Designing a Public Participation Pattern in Policy Making with a Multi-Method Approach

People’s participation in political decisions has become increasingly important in recent years.Also, this issue has recently come to the attention of policymakers in Iran. Hence, this studyaims to design a public participation pattern in policy making with a multi-method approach.The research consists of two stages: the first stage used the qualitative method of the casestudy. For this purpose, Switzerland has been selected and studied as a country with a longhistory of using direct participation mechanisms. The results of this stage entered the secondstage of the research, which used the Grounded Theory to design a public participation patternin policy making. According to the research pattern, the central phenomenon is public participationin policy-making, and the causal conditions that cause the concept of public participationin policy-making are composed of three categories of structural, economic, and behavioralfactors. The contextual conditions come into two categories: the openness of the political spaceand the level of technology. Interventional conditions consist of two classifications: politicians’willingness to participate and public demand for participation. Strategies include public participationmechanisms, stage, level, and type of policy making, as well as how to balance theviews of the elite and the public. Ultimately, the consequences will enhance the democraticlegitimacy of the state, recognize the significant role of the people, and increase public trust.Political culture of direct participation is a collective learning process that takes time to develop,as well as opportunities to correct mistakes.