Towards the end of last month, I attended a meeting of the
Participatory Budgeting Network, hosted by the Centre for the Study of
Democracy at the University of Westminster.
The PB Network is a newly formed body advocating for and leading
new learning and innovations in PB. It takes over from the work of the PB Unit,
which sadly was forced to close due to lack of funding in mid 2012. The PB
Network has a small volunteer steering group and aims to put on learning
events, publish policy related papers and stimulate debate on where PB might go
next.
You can
receive updates of the network via Twitter, Facebook or
LinkedIN
These are my notes from the opening panel session, titled
“Hearing the voices of the unheard”. The issues of inclusivity and equality in
democratic participation are something that, like many others, we at Involve
are very concerned with. The following thoughts from the panel, which I’ve
recorded as faithfully as possible, include a range of useful observations,
arguments and reminders for anyone interested in democratic participation.
Here are five things that particularly hit home for me:
Participatory processes can achieve as much, if not
more, through their ability to bring people together to discuss, share and take
action, as their impact on decision making (though the latter must not be
forgotten). PB should be about building a democratic movement – not the
distribution of small grants.
Process design is all-important for ensuring people are
able to speak and be heard. Effort and resource is required to ensure that
power imbalances are overcome.
It’s important to be aware of who the unheard voices are
in different contexts. There may be some surprises.
We should be mindful of and challenge participatory
processes that are being used to control and appease people, rather than hand
over genuine power.
If PB, or any other democratic innovation for that
matter, is to make a real impact on power balances, they must be focused on
core issues (and budgets) – not scraps on the edges.
Professor Yves Cabannes
Professor Yves Cabannes kicked off the session. He has a large
amount of practical experience of participatory budgeting, including as senior
adviser to the Municipality of Porto Alegre, Brazil, where PB was first
developed.
Yves began by noting that the vast majority of participatory
budgeting processes are either thematically or territorially based, and
advocated the use of actor based participatory budgeting instead, to hear the
voices of the unheard.
Listening to the voices of the unheard, Yves says, can lead you
to projects that are very different. For example, he spoke about his experience of a PB process with
young people in slums in Brazil who identified that the short length of time
school buses would wait at a stop for them to get on meant that the younger
ones were pushed and shoved by the older ones to get on. Negotiating a longer
stoppage time with bus companies meant the young people arrived at school in a
much better state of mind – an outcome that could not have been anticipated
before the process.
Yves also spoke about PB being a means rather than an end. For
example, he spoke about PB being a pretext for bringing together migrants in
Spain, giving them a place where they could speak to and learn from each other.
However, Yves noted that there are a number of ongoing
challenges and issues relating to hearing the voices of the unheard through PB.
For example, he noted that very little progress has been made on increasing
women’s voices in PB, and suggested more effort is required to break the
power imbalances.
He also noted that just because people are present at a PB
event, does not mean their voices will be heard. It’s therefore important
that we create the right conditions for people to feel comfortable to speak.
Another challenge, according to Yves, is to include the
voices of the unheard in the implementation of a project as well as the initial
decision. The risk is that in the transformation into a project eligible
for PB, an idea becomes coopted by those with power. Too often, according to
Yves, people are not empowered fully and others take over.
Yves went on to talk about the importance of deliberation in
a process, arguing that one of the duties of PB is to open up an
opportunity for people to speak and exchange their opinions. For Yves, the
deliberative quality of a PB process determines its success. He therefore said
he was reluctant about the use of electronic voting in PB and also commented
that while technology can be useful, deliberations can be difficult, especially
for the unheard, if not face-to-face.
Finally, Yves spoke about the risk that PB is used to keep
people in “their ghetto”. PB can maintain segregation and just as well as it
can lead to people voice and power. For Yves, PB needs to give people power
in their city, not just in their neighbourhood.
Professor Graham Smith
Next up was Professor Graham Smith, a specialist in the theory
and practice of democratic innovations at the University of Westminster’s
Centre for the Study of Democracy, who responded to Yves’s remarks.
Graham agreed with Yves on the importance of how PB processes
are designed; it’s not just an issue of wanting to hear the voices of the
unheard, but also about how it’s done. It’s one thing to have people in a
room, but it’s another for them to have a voice, and another for them to be
heard. Therefore, for Graham, the issue of institutional design has not had
enough attention paid to it.
He spoke about how the clever separation of different types of
voice that can be found in the Porto Alegre process have been collapsed in the
UK; for example, there is no separation between where demands and decisions are
made. The best PB processes, according to Graham, are those where somebody
has thought very carefully about what space they are creating and why.
Asking the question, “how do we design this in order that the voices of the
unheard will be heard?”, because it won’t happen by accident.
Graham finished by commenting that we still have a lot to learn
from Latin America about willingness to take a risk on different types of institutions.
Cllr Simon Henig
Simon Henig is Leader of Durham County Council. He spoke about
County Durham’s experience of implementing PB via its area partnerships.
Simon began by commenting that the formation of the new unitary
authority in County Durham in 2009 presented an opportunity to change the way
in which public engagement was done. He noted that, in common with other
councils, there was a great deal of cynicism from residents about how decisions
were made.
The newly formed authority set up 14 area partnerships based on
geography decided by local people. Each partnership was given a devolved yearly
budget to spend and some chose to hold one-off events with local residents to
decide how it was spent. He referred specifically to one area, with a relatively
poor population, in which they were surprised by the level of interest: 800
people turned up to the event in the first year and many stayed until the
ballots were counted and results announced – something he noted never happens
for councilor elections.
Simon also spoke about a process whereby local people were
consulted on County Durham’s overall budget, including which services should be
protected and which should be saved. While by law the decision has to be made
by a full Cabinet, he highlighted that the eventual decision went with what the
public had voted for. This, he said, effectively meant that County Durham’s
£500 million budget had been allocated by residents.
However, he also noted that only 10-15% of the money spent
within an area, is spent by the local authority.
Finally, Simon suggested that there currently exists a political
opportunity to embed PB as all of the main political parties have expressed a
desire to empower the public and acknowledged problems with the current
political system. On the other hand, he recognised that getting politicians to
give up power can be difficult and anyone with a budget at the moment will be
loath to give it up. However, he also suggested that at a time of austerity, it
is perhaps easier to get PB implemented as, for a politician, it is potentially
easier to say “because we’ve got difficult decisions, let’s make the public
make them”.
Shazia Hussain
Finally, Shazia Hussain, currently service head for localism at
Tower Hamlets Council, spoke about her experience of developing and leading the
UK’s largest PB process – You Decide! – in Tower Hamlets in 2008 and how they
are continuing to develop PB now.
Shazia began by commenting that the unheard are often thought to
include the young, BME communities and women, but in Tower Hamlets they had
experienced the opposite: those not turning up were white men.
PB has achieved support from politicians across parties and
officers alike in Tower Hamlets because it’s been shown to give people an
opportunity to be heard. Shazia later commented that when people go into the
room and see people engaging in the PB process, then they get it.
For Shazia, PB is not about consultation; it’s about people’s
ideas and how to grow them. The question they are seeking to answer in
Tower Hamlets is “how do you get people to influence and co-produce on core
services?”, recognising that they need citizens to help tackle gritty problems.
They are therefore moving from a large to a smaller pot of money, but one that
impacts core services.
Finally, Shazia highlighted that working
with councillors was key to success, in part because councilors have the
networks into local groups and communities.
Tim leads Involve’s research into
how and why citizens engage, and what participation looks like from their
perspective.
