Controlled Decontrolling: Involution and Democratisation in Dutch Rural Planning

The debate between proponents of collaborative planning theory and their critics on the dynamics of power in planning highlights a discrepancy between the norms and the practices of democratic planning. According to the norm of democratic planning, all participants should have an equal opportunity to influence and to realise a plan's objectives, but practice has shown that power is unequally divided between people, privileging some and excluding others. This raises the important issue of how normative aspirations of deliberative planning can be reconciled with actual planning practices. This article discusses this question, exploring the power relationships and institutional transformations that influence planning using two case studies about conflicts over Dutch rural land use.