M I K K O R A S K N A T I O N A L C O N S U M E R R E S E A R C H C E N T R E

IN THE GREY ZONE OF PARTICIPATION

INUSE-seminar 8th of May 2012

BACKGROUND

•  INUSE seminar 12th of December 2012: ”Influential participation: How technology assessment changes the world”

•  User and citizen participation is often portrayed as inherently good, democratic and empowering (e.g. Fiorino 1990, Bellucci 2002): •  Good substantively: relevant wisdom is not limited to scientific specialists

and public officials; participation provides essential information for decision making

•  Democratic: citizens have the right (embodied in laws) to participate meaningfully in public decision-making and to be informed about the bases for government decisions

•  Empowering and instrumental: participation supports actors’ agency and it can decrease conflict and increase acceptance of and trust in decisions made by public agencies

•  In reality, however, it may happen that participation is not so useful (substantively), is undemocratic rather than democratic, and creates new obstacles for effective action rather than empowers agency.

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RESEARCH QUESTIONS

•  What are the broadblocks to effective and efficient participation? •  Are there different types of broadblocks to different

types of participation? •  Could it be useful to distinguish between the bright,

grey and dark zones of participation? •  Can we shed more light into the grey zone of participation? •  Can we get rid of the dark side of participation, and if so,

how?

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TWO TYPES OF PARTICIPATION: SPONTANEOUS VS. PLANNED

  Social movements Deliberation

Ontology Motion Contemplation

Focus Grievance Issue

Strategy Contest authorities Inform authorities

Knowledge base Experience Science

Image Drama Talk

Participant relations Solidarity Citizenship

Organization Spontaneous Planned

Source: Rask, M. & Worthington, R. (forthcoming): Prospects of Deliberative Global Governance, Journal of Environmental Science and Engineering B 1 (2012) 4

THE DYNAMICS OF SPONTANEOUS AND PLANNED PARTICIPATION

Source of information: Scholte, J. Civil society and democracy in global governance, Global Governance 8 (2002) 281-304.

• Democratic deficits and limited public accountability • nationalistic conception of demos and sites for democratic governance

• state bureaucracies seldom consult their publics about policies on global issues

Problems with global governance

structures

• (1) relay information and analysis to governance agencies, political space for marginal actors;

•  (2) raise public awareness of international laws and regulatory institutions;

• (3) fuel debate in and about global governance;

• (4) increase public transparency;

• (5) increase democratic control and monitoring of global governance institutions and

• (6) create spin-offs for the democratization of territorial governance

Remedies from civil society actors, who

can…

• (1) uneven voice to stakeholders and reproduction of structural inequalities;

•  (2) focus on behind-the-scenes lobbying and dissemination of flawed knowledge;

•  (3) liabilities and co-optation by government agencies;

• (4) opaqueness of civic organizations’ own activities;

• (5) self-selected leadership and limited public budgetary oversight;

•  (6) democratic territorial spin-off compromised

Problems with social movements

• (1) voices more equally to citizens and stakeholders;

• (2) public processes, balanced information

• (3) clear rules for interaction and accountability;

• (4) High transparency; • (5) randomised or statistical representation;

• (6) real democratic processes replicable to local contexts

Remedies from planned

deliberations

Problems?

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IN THE GREY ZONE: PART I

•  Inherent challenges with planned participation

Source: Rask, M. (2008). Foresight—Balancing between Increasing Variety and Productive Convergence, Technological Forecasting and Social Change (2008), Vol 75 p. 1157–1175 6

BALANCING BETWEEN INCREASING REQUISITE VARIETY AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERGENCE

•  A trade-off: the productivity of participation increases with heterogeneity up to a point where it becomes too difficult to deliberate and productivity is reduced. •  It is likely to be difficult to engage such actors, whose expertise or political influence is instrumental to

productivity and implementation of the results. If engaged, they are apt to have a strong personal stake in the outcome of the foresight process, at the cost of displacing divergent perspectives.

•  The ‘optimal’ balance between variety and convergence is contextually contingent •  Balancing strategies:

•  (A) Secure a strong motivation among all participants. •  (B) High motivation is often linked to stakeholding that in some cases risks the creativity of participation, for

which reason actions to ensure the creativity of participation are needed. •  (C) Emphasizing creativity can take place at the cost of reducing the instrumentality, which in turn can be

counterbalanced by various means, including (C) mechanisms for consensus and priority setting, (D) increasing of process efficacy and (E) developing an orientation to implementation.

•  (F) The prioritization function, increased efficacy and a strong orientation to implementation, however, can result in various kinds of biases, and undermine alternative perspectives and interests. Therefore, mechanisms for (F) validation and (G) balancing are needed. •  balance of representation •  co-nomination •  ‘status quo’ •  independence of the executive body •  freedom from vested interests •  balance through variety

•  While a positive norm for balancing is difficult to derive, a less stringent negative norm can provide a tentative guideline (Renn 2005, p. 50): “It is essential to monitor these processes and make sure that particular interests do not dominate the deliberations.”

