From Porto Alegre to Tower Hamlets
Shazia Hussain first heard of participatory budgeting when she attended the “Champions of Participation” workshop hosted by the Citizenship DRC, LogoLink and other UK partners in 2007.
Shazia is now moving to the forefront of this technique in the UK, and increasingly finding herself embroiled in the challenge of moving the country toward a deeper form of democracy.
While at the workshop listening to a presentation by Olivio Dutra, the former Mayor of Porto Alegre, Brazil, Shazia says something clicked.
“It took the whole discussion to a higher level,” said, Shazia, whose job is to manage the Tower Hamlets Local Strategic Partnership and facilitate public involvement in the deprived London Borough of Tower Hamlets. “It just wasn’t about engagement, but active participation in decision-making.”
The Brazilian town has become famous for letting citizens decide how to spend portions of its budget. In a first stage, citizens are invited to attend local meetings to deliberate on spending priorities. Then they choose a representative to transmit their opinion at subsequent meetings. The process culminates more than a year later with the formation of a Council of Participatory Budgeting, comprised of delegates from the city’s 16 regions, which approves a spending proposal and submits it to the city council for final and legal ratification.
Inspired by the example, Shazia returned to London to advocate for participatory budgeting in her own borough. Owing to her efforts, her local council has agreed to set aside £2.4 million to be allocated using some of same methods as found in Brazil.
Shazia soon discovered how unique her experiment is in the UK. Her team spent nearly an entire year looking for examples of participatory budgeting in the country, but found nothing as established as the Porto Alegre system.
“ There wasn’t that much happening; everywhere I looked, people were still learning,” she said.
Pioneering the methods, however, also means that Shazia will confront the obstacles and challenges that currently impede deeper forms of democracy from taking root in the UK.
Over the past 10 years, participation policy in the UK has undergone a dramatic shift, yet the practice of public involvement still lags behind. The 2008 white paper by the national government on public participation – entitled Communities in Power: Real People, Real Power – sets a goal to “pass power into the hands of local communities so as to generate vibrant local democracy in every part of the country and give real control over local decisions to a wider pool of active citizens.”
Many people describe these reforms as a ‘unique policy moment’ for participation and empowerment in the UK. Indeed, participatory budgeting in Tower Hamlets has been made possible by the recent white paper.
As the policy is implemented, it will imply a shift away from the previous decade’s focus on citizens as consumers, empowered primarily through personal choice within a public sector ‘market place.’ Instead, the new forms of governance will place a greater emphasis on citizens as members of a community that is empowered, through participation in the planning and delivery processes to set priorities, shape services and affect the quality of life and well-being in their area.
The pathway to realising this vision, however, has been obstructed at times by the centralised structure of the UK government, by a lack of shared understanding about public involvement and by years of policies that have actively discouraged community mobilization.
“I think the central government is championing participation polic y, but still working through with Local Authorities about the practical consequences of implementation ,” she said.
Other challenges include how to bolster the quality and quantity of public participation and how to transform the attitudes of public servants who remain tied to a notion of representative democracy in which MPs and councillors act as opinion leaders.
Confronted with such impediments, Shazia is taking a graduated approach. Tower Hamlets has a history of progressive community-led consultation, with abundant experience gained through the Tower Hamlets Partnership and its Community Plan: all made possible by the political support of councillors, Shazia says. Still, the move from consulting citizens to adjudicating power over major decisions cannot be done in one turn. Nor can a Brazilian model be imported wholesale into a UK context.
In Porto Alegre, citizens can propose the projects that the participatory budget will fund. In Tower Hamlets, residents voted on a list of possible projects based on local priorities established through its Local Area Partnerships and other consultations with residents on issues of concern.
Over the course of eight public meetings across the borough, residents are invited to come and vote from this ready menu of activities. At the meetings, senior managers give presentations on the proposed initiatives, allowing participants to break into small groups to discuss and deliberate. The results of the voting are displayed live on a screen as participants place their votes on electronic pads.
The project has already begun to change Tower Hamlets residents from users and choosers of services to makers and shapers of policy, giving people the opportunity to influence the delivery of services on those issues that are most important to them: anti-social behaviour, young people and the public realm.
The meetings have attracted unprecedented numbers. In prior consultations, about 25 people on average would turn up, or perhaps as many as 50 on an issue that deeply interests the community. At the first seven meetings to allocate the £2.4 million, more than 700 people have participated.
Still, with a total population of 200,000 in the borough, the turnout – however improved - is still less than one-tenth of one percent. There is scope to further broaden participation, no doubt, but by how much – to 0.5 per cent, 5 per cent, 20 per cent?
Paul Skidmore and other researchers have concluded that one cannot expect more than 1 per cent of a population to participate actively in area improvement activities. Whatever the level of participation, such initiatives must be communicated effectively to ensure that discussions occur in homes, schools, places of worship and other locations of everyday democracy.
Fortunately, such challenges are not Shazia’s alone to resolve. Shazia will be hosting a learning workshop in Tower Hamlets with delegates from the UK Participatory Unit, Governance International, IDeA and her team to look at how the process can be strengthened for next year.
A network of like-minded activists and government officials is also forming in other regions in the UK, as evidenced most recently in October 2008 by another spin-off of the Champions of Participation workshop. The event, held in Skipton, brought together another 46 ‘champions’ to discuss ideas for community empowerment in the Yorkshire and Humber region. The meeting – From Engagement to Empowerment – was hosted by the South Yorkshire Improvement Partnership (SYIP) and the regional empowerment partnership – National Empowerment Partnership in Yorkshire & the Humber (NEPYH), led by COGS.
Such ripples of influence underscore one of the lessons learnt by the Citizenship DRC: if you change how people see public policy, people will see to it that public policy changes.
Related Resources
Champions of Participation: Engaging Citizens in Local Government
The report confirms the critical role of people inside government to ensure citizen participation works and provides many key lessons for those playing this role.
Case Studies from
Champions of Participation
This set of case studies show innovative and fresh examples of citizen engagement with challenges and possible solutions:
Citizens reclaim their rights to be informed: Abuja, Nigeria
Communities with clear vision: Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA
Public congress and citizen participation in disaster zones: New Orleans, USA
NGO influence on government policy on citizen participation: South Africa
Participatory budgeting for a vibrant city: Newcastle, UK
A citizen’s perspective: Sheffield, UK
The Alinksy method of participation and social change: The East London Communities Organisation, UK
Policy perspectives: citizen participation in local governance
International and UK policy perspectives in light of the growing interest in more participatory forms of governance around the world.
Hard copies can be obtained by emailing ppsc@ids.ac.uk
John Gaventa, Director of the Citizenship DRC contributed to an Economic and Social Research Council Seminar Series called 'Mapping the public policy landscape'. ESRC Seminar Series: Mapping the public policy landscape