Transitions to Participatory Democracy: How to Grow Public Participation in Local Government
Summary
Working alongside the UK Inclusive Growth Network the RSA has spent the last six months exploring how local places can advance and embed the use of participatory democracy.
The work has been shaped by five primary research questions:
- How can we make the political and business case for participatory democracy?
- How can we manage a community process effectively, authentically and ethically, including reaching the most marginalised groups?
- How can we demystify the different methods of citizen involvement? What helps us decide what is the best approach in each situation?
- How can we help create an inclusive democratic recovery from the impact of Covid-19?
- How can we create the right governance structures and institutional context for these processes?
The RSA research has involved (i) interviews with UK and international practitioners, academics, VCSE representatives, public sector leaders, local and combined authority officers and local politicians; (ii) a participatory workshop with IGN members; (iii) a steering group session with a subset of the network; and (iv) desk research exploring international best practice and guidance for community engagement. The output has shown local democracy to be a complex and dynamic system, rather than a set of discrete institutions and processes.
Participatory democracy is not a product to be ‘pulled off a shelf’ or a set of methods to be straightforwardly deployed, but is part of a cultural shift for distributing power and agency that is highly contextual and messy. While recognising there is no single approach to growing resident engagement, the research has highlighted several broad transitions in local policy and practice that can help local authorities to enhance resident participation.
The report describes these transitions, alongside practical guidance and priority recommendations, in the second section of this report. In the first section, the report sets out an approach to designing particular engagement exercises that properly accounts for the contextual nature of local democracy. The recommendations and guidance contained in this report are targeted primarily at local and combined authority officers and councillors who are interested in creating more vibrant and participatory local democracies, but the authors hope the insights will also be of interest to other audiences, including process designers, facilitators, advocates, local communities and researchers. While some of the guidance is specific to local and regional democracy, lots of the suggestions apply to national and even transnational participation and to wider stakeholder engagement such as that associated with Major Projects.