Citizen participation essential to create a strong democracy
It is well understood that the political legitimacy of democratic governments depends partly on levels of participation measured by levels of voter turnout at elections, but not entirely. There are elections in many countries that are clearly not democratic in any sense that citizens in the UK would recognise. There also has to be a discursive and deliberative legitimacy produced in the public sphere – citizens need to be involved in debates about issues, not excluded through lack of reliable information and opportunities to influence decisions, and have rights to freedom of expression and protest. The question is how such debates are managed effectively so they are productive and not divisive. The democratic legitimacy of governments also depends on other factors (such as the rule of law, constitutional governance etc.), which also include citizen participation (trial by jury etc.).
Hannah Arendt’s defines participation as: “the active engagement of citizens in the public realm”. Participation in democratic societies can take many forms. For example, community action can enable citizens to innovate, challenge and provide examples of what is possible, confounding expectations of what local citizens can achieve to challenge the status quo and improve their own lives and those of other local people. Local experimentation can create models of social change. Community action can also build citizens’ knowledge and understanding, empowerment and ownership of problems and solutions, creating ‘engaged citizens’. It can overcome divisions by focusing on practical local changes, creating a sense of belonging among the many diverse members of any community, and build trust in each other and in wider society, without which democracy cannot flourish. As Pitkin says, genuinely democratic representation is possible where the representative system is “based on a lively, participatory concrete direct democracy at the local level” which “undergirds national representative democracy”.
A second example is NGOs and pressure groups, charities, unions and other elements of civil society, operating at local and national levels. These bodies have a vital role in ‘democratising democracy’ as Giddens says. Putnam focuses on the role of these bodies in creating social capital by strengthening the civic norms and trust that, he argues, are the glue which holds society together and are the basis of effective governance. They can be formed of those fighting for their own futures (such as disabled groups fighting for disabled people), and those fighting for others’ futures (such as environmental organisations fighting for the future of the planet, wildlife etc.).
A third example is deliberative public engagement (such as citizens’ juries and larger deliberative public dialogues), through which citizens participate in policy development. The benefit to governments is clear – largely risk avoidance, spotting elephant traps before falling into them. More positively, the involvement of citizens through deliberative processes has been shown to create better policy – policy that is cheaper and easier to implement because it takes into account an additional layer of (citizens’) knowledge, and because it goes with the grain of the public values which are drawn out through effective deliberation. This also enhances the political legitimacy of even the most contentious national policy decisions (such as the example in Ireland of deliberative citizens’ juries discussing abortion). In these processes, groups of people are randomly sampled and then selected and recruited to provide a level of demographic representation. They meet in person and/or online, receive balanced information on a given topic (and the opportunity to request additional information), take time to discuss the issues and come to conclusions. These processes are rarely binding on final public policy decisions (usually taken by elected representatives), but have often been shown to be highly influential.
Deliberation has now become almost mainstream but it is vital to go beyond the focus on particular participatory methods and recognise that strong democracies need an ‘ecosystem of participation’, in which the three examples above (and many others) all play a part in offering opportunities for citizens to engage in the public realm. All require support and resources.
Citizen participation in all its forms can help create the strong democratic system of governance which is necessary to ensure the political legitimacy and consent necessary to tackle the major challenges of the 21st century and serve all citizens. Without that, there will be growing backlash against even the weak democratic system that currently exists, as already seen in the UK. This happens when proponents of change go faster than citizens are willing to go, or change is not seen to improve the lives of ordinary citizens quickly enough – or at all. Backlash of this type can result in situations where the conditions are ripe for demagogues able to articulate popular frustration.
Citizen participation is therefore not just essential to create a strong democracy, but also to counter the threats to even the democracy currently in place.
Authored by Diane Warburton. Dr Diane Warburton is an author, researcher and activist and Founding Trustee of Involve, the participation charity. Her work focuses on the relationships between citizen participation, democracy and sustainable development. She has also been active in local community organisations and environmental campaigns. See www.sharedpractice.org.uk for more details.