A year’s gone and I’ve been given the OK to start year two of my PhD, but what have I achieved? Three passes in the taught modules on social science research and piles, nay heaps of reading.
And have I learned anything? That fairness is a complex subject. It is one of a number of moral behaviours that humans (and some other animals) have evolved over deep time to improve cooperation within groups. It’s innate, like language ability, and like language ability conceptions of fairness can differ depending on upbringing and life experiences. You can change your notions of it too although the chances of that recede as you grow older.
Does any of this relate to local government? I plan to look at councillors’ views on fairness; to see how they vary within and across persons in reaction to different case examples, ones they might typically come across in their daily interactions; all treated with confidentiality of course.
Opinions on fairness are usually made very quickly, within a second, and in any group of councillors (past and present) you can be sure that some will react one way and some another.
There are many realms on planet fairness: equality, merit, equity, opportunity, process, power and rights to name a few. Each has different sensitivities and opportunities for disagreement. My working model is that people will respond differently to the same situation due to their diverse backgrounds or assumptions; some will immediately fly off to one realm whereas others will jump to another. Some will be talking merit and just deserts whereas others will be thinking equality. This can lead to profound divergence over perceptions of fairness of a proposed policy or decision.
In local government much emphasis is placed on fairness of process. Areas of responsibility like social care, licensing and planning for example will have policy, and a decision based on policy is deemed fair if due-process has been followed; meaning no bias and a right to hear about and state one’s case. Public acceptance relies on a ‘fairness heuristic’, a natural mental shortcut, where one assumes fair treatment as long as the process followed is fair. Most research studies, but not all, show this heuristic. But is this fair? Firstly, local government policy can be set many years earlier, in different economic or political times, long before it is used to guide decisions. And secondly, was the policy making itself fair or was it dominated by large organisations or outdated assumptions.
The academic study of fairness has extra complexities…the term ‘equity’ is understood differently by those working in psychology (and business) to those in education and health. To the former it means merit; with rewards and punishments proportional to effort and input. To the latter it means giving a helping hand to those that need it. As humans we engage with both meanings.
Fairness is a field rich with research opportunity – too much for me to test them all. So in the coming year, once I have finished the readings, I need to discuss which areas might be of interest to councillors and create some examples for discussion in interviews and focus groups.
This is all with an aim to do what? That’s dictated by the results. For example, if it is discovered that there are some fairness situations which are more likely to trigger discord then, perhaps, adding more context and creating opportunity for discussion and reflection before councillors take a view might lead to better, fairer and more efficient decision making; especially when discussing mitigation of harm to affected residents or businesses.
Clive was a Bristol City Councillor and author of the book of his experiences, After The Revolution. He is entering Year 2 of a PhD at the University of Bristol. He blogs at https://sageandonion.substack.com/ and can be contacted at [email protected]
Right – we, meaning I, must start with a dilemma declaration. How to deal with a major national news item – “Birmingham City Council declares itself bankrupt” – the consequences of which, as a long-term Birmingham resident and ratepayer, will affect you personally and about which in the distant past you might well have been invited to opine seriously and professionally. Yes, carry on being retired and/or pretend you’re still on your hols.
Obviously, I’ve chosen an alternative route, emphasising background and context and stuff that might just provide some clarification, or at least updating. And, if it seems frivolous, tasteless or just indulgent, I apologise. Blame me, not the editor.
I’ll start, as it’s in the intendedly eye-catching title, with numerology – the study of the hidden, divine or mystical meaning of numbers. Even if you’re not into it, you’ll quite likely have come across ‘angel numbers’, aka ‘lucky primes’ – sequences of digits that supposedly bode well and make you feel good. Or, as the ologists put it, messages from the spiritual universe offering insight, wisdom, and directionality – three-digit ‘lucky primes’ usually including 127, 151, 163, 193, etc.
