Concrete Achievements

Tag: citizen participation

  • The #GoodMove chaos in Brussels is something that should worry those of us who advocate…

    The #GoodMove chaos in Brussels is something that should worry those of us who advocate for citizen participation, and those of us who care about citizen action on the environment. lesoir.be/473320/article…

    For those not close to it, a series of traffic calming and car-excluding measures are being taken in Brussels to reduce car traffic and air pollution. They had a good, not perfect, but good citizen engagement process lasting over a year before anything was done.

    The headlines are about yesterday’s meeting in the commune of Schaerbeek, where protests got physical with a group of men tearing down the new signs for the traffic scheme – the bigger issue is the political fear that is now freezing the tens of schemes in the pipeline.

    Right now it looks like only Bruxelles-Ville and one of the projects in Schaerbeek are going to see the light of day any time soon, after this has been discussed for *years*. Let’s be clear, this is not banning cars. This is reducing their prominence in dense urban areas.

    And yet violent protest from a tiny number and loud angry voices from a small minority is derailing schemes across the whole city-region. After, I say again, a good citizen participation project (realistic in scale and open in approach for the question it was trying to answer).

    It’s particularly notable that some of the angry voices are mentioning the participation (300 citizens in Schaerbeek for instance) as being laughable and irrelevant. Because they disagree with the outcome, they disagree with the process.

    So, are we wrong about citizen participation reducing the barriers to implementation of these sorts of schemes – or at least, is the level of engagement required to get general public confidence disproportionately large?

    And can we involve citizens in these difficult climate decisions in the time we have left? I believe that the answer to both questions is yes, that’s why we’re working on @NetZeroCitiesEU, but I can’t deny a frisson of concern about what is happening in my city.

    It’s worth noting that @elkevdbrandt and @PhilippeClose among others have been trying to give political leadership – but they have been rare bright lights in a general picture of uncertainty and backtracking.

    I know that some people will see this and think ‘just have more citizen assemblies’ but 300 people in Schaerbeek did not make a difference to the angry voices, and it is the angry voices who are causing the problem.

    I don’t have any easy answers myself. It’s something I’ll be thinking hard about as we move ahead with our work in 112 cities (including Brussels!) on reaching net zero.

  • Negative piece in @ladh on politics of Brussels Parliament’s joint citizen/MP panels -…

    Negative piece in @ladh on politics of Brussels Parliament’s joint citizen/MP panels – headline calls it “Noddy Politics”. Notable for me is how the parties quoted are more critical the further to the political right they are. Eg the right-liberal MR: dhnet.be/regions/bruxel…

    The other notable points (for me) are:
    1. Citizens profited from the experience
    2. Follow up is essential (and seen to be lacking, though that’s hardly the fault of the process)
    3. The link made between citizen assemblies and the intention of abolishing representative democracy

    The last one is a risk for those of us who want to continue experimenting with these approaches without seeing them as an alternative to representation.

  • Links from the week of 11 July 2022

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Links from the week of 13 June 2022

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Checking out the new online consultation on constitutional reform in Belgium.

    Checking out the new online consultation on constitutional reform in Belgium. It’s very pretty – but the questions are essay questions with 50k character limits. I mean, I care about the constitutional arrangements but it would be a leap of faith in terms of time commitment.

    I mean… even with super smart AI and sentiment analysis, I don’t know that you would get anything out of questions like this if 1,000 people replied. And less if 10,000 did.

    And in terms of those people who are not happy with Belgium’s constitutional arrangements, of whom there are many, are any but the most parti-pris going to take the time to write 5-7000 word answers?

    The whole thing is here: demain-toekomst-zukunft.be

  • At @epc_eu in event on #cofoe #TheFutureIsYours and future of EU democracy.

    At @epc_eu in event on #cofoe #TheFutureIsYours and future of EU democracy. We’re discussing this excellent report, which was presented by @jaemmanouilidis epc.eu/en/Publication…. My four points:

    1. We need to think more deeply about the power relations on the politics side. COFOE has shown how hard it is to run hybrid decision making processes without a clear agreement on power and process up front.

    2. There is risk that the language or practice of citizen participation, which is developing quickly, runs ahead of political culture and structures. We need to move the latter faster and be careful not to overclaim and create disappointment.

    3. Institutionalisation (👋 @ClaudiaChwalisz) doesn’t mean a democracy bolt-on to each government body or structure, it means creating the structures in the middle that each government body can work through so we don’t duplicate design, expertise or networks.

    4. We can’t just work with panel-sized audiences. How can we create the digital tools for larger scale participation – with the design quality, legibility and flexibility that the best in class current apps have?

    Thanks to @epc_eu and other participants for a great event.

  • Just spoke at the #clubofvenice / @cap_com event here in beautiful @Toulouse @Occitanie.

    Just spoke at the #clubofvenice / @cap_com event here in beautiful @Toulouse @Occitanie. A few points from my notes on the topic of “placing the citizen at the centre of European debate” in this thread.

    1. Citizens don’t always know that they are in a European debate. They come into all sorts of conversations with their own expectations and experience, and don’t know (and shouldn’t need to know) which level of government is responsible for what.

    2. Policy makers come into European debate thinking about specific policies and reforms. That’s fine, but there needs to be two way interpretation between the connection, complex human stories that citizens bring and the organisationally-structured questions of institutions.

    3. This argues for a connected approach that allows for ideas to come from the bottom up and the top down, and for local conversations to be federated into European ones, and European information to be better used in local conversations.

