Edward Andersson considers why it takes a crisis for us to think innovatively about democracy.

With parts of London going up in flame and the Prime Minister cutting his holiday short it seems appropriate to write a blog about crisis and its role in democratic innovation. I wasn’t planning to write about the riots. Instead I wanted to reflect on the Icelandic Constitutional Assembly, a group of 25 elected citizens who have been busy over the past few months drafting what the media is calling ‘the world’s first crowd sourced constitution’.

The Assembly has now handed in their recommended constitution to the Althingi (Icelandic parliament).  This has rightly been hailed as a major democratic innovation; Iceland is rapidly establishing itself as a world leader in Open Government and e-Participation. Unlike examples of crowd sourcing we’ve seen elsewhere which have used a simplistic approach (akin to throwing something online, calling for anonymous comments and hoping for the best) the Icelandic Constitutional Assembly has avoided the risk of flame wars and interest group capture by complementing online engagement with face to face deliberation and in depth discussion. Writing a new constitution is serious business and the Icelandic organizers have risen to the challenge admirably.

I would love to see a similar level of inventiveness and boldness from UK policy makers. A similar approach to that taken in Iceland could have made the referendum on electoral reform more meaningful for example. Annie Quick wrote a good piece on why deliberation was vital back then.

The thing is democratic innovation at the moment seems to be largely driven by crisis; game changing innovations follow system shattering events. In Iceland the galvanizing crisis was the financial meltdown in 2008. Known locally as ‘Hrun’ (Icelandic for ‘downfall’) the country found itself owning over ten times its annual GDP, with an almost worthless currency and at the mercy of the IMF.  This led to unprecedented uproar in the otherwise stable small nation of 320,000 inhabitants. Protests and demonstrations led to the fall of the government followed by soul searching and a growing realization that something had been systematically wrong in society. This is the background which helps explain Iceland’s efforts to involve citizens in rewriting its constitution. Without the crisis Iceland would probably have muddled through with the constitution they had before.

It is a similar story with many other democratic innovations across the world.

Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre (PDF document), (PDF document) possibly the most quoted (some would argue over quoted) example of democratic innovation in the world. In the celebration over the past decades we easily forget that the innovation only happened in 1989 when city was on verge of bankruptcy.  In hindsight politicians are quick to claim that Participatory Budgeting was the result of foresight and genius, whereas at the time it was an act of desperation.

Another rightly celebrated innovation is the 2004 British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on electoral reform. This great example of far reaching deliberation around voting systems  only occurred after the 1996 election where the party which won the largest percentage of votes got fewer seats than its main rival and was unable to form a government.

There are also good examples from the UK where long needed innovation only happened after things went badly wrong; for example in 2001 riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley led to much needed investment in community cohesion and engagement (hopefully we can expect to see the same thing happen in London post riots). In the same year the general election had a record low turnout which prompted politicians and policy makers to take action on citizenship and democracy. This was an area which had needed attention and investment for a long time, but only received after things clearly went wrong.

So we clearly don’t innovate just because something is important; it has to be urgent as well. Is this a problem? After all, most of us probably procrastinated at school – delaying essays until the night before – and we survived. There’s even a school of thought which celebrates crisis as a driver for change. Rham Emmanuel (Obama’s former chief of staff) famously said “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”.

I think that relying on crisis to provide the impetus for innovation is dangerous and the Obama administration shows why. Buffeted by too many crises that have been allowed to grow too big (including the political gridlock, the downgrade of credit rating and discord around health care reform) the administration is overstretched, underfunded and understaffed. Innovations driven by crisis can be tokenistic, ill conceived and demoralizing.

The wide range of project ideas submitted to NESTA for the Creative Councils programme (PDF document)shows that democratic innovation is alive and well in local government. However, many of these ideas have only become politically possible in the context of the economic crisis, which ironically means that it is hard to fund them. How much more effective could these innovations have been if they had been implemented in a time of economic wealth?

Surely it shouldn’t need to be like this? How do we innovate and democratize without having to see things taken to a crisis point beforehand? There must be a way to pick up on the signals that change is needed before the economy tanks, public trust nosedives or storefronts erupt in flames. Something for me to ponder as I carefully cycle home on streets strewn with crushed glass and shattered trust…

In this economic climate, the value of public engagement needs to be articulated in economic terms. Involve’s toolkit demonstrates that you don’t need specialist skills or knowledge to make the business case for engagement.