And which bunch of local government personnel, more than most, could benefit from having such character traits built into their job descriptions? Section 151 Officers, of course; aka Chief Finance Officers (CFOs) – those required by Section 151 of the 1972 Local Government Act to arrange and take responsibility for the proper administration of their local authorities’ financial affairs.
Just check out the numerologists. “The energies of number 1 combined with the vibrations of number 5 … a sign from the divine realm that you need to be strong, act as a leader, and be in control of your future life …” etc. etc.
The only problem being that, with a bit of searching, you can get similar hokum for almost any three- or four-digit number. So, somewhat to my disappointment I admit, no fiddling whatever would have been required of the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel – the people who actually draft our laws – to ensure that these matters would be dealt with by Section 151 of the 1972 Act. Excepting possibly the Satanic 666, which would make the Act impossibly long anyway, almost any three-digit number would have served.
I knew this back in 2017, but I’ve habitually kept a vague look-out for any published follow-up from my INLOGOV blogs and admit that I was quite chuffed when a few years ago one was picked up and passed on by Room 151 – the “online news, opinion and resource service for local authority Section 151 and other senior officers covering treasury, pensions, strategic finance, funding, resources and risk …”.
Chuffed too to that, albeit over a lengthier time period than I was envisaging, the broad thrust of my argument of more being on the way has proved to be accurate – a somewhat nerdy argument, admittedly, that can certainly be made even nerdier, but that, for current blogging purposes, can also be tolerably summarised in a few sentences.
So here goes! If a council’s Chief Finance/Section 151 Officer (forever male, of course, in the 1988 LG Finance Act, although Birmingham’s current Interim Director of Finance happens to be Fiona Greenway) reckons his council’s expenditure is likely to exceed available resources, he issues a Section 114 Notice prohibiting any new spending apart from that funding statutory services and existing contractual obligations. OK, geeks, they’re technically ‘Reports’, not ‘Notices’, but that really, really isn’t the serious issue.
It’s a situation in which things are pretty obviously and publicly getting out of hand – current spending way over budget, reserves virtually exhausted, no imminent solution. The alternative, however, is worse: Section 24 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014, or washing your dirty linen in public – the council’s EXTERNAL auditors appending a Section 24 ‘Recommendation’ to their Annual Audit letter, “copied to the Secretary of State”.
Which may sound chummy, but, I suggested, was “the bullet-shaped chumminess of a Mafia ‘message job’”: very nasty, and rarer even than 114 Notices – historically. Yet – and this is what prompted that 2017 blog – in the space of two months two Section 24s had been issued, to councils at the very extreme ends of the council scale spectrum: the Scilly Isles and Birmingham, the latter’s then Labour Leader, Cllr Sir Albert Bore, describing it as “the most concerning audit letter” he’d seen in his 36 years as a councillor. For the record, though, and without further explanation, that’s the last you’ll read of them in this particular blog.
The distinctions between the 114/24 courses of action were interesting and debatable, but you didn’t have to be a terribly nerdy follower of local government finances to see the probable beginnings of a trend, so it was pleasing to have been reckoned insightful by the serious pros in Room 151. Especially when the trend didn’t gather pace as quickly and widely as I speculated it might.
However, given the way local government finance ‘works’ in this country, particularly under Conservative administrations, it was only going to be a matter of time, and gradually the signals became unmissable – accelerating in quite a big way with (then Lab) Croydon LBC in late 2020, who issued not one but two s114 Notices in successive months, having again failed to balance its budget in the permitted 21 days of grace. Understandably, it prompted a Commons Inquiry by Clive Betts’ ever-watchful Local Government (sorry – Levelling-up, Housing & Communities) Committee.
Slough BC (Lab then, C/LD now) was next in July 2021, despite having been one of eight councils granted “exceptional support” the previous year, as Ministers became increasingly concerned at the adverse publicity generated by threats of councils ‘going broke’.
