Dispelling common myths about public participation
Myth 1: Engagement is too expensive
This has been an often-repeated concern, but is becoming more common as budgets are cut and the impacts start to bite. It costs money to bring people together.
Critics frequently portray engagement as a waste of resources, asking ‘do people want to pay for talking shops or real services?’ This, however, is a false dichotomy. The costs of engagement are usually tiny compared to the overall cost of the service, and this small expense can play a vital risk management role, often ensuring that the service provided is of a high quality. True – people prefer to pay for services themselves rather than the process of getting them. However, as the pig with the straw house will concede, ultimately it is worth paying a bit more for a service (in this case, bricks) that actually work, than less for a service that fails to deliver.
Engagement may seem pricey, but this can be a false economy. We must ask ourselves what its expense is compared to. The costs of not engaging are far greater. For example, the Environment Agency has found that not engaging around vital flood improvements can lead to expensive delays and risks, leaving communities exposed to devastating flood damage for longer than necessary.
The costs of engagement are also often overstated. Recent evidence shows that engagement can be done cheaply and uncover cost savings.
Myth 2: Citizens aren’t up to it
Distrust of the capacity of citizens runs deep in governments. Edmund Burke said that a representative would betray his constituents if he (for it was always a he back then) were to sacrifice his superior judgement to public opinion. Henry Ford famously said: “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.” Everyone can point to cases where people don’t know what is best for them, and get caught up in mass hysteria: the sub-prime mortgages crisis shows what happens when people don’t act in their own best interests.
Of course, experts themselves are not immune to these problems. Experts can and do get it wrong, often with disastrous and expensive results. Numerous cases exist, from the Titanic to the trenches of the First World War and the Atlantis shuttle disaster, where those with expertise and power make mistakes and get caught up in ‘groupthink’. Groups are generally smarter than the sum of individual intelligences. However, when a group is too alike, it can make less intelligent decisions that the individuals involved would have made on their own. For example, few experts accurately predicted the economic crisis of 2008. When asked why, a professor responded: “At every stage, someone was relying on somebody else and everyone thought they were doing the right thing.”1
But citizens have expertise that professionals often do not, including knowledge about the impact of services and decisions on service users. Who knows more about local needs and conditions than local people themselves? As our interviewee from Imagine Croydon said: “Children are the experts at giving the viewpoint of being children.” Even when the issues are technical, citizens can provide vital insight into public acceptance and ethics.
The opinions of citizens can also help test assumptions. Benevolent intent does not necessarily translate into success. For example, in many parts of the country, well-intended youth projects were set up by councils, only to be rarely used because they were not what young people wanted. The result of one Sciencewise Dialogue on wellbeing was that the Department of Health decided not to run an expensive outreach campaign because the citizens explained that it would not work.2
- 1A. Pierce, “The Queen asks why no one saw the credit crunch coming,” The Telegraph, 2008.
- 2 http://sciencewise-erc.org.uk/cms/assets/Uploads/Publications/SWWays-to…] We all know of numerous examples of situations in which experts have created well-meant services that no one actually wants, wasting valuable resources and fostering distrust amongst people towards government (central and local) and services. We’re not suggesting replacing brain surgeons with volunteers or government with the whims of a focus group as cynics have mocked. Rather, we are emphasising the complementary expertise of professionals with years of learning and the lived experience and knowledge of those who use services first hand.
Myth 3: Engagement only works for easy issues
There are those who agree with engagement in principle but don’t think it is applicable in their particular area. Engagement is seen as being for ‘easy’ issues that are simple, close to people’s everyday lives and uncontroversial. Of course many different kinds of experts believe that their issue is off bounds, be they scientists, planners, economists, even arts curators! Experts may say: ‘It won’t work in my area because it is so complicated. After all I had to spend years at university to understand this.’ Alternatively the feeling is that the issue is too contentious and conflict-prone. Like the lion in the fable of the lion and the mouse, experts feel that citizens have nothing to offer in terms of support or knowledge, but there is evidence to the contrary.