Today Involve and Consumer Focus launch our long awaited toolkit for how to make the case for engagement using monetary terms. We’ve had over a hundred people email and ask us for copies before the launch and so we hope that it will be well received. Thank you all for waiting so patiently!

Involve started thinking about the costs and benefits of engagement way back in 2005 (Here’s the original report). Back then there was limited interest; people felt there was little need to justify engagement and participation on economic grounds. Things are very different now.  The public sector faces massive cuts across the board. Engagement and consultation are certainly not immune . I know of many posts that have been cut, projects scrapped and organisations that have lost their funding in the field. Making the case for engagement in this environment is difficult. In the past non-monetary benefits were the main arguments for this way of working. Community development workers, youth workers and consultation officers would point out that engagement was good for democracy, good for the self-esteem of the participants and good for social cohesion. Using monetary savings or efficiencies as an argument for a more democratic approach felt wrong. Clearly things have changed. When people are looking high and low for places to cut we cannot shy away from the economic arguments for participation.

The guidebook we launch today is a practical tool for you to make the case for engagement and determine how to measure the value of a project. The document consists of the main report and two excel sheets. One sheet tracks the costs and benefits of a single project and one compares the costs and benefits of two projects with each other.

The toolkit cannot and should not be used to create a false justifcation for projects that do not wokr. What the toolkit allows you to do is to articulate the benefits that you have seen but have lacked the language to speak about in the past.

I’ve had some emails from people who have welcomed the toolkit but worried that it would be difficult and not the toolkit for them. They assume they need specialised education, skills and skills to make this work. I believe that they are wrong and here are my five top tips for how to make the most of the toolkit:

1. Don’t be daunted. Start with what you have. The toolkit was designed for non-economists. You don’t need to do a course before you start, nor do you need  to gather all data on everything before you begin.  Assess your benefits and costs using existing information you have, identify things you can’t measure yet and start taking steps to fill in the blanks later on. By thinking creatively you can often come up with proxy measures; you don’t always need to carry out new research. Of course it is also important not to make exaggerated claims. Know the limitations of your work and what can be said and what not based on the evidence.
2. Don’t forget the potential costs of non-engagement. All engagement seems expensive unless the costs of not engaging are measured (or approximated) alongside the costs of your project. In most cases the alternative to public engagement is not ‘do nothing’ but to carry out PR and marketing, limited consultation, market research or other activities – all of which have costs. The comparator excel sheet allows you to make these calculations.
3. Use the business case to tell stories about why engagement matters. Equations and spreadsheets won’t shift people’s thinking on their own. We are all emotional animals and it is as important to place the data in a compelling narrative as it is to gather the data in the first place. Don’t forget that people are motivated both by opportunities and threats and in the current environment many managers are driven by the latter. If you can point to real cases where no engagement led to real negative impacts (conflict, costs etc) it can be very persuasive and make a convincing case for engagement as a risk management technique in difficult times.
4. Tailor your argument to fit your audience. Your business case is not an end in itself; it is a tool to get a message across and to convince. Make sure you understand your audience and what is most persuasive to them. Will cost savings over a longer term or budget savings that accrue to different budget-holders be persuasive? Are there non-monetary measures that matter to your decision makers, suhc as health outcomes, an improved reputation or less conflict? Often (even in the midst of cuts) it is not just pounds and pence that matter to people. You need to understand this to make a persuasive case.
5. Finally, if you really want to persuade people, give them the opportunity to see engagement first hand. I have found few things as persuasive as being a firsthand eye witness. A dry report is no substitute for a lived experience. The business case is only part of a wider process of educating colleagues and partners in the merit of engagement.

I’m proud to launch the guide today. Lots of work has gone into it and I hope that many people will use it to make the benefits of engagement clear to all. Let us know if you use it and spread the word to others.

I have been spending a lot of time in Turkey lately, working on projects with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the UNDP. The projects have looked at how citizens can be better involved in local and national decisions. I find that travelling is always an illuminating experience; what at first seems very foreign and different to the UK often ends up shedding new light on work I’m doing back home. So it has been in Turkey, where, despite differences, the future challenges of local democracy aren’t that different after all. Turkey is, much like England, heavily centralised with little room for local decision making.