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HOW THEY BALANCE INTERESTS Concept Balancing strategy Benefits Costs

Functionalist Expert perspectives prioritized

Rational, systematic Narrow, inadequately reflect social realities

Neoliberal Statistical representation; status quo

Politically neutral, descriptive

Simplistic, vulnerable to measurement errors, self-fulfilling

Deliberative Relevant arguments included

Issue and context sensitive, negotiative

Rationalistic, vulnerable to strategizing, non-neutral

Anthropological Randomly selected lay perspectives

Common sense and disinterested assessment

Superficial, unpredictable, irrational

Emancipatory Less priviledged groups empowered

Equality and fairness, corrective

Politically biased, quasi solutions

Postmodern All perspectives equal

Open, transparent, inclusive

Irrelevant, biased, sensational

8 Source from which modified: Renn, O. (2008). Risk Governance. Coping with Uncertainty in a Complex World. Earthscan, London and Sterling.

IN THE GREY ZONE: PART II

•  Deliberation is an imprecise art: a myriad of judgement calls are an enduring feature participatory methods. •  Study and reflection surely can strengthen the basis

for such judgements, but you’ll never get rid of them.

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THE DARK ZONE OF PARTICIPATION: PART I

•  The ”tyranny of participation”: •  illegitimate or unjust exercise of power; naivety

with regard to the complexities of power

•  Cooke and Kothari (2001) focus on participatory development within marginalized underpriviledged communities •  tyranny of decision making (existing legitimate decision

processes overridden) •  tyranny of the group (group dynamics leads to participatory

decisions that reinforce the intersts of the powerful) •  tyranny of method (participatory method is used at the

expense of other productive methods)

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THE DARK ZONE OF PARTICIPATION: PART II

•  The ”tragedy of citizen participation” •  while participatory agencies seek to develop

tools to help solve the legitimacy crises of governance, they themselves are driven into a functional crisis

•  Despite welcoming rhetoric, real participation is hard to achieve in some or most situations

•  Different types of broadblocks •  cognitive: diffuse understanding of the usability of deliberation

as a component of policy making •  structural: inadequate infrastructures facilitating the translation

of deliberations to effective public policy •  operational: inadequate resources and skills in deliberative

bodies

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Rask, M. (forthcoming): The Tragedy of Citizen Deliberation – Two Cases of Participatory Technology Assessment, Technology Analysis and Strategic Management

TWO CASE STUDIES

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•  Global participatory process on climate change •  Objective: to give citizens possibility to define their

positions on some of the issues and questions central to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009 (COP15) •  Organized in 38 countries in September 26, 2009 •  Approximately 100 citizens in each event – 3800

globally •  The results communicated to COP15 negotiators •  Main coordinator: The Danish Board of Technology

(DBT)

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METHODOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS

•  A hybrid based on well-tested citizen participation methods (Bedsted et al., 2011) •  voting conference and interview meeting: voting on choices •  citizen hearing: table brainstorm and meeting priority-setting

recommendations •  consensus conference: principles of composition of the

information materials •  focus groups: test of information materials and questions

•  Same method cluster as citizen summits (AmericaSpeaks) and the Deliberative poll® (James Fishkin) •  procedure of citizen selection more elaborate than in citizen

summit but less elaborate than in deliberative poll

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•  CIVISTI gave citizens from 7 EU Member States an opportunity to define and communicate their visions of the future, and •  Transform these into relevant long-term STI issues

Objectives were to •  Produce a list of new and emerging issues for EU S&T •  Produce policy options of relevance to future FPs •  Base this on a novel process of citizen participation,

supported by analytical capacity of experts and stakeholders

METHODOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS

•  Participatory foresight provides for insight into the demand for future societal development •  by directly involving the

citizens/costumers/users/voters

•  Participatory “demand-side” foresight •  the supply-side over-

represented in other forms of foresight

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THE PROBLEM

•  Initial promises of the political relevance of the two exemplary projects were set high •  Evidence of their actual policy effects, however, is

dismal •  The general pattern in the policy effects of large-

scale DDPs can be characterized as: •  high learning outcomes •  low implementation outcomes •  moderate socio-political impacts

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COGNITIVE LEVEL EXPLANATIONS

•  The starting point •  The ’dominant shape’ of a participatory procedure was

approved by the organizer, for which reason the role of external actors is in participating to the negotiation of the ’dominant meaning’ of that procedure (Meyer & Schuber, 2007)

•  Some concepts to understand •  Path dependencies from organizational to cognitive level

matters (North, 2005) •  Interpretative frames (Garud and Ahlstrom, 1997) •  Waiting games (Borup et al., 2006)

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COGNITIVE ROADBLOCKS (RB)

•  RB1: Attraction to conflicting narratives and big numbers •  different expectations by the practitioners, politicians,

media

•  RB2: Demand for technical expertise •  different expectations by the practitioners and policy

makers

•  RB3: Risk of ’politically incorrect’ opinions •  different expectations by the practitioners and key

stakeholders

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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

•  The grey zone of participation is the judgemental area in the design of deliberations •  we can better understand the trade-offs but never get rid

of them

•  The ”tyranny of participation” is political misuse of participation •  we can anticipate misuses and consider alternatives to top

down models of participation

•  The ”tragedy of participation” turns high expectations of consequantiality to dysfunctionality •  different types of roadblocks have to be cleared to

overcome the darkest zone of participation

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!