A presentation by Simon Burall and Edward Andersson

1. HOW TO MAKE
PARTICIPATION COUNT?
Picture CC: Some rights reserved byDarnok

2. What we will cover
1. About Involve
2. Why engagement is important
3. Motivations for Participation
4. Culture change and engagement
5. New practices in engagement
6. Q&A

3. About
• Registered Charity (nr. 1130568)
• Focus: Public and stakeholder engagement
• Works with: Central & local government.
Health organisations, NGOs and International
Organisations
• www.involve.org.uk

6. Why is engagement important?
• Consider the reasons
• Write on post its
• Share with others

7. Local engagement in democracy
Findings and implications from Pathways through Participation

8. Available from:
www.pathwaysthroughparticipation.org.uk/resources

9. Research questions
How and why does participation begin, continue
and stop?
Can trends and patterns of participation be
identified over time?
What connections, if any, are there between
different forms and episodes of participation and
what triggers movement between them?

10. 101 in-depth
interviews
Life stories
Qualitative research
Individual at the heart
Approach
Participation as ‘situated practice’
3 field work areas:
Leeds Stakeholder
Enfield engagement
Suffolk

11. What is participation?
Social participation:
the collective activities that
individuals are involved in
Public participation:
the engagement of individuals with
the various structures and
institutions of democracy
Individual participation:
people’s individual actions and
choices that reflect the kind of
society they want to live in

12. Why participation starts
Helping others
Developing relationships Groups and organisations
Exercising values & beliefs Local environment and place
Having influence
For personal benefit Practical resources
Being part of something Learnt resources
Felt resources
An emotional reaction
A personal life event
An external influence

13. Why participation
continues or stops
Impact
Life event
Enjoyment
Friendships
Relationships
Time
Health
Energy

14. The factors that shape
participation
Individual motivations
and resources
Relationships and social
networks
Groups and
organisations
Local environment and
place
Wider societal and
global influences

15. Conclusions
Participation is personal
Participation can be
encouraged, supported &
made more attractive
Significant barriers to
participation are
entrenched

16. Briefing paper
Also available from:
www.pathwaysthroughparticipation.org.uk/resources

17. Local engagement in
democracy
Social participation:
the collective activities that individuals
are involved in
Public participation:
the engagement of
individuals with the various
structures and institutions of
democracy
Individual participation:
people’s individual actions and
choices that reflect the kind of society
they want to live in

18. The language and image
Local engagement in democracy
The accessibility The practice

19. Language and
image
Voting a Safe seats
Perceptions of ‘civic duty’ discourage
activities were political
important Not ‘political’ participation
Low levels of trust
Perceptions of the and confidence
political system
Politicians seen as self-serving
But perceptions Positive opinions of particular
can be overcome political representatives

20. Practice
Examples of bringing about
Opportunities to change through lobbying
participate No examples of public bodies
proactively engaging with people
Tokenistic and/or repetitious
Negative experiences
of public consultations Decision already made
Tension between
People wanted
Perceptions of motivation of
to see the
impact impact of their
citizens and
needs of public
participation
bodies

21. Accessibility
Need to respond
Need to
Opportunities to to their needs
complement
participate people’s lives
motivations and
expectations
A lack of Sometimes
resources stop due to
People’s resources
people from systemic
participating inequalities
Relationships
Relationships and Groups important can determine
groups source of public success of
participation participation

22. Implications
Language and Practice Accessibility
image
Increase impact of Involve people early Show that people will
individual’s vote and be genuine be welcome and
valued
Engage with citizens Understand people’s
on their terms motivations and be Support social
flexible participation
Value, respect and
resource those already Show the impact and Work with those
actively engaged limit the cost of actively engaged to
participation connect with others
Recognise what is
easy and difficult to
influence

23. What are your personal
motivations to take part?
• Consider a time when you participated
• What drove you to?
• What held you back?

24. Some rights reserved by mastermaq
Engagement

25. 3 types of democracy:
1.Representative
2.Direct
3.Participative

26. Number of democracies
‘Free’ societies according to Freedom House
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Free

27. Enthusiasm
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009
Turnout in European Parliament Elections

28. Trust
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1983 1993 1997 2003 2007 2011
Politicans

29. UK political parties
3,500,000
3,000,000
2,500,000
2,000,000
1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
0
1951 1965 1975 1984 1993 2000 2008
Conservative Labour

30. Drivers for engagement
• Structures out of date
• Mismatch demand/supply
• Public expectations different
• Legitimacy harder to acquire
• Co-produced problems

31. Understanding Engagement:
Making it all add up
Process /
Purpose Context People Outcome
Structure
Why Where Who What
How
Process/
Structure
How

