Reclaiming the Participatory Rights of the Public——An Analytical Framework of Holistic Collaborative Democracy for Public Legislative Participation in Mega-city

The inclusion of public opinions and wisdom and the promotion of public participation in legislative processes are among the basic principles of good governance. Against the backdrop of public participatory rights being largely nominal and a disconnect between legislative efficacy and democratic values, how to achieve broad and effective public participation in the legislative process constitutes an institutional challenge that China's legislative system urgently needs to address. The findings show that collaborative democracy successfully enhances the breadth, scope and depth of public participation in law-making through the synergy of consensus-based approaches, institutional actors, incremental capacity-building mechanisms and platform-based vehicles. The regional collaborative democracy emerging in China's megacities not only reclaims the participatory rights of the public, but also demonstrates an organizationally-driven democratic path that transcends the Western models and activates legislative participation demands of the public through collaborative institutional arrangements.