Before attempting to deal with the problems of provincial-municipal relations one might well ponder the following comments of some who have previously delved into the problems of the relationship between governments: “A student should enter the field of intergovernmental fiscal relations with modesty and even humility…. It is a field in which students and committees, one after another, have spoken their piece, registered complaints, made recommendations and achieved no action. It is a field mined with explosives; beneath a placid surface lie some very deep emotions ready to burst into flame at the slightest provocation. If discretion were the determining factor, the student might well choose some other field to conquer.” The problems of provincial-municipal relations are of such urgency and importance, however, that the risks of indiscretion must be incurred. The urgency, from the municipal view point, arises from the increasing pressure on the limited municipal finances; its importance lies in the necessity of preserving the reality of local self-government in a democracy. On the surface the problem appears to be a financial one but the political aspects may be of even greater significance in the long run.

The role of “participation” by individuals or groups in American culture in general and in industrial organizations specifically has been treated by many writers. Its implications for political theory as well as for a theory of human relations in formal organizations are numerous. However, in spite of this academic and extra-academic interest, a clear-cut, operational definition of the concept, or a precise set of hypotheses regarding its dynamics, has not been developed. While to do so will be the object of this paper, the treatment will not be completely operational. The development of appropriate methods of measurement is conceived as a next step that should follow the preliminary one of conceptual clarification undertaken in this paper.

A review of the literature indicates that three major approaches have been taken in dealing with “participation”:

(1) The Experiential Approach. This approach is exemplified by writers who in the course of their experience in enterprise work have obtained a “feel” for the role of participation in the decision-making process and have put down their experiences in article or book form. Writings such as these provide a set of insights and hunches whose verification in any systematic fashion has not been attempted. The actual referants from which these formulations are derived often are single sets of observations in a single or in a few enterprises—observations generally made in an uncontrolled fashion.