An interesting case in point is the role of the Muhtar (village headman), an elected post (the closest British equivalent would be parish councillors). Much like parish councillors they are an example both of what is best and worst with democracy at the local level.

On the one hand they are very local and non party political, just like the parish councillors. Despite limited power Muhtars often command a reasonable level of trust in their communities. They are certainly more connected to local residents than the municipal councillors and in part this springs from the fact that the Muhtar role is non-partisan and relatively informal. Any proposals to formalise it or increase their power may undermine these qualities.

On the other hand Muhtars have frustratingly little real power and their role is becoming increasingly irrelevant as some of the tasks they used to perform (administrative duties and census, for example) are now being done remotely via e-government applications. In the worst cases, the post of Muhtar is almost hereditary (with son replacing father), appointed through uncontested elections (with abysmal turnout) and office holder primarily motivated by local prestige. All of these are also criticisms at various points levelled at Parish councillors.

A strange incentive to become a Muhtar is the customary right to carry a gun. In that regard they are quite different from Parish councillors! This is one example of where something which at first sight seemed completely irrelevant to the British case actually turned out to be quite illuminating. The fact that the right to bear arms in some parts of Turkey acts as an incentive to make people stand for office brought home to me the difficulty of dealing with motivations for participation. I was thinking how problematic it is from a British perspective to have armed local representatives and how the prospect of gun ownership might attract the wrong kind of applicant.

Last week I gave a presentation (Together with Richard Wilson from IzWe) for the Home Office and Baroness Newlove, the Government’s Champion for Active, Safer Communities and ended up spending a lot of time talking about what the excellent reports from Pathways through Participation have to say about motivations for participation. I made the point that we need to make sure that the participation gives incentives that tie in to the motivations of citizens and I was challenged by a community activist. She asked why incentives should be necessary at all. Shouldn’t the positive impact on the community be enough on its own? After all that’s why she was involved. There were a lot of nods around the room and many people seemed to be worried that introducing incentives of any kind would lead to the wrong kind of engagement. We often assume that there are good and bad reasons for participating (the good reasons obviously being the ones that compelled us and the bad those that drive our neighbours).

A lot of people find the idea of people participating motivated by personal incentives troubling. In an ideal world everyone would be motivated by doing good for the community rather than personal aggrandisement.

However, I think that assuming that everyone is motivated by the same things is a dangerous path to take. The Campaign Company has done some interesting work looking at what motivates different parts of the population. Clearly for some people (usually those already involved) good deeds are their own reward and they tend to look down on their neighbour who are looking for benefits that accrue to them personally, or indeed those neighbours primarily motivated by negative emotions and fears. Simply discounting these people and their motivations may be good for the sense of moral superiority of the existing activists, but is unlikely to encourage a broader range of people to take part.

Clearly some motivations will always be inappropriate (corruption, racial hatred, etc.), but maybe it is time for all us habitual activists to take a good look at ourselves in the mirror. If we sneer at people who show up for the free food, fancy title or cash incentive; what does that say about us? Because the fact is that people often join in for these reasons, but they end up staying on as activists for very different reasons, the social interactions, the friendships and the sense of local ownership that develops. The trick is to get them in the door in the first place for these social reasons to start playing a role.

So maybe I’m wrong to take exception to people choosing to become Muhtars in Turkey because it comes with status and the right to carry a pistol. Should we worry too much about the initial motive if they end up doing good work and representing their community? It is easy to laugh at the ‘big fish in the small pond’, but maybe we need to abandon our snobbishness and ‘big up’ the offer in order to appeal to some people’s sense of vanity? Should we accept that for some people the gold chain, sitting on prestigious boards, titles (for example being a ‘champion’ or ‘warden’ rather than a ‘volunteer’) and uniforms and tabards and other visual signs of status are very important?

Handing out guns to parish councillors might increase interest in the role, but it is perhaps a step too far. However, the shiny sheriff’s badge might have the same effect. After all, community rehabilitation means making the people who have done something wrong visible to the community, so shouldn’t we be making those who have done something right visible as well?