Participatory policy making, ethics and the arts

The ethic of community participation is dominatedby the ideal of the self-governing community of reflective citizens. This article suggests the need to focus on some of the more down-to-earth ethical attributes of a responsible participant that tend to be overshadowed by that ideal. The authors look at the disciplinary, rhetorical, and role-specific demands of participatory styles of governance. Implications of this perspective are drawn out in an examination of how the challenges of community participation are or might be played out in an arts policy field that is currently under the sway of neoliberal approaches to government and anti-elitist political challenges to the arts.