 Regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union and Climate Action. Member states must elaborate decadal energy and climate policy plans to submit to the European Commission, with updates mandated every five years. This study draws on data from two sets of draft and final submissions (2018–2019 and 2023–2024). These documents constitute a unique dataset for comparative analysis of participation across varying contexts of EU member states. To test the effects of process-related and contextual factors on participation quality, we will first establish an assessment framework to assess the quality of NECP’s public consultations. We will then employ multiple regression analysis to identify contextual factors that may drive or hinder the effective implementation of these participation criteria. This research plans to use existing datasets (von Homeyer et al., 2024 for participation quality in NECPs; V-Dem and World Bank datasets for contextual factors). With this article, we aim to demonstrate that procedural quality alone does not explain the quality of participation conducted for NECPs. Instead, contextual factors, such as democratic standards, national means, and existing climate policy frameworks, likely mediate this relationship. Furthermore, the findings will offer insights for designing more effective, context-sensitive participation mechanisms in environmental governance.