Come December and Cumbria’s Copeland BC (Lab then, since abolished and incorporated into Cumberland) was reported to be “in Section 114 territory”, but was soon overshadowed by (Lab) Nottingham City Council’s unlawfully diverting cash from what should have been a ring-fenced Housing Revenue Account to ‘General Funds’ – an ‘accounting error’ which personally I found extraordinary, since it’s one of the few bits of tekkie lg finance that even I know. And it dragged on.
2022 saw serious acceleration. In May Northumberland Council (Con)issued a s114 for unlawful expenditure, including allowances paid to the council’s Chief Executive. It was possibly the case generating least sympathy for the beleaguered council, whose elected members and officers went public with their mutual distrust – not the only such example, but probably the bitterest.
Towards the end of 2022 it became clear how desperate the situation – or at least the search for commissioners available to ’intervene’ – was becoming, as returning Local Government Secretary Michael Gove sought to launch anticipatory “turnaround programmes” short of sending in commissioners – ‘risk-mitigation directions’, in Govester jargon.
Not in time, however, to prevent Croydon LBC (NOC) issuing its third s114 in three years, and Thurrock Council (Con) having the courage/desperation to report that it would require “exceptional support” from Gove’s Department “over a number of years … to stabilise our financial position and give us time to have balanced budgets.”
At which point – after an obviously uplifting Christmas and New Year – “Whitehall officials”, in the person of Jeremy Pocklington, Permanent Secretary of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), had the confidence/nerve/effrontery to announce to a Select Committee that even at the time sounded, well, brave.
As reported in The MJ (Jan 10th), “Whitehall officials are not expecting councils to issue further Section 114 notices in the coming weeks … our assessment, looking at the sector as a whole, is that the financial position is sustainable … strengthened by the additional resources made available in the Autumn Statement.”
Apart, that is, from the nine councils within the Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities (Sigoma) who warned last week that they could issue a Section 114 notice by 2025; Stoke-on-Trent City Council (Lab) that announced this week that it is on the verge of bankruptcy … oh yes, and Birmingham.
Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan. He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.
“Things from the past you’ll never see again”. I came across a listing of these recently, and they were – well, moderately interesting. More so, anyway, than the accompanying “trends that have unfortunately returned” – pleated skirts, corsets, and structured vests, whatever they were.
The never-see-agains included smoking adverts, bubblegum cigarettes, and rotary push lawnmowers – to which I might easily have added “The Barnet Graph of Doom” as at least a never-expected-to-see-again.
It was a visual aid devised a dozen or so years ago primarily for the councillors of the London Borough of Barnet. It would come, however, to be associated with/appropriated by Birmingham City Council, and something with which some INLOGOV colleagues were so taken that it was discussed and illustrated in these pages not once but repeatedly – by, inter alia, me in May 2012 and January 2013 and the Institute’s then Director and this blog’s progenitor, Catherine Staite, in December 2012 and October 2013. Indeed, as Catherine notes in that second blog, it at least part-prompted an INLOGOV ‘book’ or, more accurately, Discussion Paper.
Impactful at the time, then, but at least not prominently, I presumed, over the ensuing decade. Certainly I, though at best semi-detached from these matters nowadays, was genuinely surprised to be confronted by its reappearance in a recent Financial Times (indeed, its double reappearance). Somewhat less so that it was credited entirely to Birmingham City Council, with Barnet getting, as my mother would have said, nary a mention. Which justifies at least a brief résumé, and for more senior readers a bit of reminiscence.
Some 15 years or so ago the very Conservative Barnet LBC acquired the not entirely flattering moniker of ‘easyCouncil’ – that precise orthography/spelling, though frequently ignored in the media, being arguably the policy’s most appealing attribute. With its stray upper-case C intendedly referencing the easyJet business model that inspired the council’s almost boundless outsourcing drive for no-frills efficiency, it embraced pretty well all services, from reduced-size waste bins and privatised street cleaning to limited ‘personalised’ adult social care budgets.
