01750pab a2200169 454500008004000000100001700040245008700057260000900144300001500153362000800168520126700176650002101443650002601464700002201490700001701512773005101529180718b2011   xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d  aRoyoa, Sonia  aCitizen participation in German and Spanish local governments: A comparative study  c2011  ap.139-150.  aFeb  aIn recent decades, citizens have become more and more disenchanted with the traditional institutions of representative government, detached from political parties, and disillusioned with old forms of civic engagement and participation. This has favored a renewed interest in citizen engagement and citizen participation and a growing re-emergence in academic and political discourse of ideas and values of community, localism, ad citizen participation. This article analyzes the main objectives and the actual implementation of citizen participation initiatives in the local governments of two European Continental countries, Germany and Spain. The aim is to find out the factors that affect the possible decoupling between the objectives and the "real" uses of citizen participation. Our results show that most local governments in these two countries are using citizen participation only to increase the level of perceived legitimacy or to comply minimally with legal requirements, without really taking advantage of citizen participation to enhance decision-making processes. These findings confirm that institutional theory becomes the rationale to explain the implementation of citizen participation in these two European Continental countries. -Reproduced.  aLocal government  aWorkers participation  aAceretea, Basilio  aYetanoa, Ana  aInternational Journal of Public Administration