allows citizens to give advice, power holders still retain the right to judge the legitimacy or
feasibility of this advice.
The bottom-up interpretation of participation is more radical: the setting of objectives and the
implementation are subject to participative processes (Jacobs 1999, 34). This participation is seen as
a civil right. Seeing the participation only as a mechanical function is not enough (Bell & Morse
2001, 297-299.) According to Arnstein (1969, 217), these forms of participation reflect different
degrees of citizen power. The first of degree of citizen power is partnership, in which power is
actually redistributed through negotiation between citizens and power holders. The responsibilities
for planning and decision-making are shared through committees. The EU structural fund policy
process could, at its best, be an example of partnership, but only when local citizens acquire some
real influence over the target of the policy process through public hearings. The second form is
delegated power: citizens hold a clear majority of seats on the committees with delegated decision-
making power. The third form is citizen control: citizens handle the entire job of planning and
policy-making with no intermediaries between them and the source of funds. Referenda and other
forms of direct democracy are probably the most pure forms of citizen power. In this way, citizens'
empowerment and Arstein's degrees of citizen power could also be realised more fully than by
using only representative procedures.
In practical terms, the participation of citizens in development policies for rural areas should be
consider more as a bottom-up approach and the top-down participation ritual should be more rarely
practiced, or at least mechanism of combination should be find. Furthermore, with respect to
sustainable development, its ecological, social, cultural and economic dimensions should be taken
into consideration while designing and implementing rural and regional development policies.
Different variations of sustainable development
In the subsequent discussion on sustainable development, the concept has also been divided into
different variations: very weak sustainable development (also called treadmill of production model),
weak sustainable development, strong sustainable development and very strong sustainable
development (Ponnikas 2003). The variations delineate the alternative frameworks for putting
sustainable development into practice. They are an indication of differing ideological beliefs about
the natural world, which can be divided into the anthropocentric and ecocentric positions. The
strong sustainable development variations represent ecocentric position and weak sustainable
development variations anthropocentric position. (Baker et al. 1997, 8-14; Dobson 1998, 56-57;
O’Riordan 1996, 144-149; Ponnikas 2003, 67-73.)