Improved and cheaper services were obviously the aim, but senior officers foresaw that the sheer scale of demographic change – more children, more elderly – would in any foreseeable future take up an unmanageable proportion of the Council’s increasingly constricted budget. “No libraries, no parks, no leisure centres – not even bin collections”. Hence the original Barnet Graph of Doom. The one on the left of the illustration, that is – the other, pleasing if more alarmist one, being a public ‘reminder’ tweeted a few years later, just as the social services budget was seriously taking off as forecast.
The Barnet graph, described at some length in my first blog and more summarily by the Guardian’s Public Services editor, David Brindle, started life as part of first a PowerPoint, later video, presentation used by the Council’s Chief Executive, Nick Walkley, to:
“focus the thoughts of colleagues and councillors … In five to seven years we get to the point where it starts to restrict our ability to do anything very much else. Over a 20-year period, unless there was really radical corrective action, adult social care and children’s services would need to take up the totality of our existing budget.”
The tone, as Brindle noted, was deliberately alarmist, with the policy making no provision, inter alia, for Barnet’s anticipated rise in income through regeneration schemes. As an illustrative device, though, it was hugely effective. It featured regularly in local government media, and also in presentations by the late Sir Bob Kerslake – then Permanent Secretary at the DCLG, and whose outstanding career in both central and local government was fulsomely recounted following his recent death.
Alarming, yes, but “Where are the jaws?”, I hear you ask – and, of course, there weren’t any, yet. They were Birmingham Council’s contribution when it took the idea over and “simplified/dramatised” it by, as Patrick Butler put it, again in The Guardian, projecting “a ‘budget pressures’ line rising steeply to the top right of the grid, and a ‘grant reductions’ line crashing to the bottom right.” It featured prominently as a ‘Jaws of Doom Graph’ in the council’s 2013 Budget Consultation document, and could indeed resemble, as Butler suggested, “a child’s depiction of a shark, or crocodile, about to bite its prey. Lunch, in this case, appears to be local government itself.”
In my January 2013 blog I sought to address the question of whether the ‘doom-mongering’ was entirely fair: Were “Birmingham and urban councils generally, or Labour councils, or the country’s most deprived areas, being particularly harshly treated by the government’s grant funding cuts?”
Which, you’ll be relieved to learn, I’ll not be bothering you with here – not least because, as already noted, for the vast bulk of the past decade I’ve personally given these particular ‘Jaws of Doom’ and their graph scarcely a passing thought. Now, though, I wonder whether that’s simply another consequence of a retiree’s detachment from the daily concerns and parlance of local government personnel. Could it be that this is what today’s finance officers jaw about, as it were, down the pub of an evening?
For suddenly there it was, weeks before the journalistic ‘silly season’, and in ‘The Pink Un’ – no, not Norwich City FC’s newsletter, but the albeit self-styled “worldʼs leading global business publication”: “The Jaws of Doom” graph in its original glory, and not once but twice. First, in a kind of editorial intro by Associate Editor, Stephen Bush, commending to readers William Wallis’ “excellent piece … featuring this alarming chart [shown on the right below] about the … ‘jaws of doom’ facing local authorities”. And then Wallis’ article itself.
As you’d expect, it’s a good summary presentation – that I’d certainly be recommending to students, if I still had any – the thrust of which is that:
“for more than a decade, local authorities in England have been sacrificing services and staff to what they call “the jaws of doom” – a reference to a graphic produced by Birmingham city council to show worsening budgetary pressures, that resembled a crocodile’s mouth.
Between rising demand for social care and other essential services, and the dwindling funds councils have received to provide these, discretionary spending on everything from libraries to youth clubs has already been eaten up.
Although local authorities won a better than usual financial settlement for 2023-24, 9.4% up on the year before, inflation running at 8.7% is eroding any benefits.”
And, having already well exceeded a thousand words, that’s where I’ll stop … though not before sharing the interesting and, more importantly, interactive graph of Sigoma’s English Indices of Multiple Deprivation also included in Wallis’ article – not new, so doubtless familiar to some readers, but to me unfamiliar, informative (see added results), surprising in places, and, I felt, worth sharing. It made me (almost) sad not still to be lecturing and so able to play with it in public, as they say!
Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan. He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.
We know our GPs are busy; and indeed, during my visits, I have seen how hard they work — my own doctor is amazing. But I also hear, too frequently, from our residents of their struggles to get an appointment, to use online systems or to see a GP in person.
As a Brent councillor, I chair two health committees — one in Brent, and the other covering the 8 NW London boroughs — and I am proud of our NHS, in this 75th anniversary year, particularly our primary care service.
So, a few days ago, I was pleased to welcome GPs from across NW London to Brent and to hear about some of the changes our local NHS is implementing to help us all get the very best from our GP surgeries.
A new campaign from NHS NW London, We Are General Practice, explains the different people who are now working in our GP surgeries. I have met with GPs from across NW London, and they have spoken about how sometimes our residents do not actually need to see a GP — they can see a specialist like, say, a diabetes nurse, a pharmacist, or a physiotherapist. In many places, these people are now working side by side with the GP in the same building which, of course, is fantastic for patients.
Not only does this ease the pressure on our GPs but it means that, as a patient, you will be seen by the best possible person in a timely manner.
Also, what is special about this campaign is how it has used input from our residents. We often hear the phrase “co-produced”. Well, this is, perhaps, the best possible example of that phrase. The teams in NW London, who are always out and about across the boroughs listening to residents, have taken on board what they have heard and used it to shape, not just the campaign, but the improvements we are beginning to see across our general practices.
We, in local government, of course, have a part to play. Not only are we more formally in partnership with the NHS locally now but we are all here to support the same people. The NHS call them patients, we call them residents. And we can all support people navigating their way through services and help with the sign posting and support.
So, my thanks to all those residents who shared their experiences and views on how our health services can improve.
Our GPs, and their teams, do such a lot to keep us all well and I am pleased to see this campaign shine a light on all the people that make up a general practice team.
Cllr Ketan Sheth chairs the North West London Join Health Scrutiny Committee
Previouscolumns have urged a cautious approach to the introduction of photographic voter ID in England. The May 2023 elections provided the first nationwide test of the system, and early analyses are highlighting some significant issues.
Elections took place in 230 areas in England and around 27 million people were eligible to vote. This week, the Association of Electoral Administrators (the people in councils who actually deliver elections) issued their post-match analysis, highlighting ‘the fragility of the system’ and recommending a fundamental review of the country’s electoral arrangements.
With less than four months between the enactment of the new legislation and polling day, which included new statutory duties on accessibility as well as voter ID, councils faced a huge and risky task to administer the new system effectively. They also faced significantly more paperwork, with new forms to track electors unable to vote and new data capture requirements. The AEA report significant impact on polling officials: ‘many of our members reported POs feeling overwhelmed by paperwork and the time it takes to complete throughout polling day and at the close of poll’.
The AEA report reveals that the government’s website to provide free photo ID to those needing Voter Authority Certificates (VACs) failed to work properly from its launch in January and many functions were still not available by the deadline to apply for a VAC for 4 May poll. Updates were still being issued two weeks before polling day. Almost 90,000 people applied for VACs by the deadline, well short of the Electoral Commission’s earlier estimate of 250,000 – 350,000 applications based on the proportion of local election voters who did not have suitable ID. Many didn’t know they would need one – just over half (57%) of the overall population and those who said they did not already have photo ID were aware of VACs in May, according to the Electoral Commission.
The types of photo ID acceptable under the legislation proved rather esoteric. Passports are accepted, but what about a passport from Zimbabwe or a British format immigration document? London Oyster 60+ cards are accepted, but not the Merseytravel Over 60s pass which has similar application checks. Photo IDs issued by councils themselves, such as taxi licences and gun licences, were presented but could not be accepted. Similarly police warrant cards, NHS and other emergency services photo ID were presented but unable to be accepted.
