Power Lines

Report: Power Lines


By Gaia Marcus, Thomas Neumark and Steve Broome
 
In 2010, the RSA published Connected Communities: How social networks power and sustain the Big Society, which explored a new approach to community regeneration based on an understanding of the importance of social networks. It argued that such an approach has the potential to bring about significant improvements in efforts to combat isolation and to support the development of resilient and empowered communities. This paper follows on from that report, deepening the analysis to look at networks of power and influence, and in particular those who are isolated in the community. The paper argues that the government’s efforts to build the Big Society are too focused on citizen-led service delivery. An approach based on utilising and building people’s social networks, which largely determine our ability to create change and influence decisions that affect us, may prove more effective.
 
Download the Power Lines paper (PDF 1.82MB)

                                                                                                      
More often than not, participation is defined too narrowly. Consequently, there is a focus on so-called ‘active’ citizens (typically labelled the ‘usual suspects’), identified through their contacts with local councillors, voting behaviour in elections, vocal membership of local groups, or written responses to local consultations. Such citizens represent our vision of what it is to be empowered and to have influence. This paper argues that to increase access to local power — understood as the ability to get things done and change one’s circumstances and local community — the focus must first be on fostering overall social connections and neighbourliness.
 
The Coalition government has declared that:

"We need to create communities with 'oomph' - neighbourhoods who are in charge of their own destiny, who feel if they club together and get involved they can shape the world around them."

With the publication of the Localism Bill we now have some idea of how they intend to go about creating these communities. Sadly, the vision of how to empower communities is far too focused on engaging members of the public in the delivery of public services.
 
A better - and possibly complementary - strategy for fostering neighbourhoods that are in charge of their own destiny would be to focus on building denser and more varied connections within these neighbourhoods. This is difficult, unpredictable work, but the potential returns are enormous. There are structural reasons why certain people currently have fewer or more uniform connections than others. As this paper will show, those who are unemployed, retired, or who live in areas that have thinner social networks overall, all tend to have fewer local connections. These groups, who are at risk of isolation, need to be a particular focus in efforts to build more empowered communities.
 
The prospect of running a school or a library or even a community pub can leave most people nonplussed. Ipsos MORI’s polling has found that only about 5 percent of people express even a nominal interest in becoming actively involved in the delivery of public services.

On the other hand our research has found that even those who are currently poorly connected show an interest in being able to shape their networks and connect more when given the appropriate tools and forum.
 
Attempting to get more people and community groups involved in the provision of public services will not, by itself, create neighbourhoods where people feel that they can shape the world around them. Fostering support and exchange through informal connections may be an important way to 'achieve' outcomes that many public services aim for. We have found that the more connected someone is, the more likely they are to believe in neighbourliness. The less connected someone is, the less likely they are to perceive their connections as being of use to them in effecting the change they would like to see.
 
Further complicating matters, those who do participate in this way - the so-called 'civic core' of predominantly well educated, middle-aged professionals - do not feel in charge of their own destiny: the majority of community activists say that they cannot influence decisions in their local area. This is compounded by our research that has shown that these so-called 'usual suspects' often feel used by local services as 'free labour' or to legitimise a particular policy or action.
 
Find out more information on the Connected Communities project.