There are numerous examples where people have successfully engaged citizens in some of the most complicated and contentious issues of our time, including the rebuilding of New Orleans, developing an alternative voting system, managing the Federal Deficit in the USA, rewriting the Icelandic constitution, developing domestic violence courts in New York, and exploring the strengths and weaknesses of genetically modified foods. In fact, as risks mount we will need engagement more. We need citizen input precisely because the topic is difficult and complicated. After all, we choose to use lay members of the public rather than trained legal experts to determine guilt in jury trials. Speaking of juries, practitioners have been using citizens’ juries for 30 years, with a wealth of experience that shows citizens can engage on difficult topics as long as they are supported properly.
Myth 4: Citizen power is a floodgate we should avoid at all costs
There is a deep running fear of citizens in parts of government. Citizens are often seen as a baying mob or unruly mass. Often the metaphor that springs to mind for civil servants is that of a tidal wave of criticism and scorn, which will inevitably come crashing down if the ‘floodgates’ of active citizens are ever opened. This is an argument often levelled against open data or freedom of information initiatives. Many civil servants have had negative experiences of active citizens. In a top-down decision-making system, engagement is limited and often frustrating for both citizens and civil servants. Often the way we engage today, through consultation documents and public meetings, discourages participation from all but the most determined (and often angry). Typical public meetings often create ‘difficult’ participants by bringing in self-selecting contributors, encouraging combative behaviour and fostering conflict. Citizens feel like Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, who is faced with ridiculous obstacles to having a say on a local planning decision, including the famous ‘beware of the leopard’ sign.
The result is a body of citizens that is disillusioned, cynical and adversarial, making the life of consultation officers miserable. Many civil servants expect that the unengaged will act the same way and prefer to act as if they are under siege, pulling up the drawbridge to keep citizens out. However, what many civil servants find once they engage at a deeper level is that the experience can be rewarding and even enjoyable. Most people are polite and constructive if their engagement is framed in the right way – people cite ‘wanting to make a difference’ as the key reason for getting involved in local decision-making. Examples of failure and discussions getting out of hand show what happens when government tries to be overly controlling. American Deliberative Theorist Matt Leighninger has quoted a citizen at a public meeting in Colorado, who said: “Look, we know you’re working hard for us, but what we’ve got here is a parent-child relationship between the government and the people. What we need is an adult-adult relationship.”1 ; in short if you treat your participants like adults you’ll get adult responses.
We need to take responsibility for the situation. Rather than the metaphor of floodgates, we prefer to look at citizen engagement as a pan boiling over if left covered for too long. While a gut instinct might be to slam the lid down tight, this tends to make matters worse rather than giving citizens the chance to air grievances and let the steam dissipate. Given the right forms of engagement, citizens and officials can often move from a shouting match into more peaceful co-existence.
- 1Matt Leighninger, “The Next Form of Democracy” (US: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006).
Myth 5: Citizens don’t want to be involved, they just want good service
It is sometimes suggested that engagement is a waste of time and money because citizens don’t care or are too busy to participate. In the UK, the country that is the worst offender against the working time directive, won’t increased engagement just attract the ‘usual suspects’? Let’s be realistic. We may never get a majority engaged but we can expand the minority that does. Even a few per cent would be extremely useful. Through history we’ve seen that small groups can make a massive difference.
The key is to tap into citizens’ motivations and provide different levels of engagement. Without a ‘shallow end’, the numbers of people actively engaged will never rise. Not everyone will want to run their local library or set up a community action forum. But three-quarters of people routinely say they would like to be more involved in their communities if the opportunity could be integrated within their busy lives.1 A 2012 Consumer Focus Report found there were “many people who said they would like to have more influence, but who are put off because it was not easy for them to find out about or take up opportunities. There is a clear opportunity to tap into the resources and energy of this particular group who may need some extra encouragement and support.”2