Discussing civic engagement when in a foul mood ...

I spoke last night at an ACEVO event on civic engagement. I left late and got hopelessly lost behind Liverpool Street station. So by the time I arrived in the three quarters empty room I was in a foul mood. This was only exacerbated by the idealism and cheeriness of the panel members, keynote Trevor Phillips, Chair of the ECHR, Baroness Jill Pitkeathley OBE and Stephen Burke, CEO of Counsel and Care. They were all terribly in favour of civic engagement. So being a mature, responsible, thoughtful person I arbitrarily decided I would be against it for the night.

What, I said, is the point of civic engagement? Some say it is necessary for democratic accountability but citizens and voters don’t seem to have a problem mobilising when they want to change or stop something. Whether it’s the turnout in the US elections or local campaigns against post office closures, people get moving when they feel they need to. It is not clear that we need to maintain a high background level of engagement in order to foster these interventions.

Another argument says civic engagement is necessary to ensure we get good policy decisions. Well, up to a point. I am all in favour of innovative forms of deliberation like Planning for Real or citizens’ juries (proper ones, not the phoney versions organised last year by the Government), but these are intensive processes which are essentially about taking people out of the community and turning them into experts for the day. The benefits of engaging the wider population (who rarely think about such things and who tend to be suspicious of change) is less clear. That’s why mass societies developed representative democracy.

A third argument is that civic engagement brings communities together and makes them stronger. But in reality civic mobilisation is often about conflict within communities and exclusion. Baroness Pitkeathley positively cited two examples of effective civic engagement around her weekday home in Islington. The first was to establish a residents’ parking zone, the second was to close down a rowdy pub. But, as I pointed out to her, in both cases the community was mobilising to exclude outsiders.  This may be good for the community but what about the wider social good – where will the non resident drivers park now, have the pub goers moved on to a community even less able to cope with their exploits?

A fourth argument goes back to the civic republican tradition asserting that civic engagement is simply part of living the good life as a good citizen. I sympathise with this view. But to what extent is my claim that civic engagement is good for you any more valid than someone else’s claim that meditation, eating spinach or wearing crystals is good for you? And, I said, building ever stronger bridges with my audience of third sector CEOs, if civic engagement is so great, how come so many charities try to keep their members and lay activists at arm’s length?

By the time I had finished my rant, everyone in the room was feeling less cheerful but my bad mood had almost gone. So it was time to be more constructive. The point about civic engagement is that it is an important part of the solution to a specific problem. Rather than praise engagement as a universal good in itself, we should see it as an often essential part of what cultural theorists (yes, them again) call a clumsy solution. In his recent book ‘Organising and Disorganising’, Michael Thompson (speaking here on December 4^th) cites the example of the relocation of Arsenal football club as an exemplary clumsy solution. He argues that the right outcome – the building of the Emirates Stadium on derelict ground close to Highbury – was possible because the search for a solution involved the hierarchical actor (the Council), the individualist actor (the Club) and the egalitarian actor (the Residents’ Association). Civic engagement was a powerful part, but only a part, of a solution to a particular problem.

It is by understanding the contribution civic engagement can make to clumsy solutions, rather than simply extolling it as a virtue in itself, that we can best develop our ideas and practice.  

• Richard - 15 Nov 2008 12:10pm

  I can make allowances for your foul mood and your desire to bring balance to a panel, but - naive and idealistic as I may be - I have to react to this depressing read. Depressing, especially, from someone who has been at the heart of government.. Where is the man that wrote: "The reason above all why Barack Obama is such an exciting politician is his ability to engage people directly, to make them feel part of the change... The new President must carry on explaining to people that real change can only come when government and people share ambitions and the responsibility for achieving them."? In your rant you sound like you would be almost be comfortable arguing that there is no such thing as society. I'm more sympathetic to "there is no such thing as the State". Social and political institutions exist only in the minds of citizens and continue to have authority only on those terms. Thus civic engagement is vital not just to change social and political institutions but to ensure their continuing legitimacy. Anyone who doubts that social institutions exist in the mind of the people should spend some time in Afghanistan. Institutions have access to force, yes, but this is bounded. An inappropriate use of force, and a breakdown of trust, even in a Western democracy, can lead to, say, the L.A. riots. Closer to home, gang-involved youths who don't acknowledge the legitimacy of the police and criminal justice system unsurprisingly take justice into their own hands, in the form of retributive violence. Then there is tax avoidance, flytipping, illegal parking, and all the small signs of failures of legitimacy. And political disillusionment is the symptom of a political system which has not yet adapted to meet the expectations of the people, and their need for engagement. You describe people getting involved in large-scale actions like the US elections and post-office campaigns. But surely the larger these movements are the worse a democracy is performing? These actions are those of people wanting to be heard, and it is better if they are heard earlier in the process. It is not a good thing if people have to wait 8 (or 212) years to feel like they have an influence. Retrospectively identifying successful civic engagement and concluding that it happens when it needs to misses a lot out. Could the next Baby P be saved by the support or intervention of a local Parents Support Group? Could a crime be prevented thanks to a neighbourhood group cleaning up (or being seen to clean up) graffiti and broken windows? Maybe, maybe not, but let's not underestimate the potential impact of civic engagement, at every scale. On "The benefits of engaging the wider population ... is less clear".. Policy decisions are only worthwhile if they are based on an understanding of the needs and interests of the public. I agree that citizen's juries and the like can be little more than gimmicks.. I might well trust a government economist to do the weighing up of costs and benefits (as long as she is not unduly influenced by inappropriate external considerations, and civic engagement can ensure she is not). But the government economist will have no data on which to make a decision if civic engagement has not alerted her to the diversity of needs and interests of the wider public. A failure of civic engagement (necessarily coupled to an inadequate government) can mean that popular decisions in the general interest don't get made - e.g. perhaps most tragically in the non-appearance of a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. Representative democracy is not a solution but very much a compromise. It is only democracy to the extent that it is representative, and that is in short why civic engagement is so important. (Colonel Gadaffi makes this point in one of the most unintentionally amusing sections of his 'Green Book'... "The masses will rise and proclaim the new principle in a thundering cry:'No, to representation of the people!') From a cultural theory perspective, surely we need a constant egalitarian balance to constant heirarchical and individualistic forces? Otherwise we have the arrogance of government and things like ID cards. * * * On cultural theory, when does a problem require a clumsy solution? (An individualistic business transaction can benefit both parties. A heirarchical body can intervene to prevent inappropriate infractions.) Also, from what perspective does the cultural theorist identify "the right outcome"?

Please sign in below if you already have an account (your username will be your email address).

Don't have an account?

If you are a Fellow, please sign up for an account now to gain access to Fellows-only areas of our website.

Problems logging in? Forgot your password?

If you cannot login, or have forgotten your password, please go to our Password Reset page to change your password.

If this doesn't work, or you have any other queries regarding your account, just give us a call on +44 (0)20 7451 6927. Alternatively you can also email the Fellowship team.