Citizen Laboratories as Scenarios of Cultural and Political Democratization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Citizen Laboratories as Scenarios of Cultural and Political Democratization

This manuscript addresses citizen laboratories and the related effects for public behavior of politics and culture. This is an interesting and important topic that combines public administration, urban governance, and political culture.

The Introduction and Background provide a descriptive and explanatory context for the study. It may be helpful, at the end of the Background section, to insert a ‘guide’ paragraph, that identifies the outlay of the article and reiterates/frames the purpose of the study.

Theoretical context: This section is good, but a couple of suggestions. The section is very heavy in long, direct quotes. I understand the importance of the material, but this does affect readability. If there is some way to make this flow better, I think that would be good. Perhaps some additional information/explanation can be provided in Table 1.

Also, this discussion relates to several main points of political culture. I would highly recommend that the authors consider including the literature of Daniel Elazar. Although Elazar mainly assessed political culture in the United States, his foundational research in this area aligns with many topics explored in the manuscript. In addition, regarding urban culture, Louis Wirth’s “Urbanism as a Way of Life” is an essential study in this area, exacting aspects of cultural systems, social organization, and behavior.

Methodology: A little more description here of methodological approaches would be helpful. For instance, how many articles were reviewed? Were there any criteria to categorize or rate articles? Were there any limiting factors for inclusion in the review? Were there any specific content analysis methods utilized? Also, address limitations of this study and methodology.

Findings are well presented.

Conclusion: This section is good, but I would suggest including some additional interpretation of the application of the findings. In other words, what is the broader impact of this study? The authors do address this, but it could be expanded. Also, how might this study contribute to future research?

Minor editing/sentence structure.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript entitled “Citizen Laboratories as Scenarios of Cultural and Political Democratization”, submitted for publication in Social Sciences, manuscript ID socsci-2465410.

Although the general topic of the paper fits into the journal topic, the content of the manuscript does not meet the necessary criteria to recommend its publication in the submitted form.

Bellow you can find some of the main arguments in supporting my recommendation:

·        Extensive editing of English language and style is required. Thus, it is not understood, for example, in the abstract the enumeration "they allow individuals to develop their public behavior from five concepts, which are the politician, the political, politics, culture and the cultural".

·        Also, the introduction is schematic, not being clear the transition from Athenian democracy to the countries that adopted (thousands of years later...) this "innovation".

·        The purpose of the article, presented in the introduction, is rather difficult to understand: "This article reviews academic literature on citizen laboratories to understand how various actors in society articulate, to enrich the conditions of habitat and coexistence in urban territories." What actors? What is understood by "articulate"?

·        There are quite a few elements in the Background that are debatable. For example, the idea of "ideal society" should be deepened and evaluated from the perspective of modern society (because in ancient society, women, for example, did not have the right to vote, not to mention the situation of slaves, for example); the transition from ancient democracy to the present is made suddenly, without being clear what the authors want to emphasize. In addition, it is unclear what type of institutions they refer to here "Consequently, between the 20th and 21st centu-ries, institutions fell into crisis that failed to adapt in a timely manner to the dizzying changes".

·        Theoretical context – again, starting from antiquity (Aristotle), to arrive (how? There are no sources to support their selection) at five concepts that are assumed to be central to understanding public behaviour.

·        The politician - the quotes are not clear, one doesn't know where they start and where they end.

·        Methodology – the definition of the concept of "citizen laboratory", central to this analysis, is not clear, especially through the selected case study (indeed, some info is provided later, at "Citizen laboratories in context").

·        Challenges for urban governance – it is not clear why for a case study from Colombia, data about the urban population in Europe are presented.

·        It is not clear the role of figure 1, based on sources that the authors do not use (some of them being quite old already) and representing an analysis of the way in which Steen & Van Bueren perceived the main concepts within the scientific literature about citizen labs... In the same way, Table 2, Table 3 and Table 4 are not adequately capitalized by the explanations of the authors of the present article, being only presented, not analyzed in order to contribute to the (unclear, otherwise) purpose of the article.

·        The conclusions are not compatible with the analysis, no matter how schematic this analysis was. For example, the dimension of tourism, which does not appear in the paper... Moreover, the assumed case study (Commune 5 of Medellin) is not, in fact, treated anywhere in the article.

In brief, considering that the manuscript does not present original research questions, that the methodology does not properly underline the importance of the paper or the study’s contribution to the existing body of research (also, that there are not details about the data collection, analysis and tools used), and that the conclusion fails to critically discuss any result against the literature, in my view, the manuscript does not comply with the standards of the journal and my recommendation is not to be published in the submitted version.

Please see the previous section.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for your careful reading of the first peer-review report. 

Indeed, some improvements have been made, but the some of the references are still outdated (and I not referring to the classics, here) and the analytical dimension is debatable.

The paper still needs to be careful read in terms of English cursivity.

Author Response

Dear Editorial Board and Reviewers,

We sincerely appreciate the suggestions provided to enhance both the form and content of the manuscript submitted. There is no doubt that they contribute to enhancing the quality of the work that we are subjecting to review for publication.

Below, we address the concerns raised by the reviewer in the last submission of this article.

1. Regarding outdated references:

In response to the requested improvements to enhance the coherence of the text, new citations have been added. These citations appear in the bibliography and are marked in blue. This has expanded the bibliographic record to a total of 60 entries.

Regarding the outdated bibliographic records, we present the following arguments in favor of retaining these entries:

- Out of the 60 bibliographic records, 21 belong to a period prior to the year 2012, while the remaining 39 are within a timeframe of the last 10 years, considering publications from the year 2013 onwards.

- If we conduct a general analysis of these 21 records prior to the year 2012, they can be grouped into three categories. The first category corresponds to bibliographies that underpin the methodology. Despite their age, these methodologies remain relevant in our Latin American context. The second category includes bibliographies that support classical authors and are essential for constructing a historical understanding of the paradigm of citizen participation, the political, and politics. The third category involves terms like "innovation" or "sustainability," which predate the concept of "Citizen Laboratories." From this perspective, it is necessary to demonstrate a precedent that substantiates the paradigm of citizen laboratories.

- The remaining bibliographic records, totaling 39, consist of articles written from the year 2013 onwards and support the idea concerning fundamental issues such as citizen laboratories, participation, political and cultural democratization. We believe that these are sufficient to establish a framework of reference which, within a Latin American context, portrays distinct realities compared to other parts of the world.

2. The Analytical Dimension

Our research demonstrates that the concept of citizen laboratories exhibits distinct trends between the Latin American case and the more developed countries, which are the ones that publish most extensively on the subject.

According to our bibliographic records and the discourse stemming from them, we observe distinct realities between Latin America and developed countries. In the case of developed nations, the literature (especially that published in the last five years) focuses on topics of sustainability, technologies, development, mobility, clean energy, emissions, smart cities, among others. Meanwhile, in a Latin American country like Colombia, current discussions center around citizen participation and the democratization of spaces to enhance political and cultural processes in different territories. This discrepancy is driven by social dynamics, institutional challenges, and political and social conflicts.

3. Regarding the Quality of English Language

A new edition in British English has been prepared and is attached once again. The University of Medellin provides an expert and certified translator for translating academic publications, who has made improvements in the translation.

Best regards