| Public policy protests can be understood through public participation and conflict theories, and also have characteristics of complex adaptive systems, which are within the interdisciplinary study of complexity science. Increasingly, conflict and public participation theorists are using complexity science's nonlinear dynamics to analyze conflicts. In a complexity science view, the conflicting parties co-create their future through mutual adaptations on a shared landscape. This research explores how public policy protest groups co-evolve with the policy decision-makers against whom they are protesting, and with the news media.; The analysis is based on case studies of three public policy conflicts in Toronto and region, in the years 1996 to 2001, involving protests over three conflict issues: environment, governance, and homelessness/anti-poverty. The data are from interviews with protest leaders, documents, and news media accounts. Using public participation theory, conflict theory, and complexity science, I analyzed the evolution of each public policy conflict.; These protest groups began spontaneously as three, single-issue, ad hoc groups, in response to public policy announcements. Each group attempted to influence government, and other decision-makers, to change the public policy to which they objected. These protest groups often, for a variety of reasons, rejected the official public consultation and conflict resolution processes. The decision-makers and the news media often rejected the protesters' unofficial public participation activities, and dismissed the protesters as malcontents, or worse. However, this study shows how unofficial protest activities can be understood, as indeed the protesters viewed their activities, as constructive, democratic participation.; From a cross-case analysis, I concluded that agents in public policy conflicts that involve protests, through adaptation to each other, together form a public policy conflict system. Using complexity science to expand conflict theory and public participation theory, I reframe these public policy conflicts as sites of learning and adaptation, where mutual benefits can accrue to all the participants and to the community. The decision-makers may set public policy, but the protest groups and the news media then shape the policy debate. |
