• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.6 no.1 s.11
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• pp.1-30
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• 2006

This paper is to analyse the case of citizen participation employed in the local government, Buk-gu (Northern District) in the city of Ulsan, Korea. A kind of deliberative type of citizen participation named' citizen jury' was exercised to resolve an environmental conflict between Buk-gu government and its residents. The conflict was caused by the construction of a food waste recycling facility near by some residential areas in Buk-gu. Theoretically this paper makes a typology of citizen participation methods. Two criteria are employed. First of all, lay citizens are the primary participant or not? Secondly, interactive communication is feasible or not among participants in the process of citizen participation. Four generic types of citizen participation are sorted out: technocratic, pluralist, direct/participatory, and deliberative type. Especially deliberative type of citizen participation is based on an idea of deliberative democracy. This paper argues that the case of citizen participation employed in Buk-gu belongs to deliberative type of citizen participation. The argument is based on the following reasons. Firstly, primary participants in deliberation process can be considered as lay citizens though they are selected form local NGOs and religious groups. According to a survey, most of participants said that they would participate in the process of deliberation in the capacity of lay citizens though they were selected by their own groups. Secondly, the citizen participation process was deliberately designed and implemented to facilitate competence of primary participants and fairness in the deliberation. Viewed from this analysis, this Buk-gu case can be safely considered an innovative method of citizen participation which is also very successful in resolving intractable environmental conflict in the local government.