Экзамен зачет учебный год 2023 / Participatory Democracy

2.8.3

Participatory democracy

Sometimes called ‘deliberative’ or ‘direct democracy’ participatory democracy promotes direct participation by individuals and groups in decisions which affect them. It is favoured by republicans. The UK Constitution makes little provision for participation. Indeed, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index (Economist 2010), the UK has one of the lowest levels of democratic participation in the developed world. Supporters of participation claim that it can harness ‘reason’ from a wide range of perspectives and enhances dignity and public education. However, participants are voiceless without rules and leaders who stage-manage their involvement.

Sherry R. Arnstein’s 8-level Ladder of Participation illustrates different levels of stage-managed participation (‘A Ladder of Citizen Participation’, JAIP, Vol. 35, No. 4, July 1969, pp. 216–224). It is based on experience in the USA but also has relevance in the UK.

1. Manipulation – people are placed on rubberstamp advisory committees or advisory boards for the express purpose of ‘educating’ them or engineering their support: a public relations vehicle by power holders.

2. Therapy – under a masquerade of involving citizens in planning, the experts subject the citizens to clinical group therapy, for example ‘where tenant groups are used as vehicles for promoting control-your-child or cleanup campaigns. The tenants are brought together to help them “adjust their values and attitudes to those of the larger society”. Under these ground rules, they are diverted from dealing with such important matters as: arbitrary evictions’.

3. Informing – informing citizens of their rights, responsibilities, and options can be the most important first step toward legitimate citizen participation. However, too frequently the emphasis is placed on a one-way flow of information – from officials to citizens – with no channel provided for feedback and no power for negotiation.

4. Consultation – inviting citizens’ opinions, like informing them, can be a legitimate step toward their full participation. But if consulting them is not combined with other modes of participation, this rung of the ladder is still a sham since it offers no assurance that citizens’ concerns and ideas will be taken into account. The most frequent methods used for consulting people are attitude surveys, neighbourhood meetings, and public hearings. When powerholders restrict the input of citizens’ ideas solely to this level, participation remains just a window-dressing ritual.

5. Placation – it is at this level that citizens begin to have some degree of influence though tokenism is still apparent. An example of placation strategy is to place a few hand-picked ‘worthy’ poor on public bodies (such as school governors). If they are not accountable to a constituency in the community and if the traditional power elite hold the majority of seats, the have-nots can be easily outvoted and outfoxed.

6. Partnership – at this rung of the ladder, power is in fact redistributed through negotiation between citizens and powerholders. They agree to share planning and decision-making responsibilities through such structures as joint policy boards, planning committees and mechanisms for resolving impasses. This does not exist in the UK.

7. Delegated power – negotiations between citizens and public officials can also result in citizens achieving dominant decision-making authority over a particular plan or programme. At this level, the ladder has been scaled to the point where citizens hold the significant cards to assure accountability of the programme to them. To resolve differences, powerholders need to start the bargaining process rather than respond to pressure from the other end. (This does not exist in the UK.)

8. Citizen control – degree of power (or control) which guarantees that participants or residents can govern a programme or an institution, be in full charge of policy and managerial aspects, and be able to negotiate the conditions under which ‘outsiders’ may change them. (This does not exist in the UK.)

Recognising that in a complex society full participation might be impracticable, many have argued (such as Hannah Arendt, 1906–75) that participation should apply to smaller units such as local government, charities and the workplace (civil society). Habermas suggests a form of deliberative democracy that he regards as appropriate to contemporary circumstances in which the state is merely one among numerous community organisations, each comprising activists ‘deliberating’ on equal terms. The role of the law is to coordinate these units and to ensure that the discussions are open, fair and equal (‘Three Normative Models of Democracy’ in The Inclusion of the Other (MIT Press 1996)). Social networking technology opens up considerable scope not yet exploited outside the realm of limited public demonstrations.

Liberals, notably Mill, have objected that deliberative democracy is likely to attract busybodies, the self-promoting, the corrupt, the ignorant and cranks. It also favours the wealthy and leisured. However, representative democracy is not immune from these distortions.

UK law provides for deliberative democracy only in a limited and piecemeal way:

◗ The jury system for serious criminal trials and in certain civil cases is the only example regarded as important enough to have constitutional status (Juries Act 1974). It has been suggested that citizens’ juries should be enlisted to make decisions in constitutional cases as a response to the problem that many see in fundamental rights being determined by unelected judges. ◗ Statute provides machinery for referendums (Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000), which have become increasingly used especially in relation to devolved powers in Scotland and Wales and local government (Section 5.10). There are also provisions for referendums relating to EU powers. It is often argued that the use of referendums would threaten the equality protected by representative democracy since a referendum is liable to be manipulated by vested interests.

The government usually consults interested parties (as designated by itself) and sometimes the public when policies are proposed although there is no general legal requirement to do so. In some cases statute requires consultation and the courts can ensure that the process is fair and is not merely window dressing. For instance in Berkeley v Secretary of State for the Environment [2000] 3 All ER 897 the House of Lords held that a local authority was required to make environmental information relating to a proposal for a football stadium conveniently available to the public even though the council already had adequate evidence to enable it to make a decision. Lord Hoffmann suggested that public consultation was an end in itself and not merely an instrument of effective decision making. However, vested interests with informal links with government officials or those who finance political parties may have an advantage in the consultation process.

◗ There are formal statutory public inquiries into many decisions relating to land development where those who can afford good lawyers have an advantage. The outcome is not normally binding on the government.

◗ There is also some participation in the provision for ‘parish meetings’ at local government level in small rural villages. However, these have little power other than in relation to local amenities such as playgrounds. The Localism Act 2011 introduces direct public involvement in certain land use planning decisions.

◗ There is provision for ‘e-petitions’ to the House of Commons (Section 13.6).

Participatory democracy shares with representative democracy a concern with freedom of expression, particularly freedom of the press and with public access to information. Thus Lord Bingham pointed out in McCartan Turkington- Breen v Times Newspapers [2000] 2 AC 277 at 922 that a ‘free, active, professional and enquiring press’ was all the more important to support a participatory democracy since the majority of people can participate only indirectly.