32. Understanding Engagement:
Policy Cycle – PE at different points
Feedback/ Evaluation Agenda Setting
User/ Citizen Panels Implementation Visioning
Deliberative forums
Polling
Surveys Campaigns
Future search
Mapping
Delivery
Delivery
Co-production Political Vision
Service delivery
Decision Making
Follow Process
Attend meetings Policy Formulation
Webcasting
Newsletter Shaping Policies
Email Deliberative forums
Reports Citizen panels
Media
Policy Proposals Focus groups
Dialogues
Consultation Polling
Written
Face-to-face
Media generates debate

33. Understanding Engagement:
Policy Cycle – role of evidence
Business Animal rights
Media
Personal Prejudice PE Process
Economic
Parents Medical staff
Cultural
Point in Cycle
Patients
Political
Religious leaders
Media Scientific/ medical

34. "It's easy to come up with new
ideas; the hard part is letting go of
what worked for you two years
ago, but will soon be out of date."
— Roger von Oech

35. What civil servants think
“…it’s got a number of different uses (…) no-
one is quite sure what it means.”
“finding out what people think and using that
information to come up with better policies.”
“makes our policies more robust (...) it needs
to have the buy-in from society as a whole”
“it’s all about creating behaviour change”

36. What civil servants think
“...it’s a box ticking exercise for people who
have no constituency, no decision making and
are routinely ignored by anyone who does
actually have any influence over decision
making; it’s a sham”

37. Problems
“If you consider yourself an expert and have
been schooled as such and have spent years
getting a scientific background or whatever
else, you might be more reluctant to say I’m
going to try and speak to the man in the
street”

38. Problems
“There’s lots and lots of consultations that are
about (…) either a political fix to get the
answer that people want by, you
know, slanting questions or only including
certain groups that you think might agree with
you.”

39. Problems
“I think it is for officials to understand the
value of going out there and talking to people
and it needs to be a mindset rather than set of
rules, I think there is a real disconnect there.
People with the mindset came up with a set of
rules and people without the mindset just
obey the rules without actually doing it.”

40. Cynicism...?
“Some policy makers end up disappointed
because they think, ‘well what’s all this talk
that engagement will help to develop shared
ownership. No it didn’t, we did everything we
could to engage them – took them to nice
hotels and had long discussion groups and
they still didn’t like what we said’.”

41. ... Or Opportunity?
“For the policy makers, the policy colleagues
recruited to work on public engagement were
actually all very enthusiastic and some of
them started being mildly enthusiastic and
finished being very enthusiastic, and are now
advocates for the value of public engagement
amongst their colleagues.”

42. Culture Change

43. "The achievement of excellence
can only occur if the organization
promotes a culture of creative
dissatisfaction."
— Lawrence Miller

44. Institutional factors
1. Mission
2. Leadership
3. Communication
4. Reward
5. Support
6. Learning
7. Staff
8. Stakeholders
9. Public

45. Empowerment vs Big Society?
Community Empowerment Big Society
‘’the giving of “Central government need
confidence, skills and power to focus on doing the things
to communities to shape that only government can
and influence what public do (…) what we need to
bodies do for or with them.” facilitate is that – at the
most local, most individual
(Source: An Action Plan for level – people both identify
Community and solve problems in the
Empowerment, 2007) way that they wish to solve
them”.
Dame Helen Ghosh

46. Context
Central inputs
Structures
Institutional culture
Political culture
Social capital
Service type
Geography

47. What engagement needs
Start Middle After
• Planning • Skills • Senior
• Time • Staff Commitme
• Staff • Resources nt
• Skills • Analytical
capacity
• Strategic
focus • Communica
tion
• Evaluation

48. Current Engagement
Lots of activity (but limited methods):
– Written consultation
– Public meeting
– Satisfaction surveys
– Questionnaires

49. Current Engagement
• Late in decision making cycle
• Fixed in format and structure
• Limited in scope
• One size fits all
• On Government terms
• Focus on hard numbers

50. Radical Engagement
Innovative practice:
– Participatory budgeting
– Online
– Bottom up
– Informal engagement

51. Radical Engagement
• Starts with lived experience of citizens.
• Builds capacity of citizens to problem-solve.
• Designed with long-term impact in mind.
• Citizens commissioned to tackle challenges.
• Uses right incentives –including having fun.
• Makes most of behavioural sciences
• Personalises engagement opportunities.
• Uses social networks analysis

52. My Estonia

53. ‘Our Budget Our Economy’

54. ‘Geraldton: 2029 and Beyond’

55. Citizens’ Initiative Review

56. Only ask:
Image: laughlin (Creative Commons)
• If you want to know the
answer
• About things that people know
something about

57. involve
Royal London House
22-25 Finsbury Square
London
EC2A 1DX
t: 0 20 7920 6470
e: edward@involve.org.uk
twitter: ed_andersson