The importance of public participation for effective policy making is now widely endorsed. Public participation (or at least its advocacy) is considered essential to poverty reduction, social change in poor countries, city politics and local governance,
development, building educational institutions and, importantly for this article, technological change and science-based innovation.
Actors, institutions and organisations who agree on very little else at least do seem to agree about the centrality of engaging with and mobilising the public in support of better policies (even if they often fall out over the actual practice of participation).