Citizen Engagement: Theories and Mechanisms

Transcription

1 Citizen Engagement: Theories and Mechanisms Featuring Alina Rocha Menocal Research Fellow, Politics and Governance, Overseas Development Institute and Senior Research Fellow, Developmental Leadership Program, University of Birmingham

2 As Mary noted in her previous presentation, drawing on the work of both the World Bank and others, in this course we define citizen engagement as the twoway interaction between citizens on the one hand, which include organized civil society and the private sector, and governments on the other, in a way that gives citizens a stake in decision-making processes, with the objective of improving development. Citizen engagement can take many different forms. Looking back over the past few decades: From the shift towards democracy in Africa, Asia, and Latin America starting in the 1980s, to the mushrooming of citizen-led initiatives to hold those in power to account, there is now a real wealth of experience that we can use to reimagine the role of engaged populations in political processes and to redefine the very substance of democracy. This is an extraordinarily diverse and complex landscape, with people everywhere grabbing opportunities to express their views and mobilise around them in a variety of ways to influence policy and decision-making processes. Forms of citizen engagement in the developing world can include a plethora of activities, for example elections and referendums, social movements, protests, constitution-making processes and other public consultations, budget monitoring, citizen satisfaction surveys, report cards and charters, citizen s juries, community monitoring or management, participatory planning, social audits and so on, you name it. If you refer to course resources, you can find an overview of citizen engagement mechanisms along with their definitions and uses. While, it is impossible to provide a comprehensive picture of the many forms of citizen engagement, it is worth highlighting some dimensions that have particular resonance in our world today. Elections, for example, are perhaps the most recognizable mechanisms that citizens have to exercise voice and hold office-holders to account and they have become almost universal. Later in this course, you will hear about accountability frameworks and the long and short routes to accountability. Elections in this instance represent the long road to accountability, which refers to the political process through which citizens try to influence politicians through voting for their political representatives and deciding whether or not the politician has adequately represented them. As you all know, elections hold tremendous promise for deepening the quality of citizen engagement and the quality of democracy itself, but they also have important limitations.

3 The most significant, perhaps, is that elections can be a rather blunt instrument of engagement and representation: they happen every so number of years, and they only enable citizens to express their views through the ticking of a box in favour or against a given candidate or party or policy. Growing dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of elections in channeling citizen voice and engagement has led to increased reliance on other, perhaps more interactive mechanisms of engagement, based on increased dialogue, collaboration and participatory decision-making among a diverse set of stakeholders, including both within civil society and the state. Since the 1980s, so called invited spaces of participation, such as, for example, participatory budgeting and constitution-making processes, have become very prominent. For instance, constitution-making processes have proven to be important moments of participation to redefine the very nature of a state and its relationship with its citizens. Over 40% of all constitutions in place by 2008 required approval by public referendum. Examples of constitution-making processes that were particularly participatory and inclusive include: South Africa in the early 1990s and Colombia in More recently, Kenya in 2010 and Tunisia just now in 2014 have adopted new Constitutions through extensive participatory mechanisms as well. The role of organised civil society through non-governmental organisations, or NGOs, has proven instrumental in channelling citizen voice, in engaging with political parties, elected representatives and other relevant actors in the kinds of invited spaces highlighted above. Civil society has also emerged as a counterweight for accountability. This can be seen in the growth of NGOs in the past fifty years, which has been absolutely exponential. However, it is important to keep in mind that political voice is not just about polite debate. As Frances Stewart, a prominent UK academic has reminded us, it has often been channelled in ways that are more contentious, disruptive and even violent. This reflects profound dissatisfaction with the quality of voice and representation, in both democratic and more authoritarian settings. The uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa over the past few years, and the eruption of protest movements in countries as diverse as Brazil, Egypt, India, Turkey and most recently Mexico, are all examples of this. Now that we have reviewed some of the mechanisms for citizen engagement, let us proceed with basic theories presented in the literature on citizen engagement. To begin with, it is important to understand the concept of intrinsic vs. instrumental citizen engagement. Within most governments and donor

4 organizations, there is scepticism over the intrinsic case for increased participation. The debate is whether the primarily socioeconomic concept of development should be expanded to include these principles as objectives in and of themselves, or whether they should be seen as instruments or mechanisms to achieve other developmental goals. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has argued very strongly that citizen engagement is absolutely intrinsically valuable, as it represents a key component of human capability. For Sen, participating in one s development through open and nondiscriminatory processes, having a say without fear, and speaking up against perceived injustices and wrongs are fundamental freedoms that are integral to one s wellbeing and quality of life. For others, citizen engagement is most significant in terms of its instrumental value. As Mansuri and Rao have highlighted, citizen engagement is now seen as a means to achieve a variety of development goals ranging from better poverty targeting, to improved public service delivery, to better and maintained infrastructure, to social cohesion, to improved government accountability. For example, having communities involved in the management and monitoring of services can help to ensure that they meet those communities needs more effectively, and that local problems or gaps are more efficiently identified and dealt with. A central challenge for governments and the donor community is how to move from innovative efforts of citizen engagement that can be quite effective but are still quite scattered and small-scale, towards efforts that are much greater in scope and can have greater socioeconomic impact. Despite research advances, practitioners still know very little about the types of interventions and wider governance structures and power dynamics that are needed for citizen engagement to have this broader socioeconomic impact. This leads us to the final, and perhaps most important concept for the course the feedback loop. Supporting a two-way flow of information, not only for citizens, projects, and project managers and implementers, but also for governments, service providers, and CSOs, should foster more substantive citizen involvement by reducing information asymmetries and facilitating recurring interaction throughout the development process. Examples like Community Score Cards or Public Hearings and Social Audits can bring together citizens and communities with local level government officials, politicians and service providers to exchange information and views on how well services are performing and to agree on joint action plans to address gaps or problems identified.

5 Of course, just using a citizen feedback mechanism does not necessarily ensure robust participation or even citizen cognizance of the opportunity to participate. This issue, which is critical to a better understanding of what works where, how and why, will be explored further in the next module. Getting to the core of when and how citizen engagement can be effective and critically for whom means grappling with the underlying politics at play, as well as with existing inequities in a given society. In the next talk of this module, Helene Grandvoinnet will talk about how contextual factors effect and shape opportunities for successful citizen engagement.