Contact Admin. Over the decades, several authors have reached for the ladder metaphor to illustrate their perceptions of the participatory process. Others have followed although not originally represented as ladders; for the sake of ease of comparison we have placed some of them in the ladder format. The use of a ladder to represent the participation process is a useful visual metaphor, or device, for a range of reasons: Common themes across all of the ladders, or more accurately typologies, is the progression from the passive to the active: It has informed and influenced a wide variety of fields of study and of practice.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Arnstein locates her theory around a stated declaration that citizen participation is citizen power specifically. Understanding participation as described and defined by Arnstein involves understanding power: A major factor in full participative models is power, who has it and who determines who has access to it.
Additionally, it depends on two commodities: Essentially, the model is a powerful process that seeks to empower people to take charge of their lives and their surroundings.
What we hope to demonstrate is the applicability of the model to all of those practitioners concerned with a practice that can and should be participative. The ladder is a guide to identifying who has power when important decisions are being made.
Its longevity as a practical model attests to communities of interest wishing to consider alternatives that confront the perceived status quo, and challenge processes that refuse to consider anything beyond the bottom rungs.