    4. Civil society orgs can help with that. Locally, they provide the associative infrastructure and the trusted local voices that can ensure that participation reaches out wider. They also can run democratic processes themselves, so participation isn’t always about …

    …politics and partisan issues but everyday life as well.

    5. Internationally, civil society can provide networks of learning and support and trusted external validation for processes.

    6. But civil society also has needs, most of all for stability of resources. That’s not just about cash – we also need trained facilitators available locally, good information that we don’t have to design ourselves but is well-tailored to citizen needs.

    7. And finally we need the security that enables us to hire and train for the long-term rather than just 12- or 24-month contracts.

    8. Long-term participation is only going to be possible if we are able to hold on to participants to update them, train and validate facilitators and designers to ensure that processes can run well and be started at short notice.

    9. And that requires us as civil society to work closer together, but also governments at every level to think about how they can support this whole space in a holistic way.

    10. Funding for orgs like @demsoc will always be triangular – foundational (European grants, foundations, other big patient resources); project-based (quasi-commercial); and members. At the moment too much focus is on the second point in the triangle.

    11. Horizon Europe is promising in its focus on democracy but even with several million euro it’s still just one funder among many – we really need to think about how we can connect up the initiatives – and better connect up the networks that help deliver it.

  • This new focus by PS on “effective freedom” seems interesting, but a lot of the ideas at…

    This new focus by PS on “effective freedom” seems interesting, but a lot of the ideas at least at this stage of development seem a bit underwhelming. But scope for more concrete things between now and September lesoir.be/424125/article…

    You certainly need *some* sort of connecting theme for social democracy other than generalised complaint and @PaulMagnette‘s argument that says “freedom’s no good unless you can use it” has appeal both in liberal and statist directions (and problems in both too).

    Speaking personally I prefer the language of power for citizens and individuals rather than effective freedom, which risks being a bit wonkish, but that’s why I run a citizen participation organisation, I suppose.

    I guess the question is whether the multiple layers of concertation to come will give more or less clarity to the question of what this all means. To take the most touchy example for PS, I think effective freedom means that women who want to wear a headscarf should be allowed to,

    and those who don’t want to shouldn’t be forced to, but there are plenty, not just on here, who would say that I was betraying social democracy to think that.

  • 10 ways to make the best of the Conference on the Future of Europe #cofoe #futureofeurope…

    10 ways to make the best of the Conference on the Future of Europe #cofoe #futureofeurope – a thread.

    Too many presidents. Too little time. People have been pretty hard on the leaked plans for the Conference on the Future of Europe #CoFoE – but it can still make a positive difference to the emerging European Democracy.

    1. Make #CoFoE experimental. This isn’t going to be writing a new European treaty, so use the opportunity to test different participative approaches on big questions, including how to join up different processes at different levels.

    2. Listening means acting. The response to the European Citizen Consultation of 2018-9 was a sentence in a summit document. The Institutions should flesh out how they will respond to #cofoe concretely – not just promise to read the answers carefully.

    3. Start building civil society links now. Seeming irrelevance leads to civil society inaction leading to minimal response. Turn it into a virtuous circle by making clear how civil society can help – and how #cofoe matters to their goals, not just the EU institutions’.

    4. Get officials involved in person. Myths around citizen participation are more easily dispelled by taking part in an event than by reading a report – and #cofoe can help officials learn how they can use participation in their own work too.

    5. Set a clear pathway for citizen agenda setting. “Citizens are free to raise other issues” is fine, but it mustn’t be “raise it to be ignored”. Online idea generation should have a clear pathway from idea to #CoFoE agenda.

    6. Run past the deadline. Spring 2022 is soon – but it’s less of a problem if the Institutions plan now to continue the approach beyond the deadline, and show how issues not addressed in #cofoe can be picked up later, in the run up to the 2024 European Parliament elections.

    7. Leave a legacy. By the time #cofoe draws to a close, the programmes selected as part of the Green Deal to create infrastructure for citizen participation in Europe will be starting up. Pass on citizen networks, tech platforms and relevant conversations from one to the next.

    8. Let citizens mark the homework. As in France, let a group of citizens who have been involved in #CoFoE review what the Institutions do with it. It may lead to a few uncomfortable comments, but it shows that this is a meaningful process.

    9. Ensure that technology is open. The tools created for #CoFoE need to be shared widely. Multilingual dialogue processes on a common European digital framework – that could really speed up the developmed of a connected European democracy.

    10. Build the foundations for trust. The institutions need to trust the answers they receive from #CoFoE. Citizens need to trust that processes are run fairly and without outside influence.

    The creation of trust is a long-term effort, longer-term than a single year or #CoFoE. But as the Hippocratic oath says, first do no harm. Make sure that processes are open, trusted and used, and that facilitation and design is independent or at least independently verified.

    Then, as citizen participation at European level expands, as it will in coming years, the #cofoe will have a legacy to be proud of.

  • This is a good read by ⁦@duncanrobinson⁩ – but the missing element is money.

    This is a good read by ⁦@duncanrobinson⁩ – but the missing element is money. Charles I and Louis XVI were both brought down because the had to get their Parliaments’ consent to taxes. economist.com/europe/2020/10…

    National governments have the whip hand for several reasons but one big one is that in the end they have to raise the money to write the cheques for parliament. This is why own resources and competences are so important.

    If the EU is to become more democratic that doesn’t just mean more popular participation (in elections and in between) and a stronger « European public sphere » – it also means power for the institutions to do things and raise the money for them.