The Electoral Commission’s interim report on the election was issued on 23rd June. They found that immediately before polling day, 87% of people in England (excluding London, where there were no elections) were aware that they needed to show photo ID to vote at a polling station – implying that around 3.5 m potential voters were not aware as the poll approached. Awareness was lowest amongst young people, BME communities, those who haven’t previously voted in local elections, and people who didn’t have the necessary forms of photo ID.
To avoid voters queuing for a ballot paper and being turned away, in some areas ‘greeters’ were appointed to meet electors as they arrived and check whether they had an accepted form of photo ID with them. Others provided posters and banners to explain the requirements outside polling stations. Polling stations with greeters recorded a smaller proportion of people ‘turned away’ inside the polling station compared to those without greeters. As a result of voters receiving advice outside the polling stations, and because of some other data issues, we should treat statistics on numbers of electors unable to vote with caution. Data collected inside polling stations shows that at least at least 0.7% of people (39,000 voters) who tried to vote at a polling station were initially turned away but around two-thirds of those people (63%) returned later in the day and were able to vote. In some councils more than 1 in 100 electors were turned away.
More worryingly, the Electoral Commission found that 4% of people who said they did not vote in these elections gave an unprompted reason related to the ID rules, and the proportion of non-voters giving an ID-related reason rose from 4% to 7% when survey respondents were selecting from a list of reasons.
It was not possible to capture reliable demographic data on people who were not able to vote because of the ID requirement because electoral law did not allow polling station staff to collect demographic information about individuals who were turned away. In the EC survey, disabled people and those who are unemployed were more likely than other groups to give a reason related to ID for not voting.
Voter confidence doesn’t seem to have been massively improved. In fact, the EC found 68% of people were confident that the May elections were well run, compared to 73% in 2022. For those who said they were not confident, the most common reason selected (by 46%) was that “some people were unable to vote due to the ID requirement”.
We await the Electoral Commission’s full report in the autumn.
Meanwhile, I close with an interesting comment made at the National Conservatism conference on the 15th May 2023 by former Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Sir Jacob William Rees-Mogg:
Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them – as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections. We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.
Jason Lowther is the Director of INLOGOV. His research focuses on public service reform and the use of “evidence” by public agencies. Previously he worked with West Midlands Combined Authority, led Birmingham City Council’s corporate strategy function, worked for the Audit Commission as national value for money lead, for HSBC in credit and risk management, and for the Metropolitan Police as an internal management consultant. He tweets as @jasonlowther
Without a question, decolonisation is a slippery concept already! Decolonising democratic innovations (DI) is even more slippery because of its inherently normative foundation. Here, Temidayo Eseounu’s argument in her blog, which forms part of the Political Studies Association’s Participatory and Deliberative Democracy Specialist Group’s blog series on Decolonising Democratic Innovations, could not be more to the point: ‘Eurocentric normative values such as inclusion, equity, representation and equality are intrinsic to the theories of participatory and deliberative democracies, which underpin democratic innovations’. Indeed, the fact that a citizen jury or mini public, where groups of citizens meet to reflect on problems and assess policy proposals, is firmly rooted in a set of Eurocentric norms makes it a productive democratic innovation in a Western context, where people value above all individual rights and personal expression and are used to openly criticizing their leaders. Such an approach to public participation is in harmony with the social contracts found in Western civilizations, which typically construct mankind as free and equal by nature, and base political authority on the individual self-interests of members of society. Typically, under a Western vantage point, a well facilitated citizen jury or mini public would be praised for offering a ‘platform for exchange’, ‘giving a voice to marginalised members of the community’, ‘deepening democracy’ and ‘improving governance’.
‘Equality’ or ‘inclusion’ are not universal concepts
Such normative framing, which indeed constitutes the very foundation of the concept of democratic innovation, disregards the vastly different realities of most non-Western societies, their underpinning Weltanschauung, core values, beliefs, ethics, and their historical social contracts that help to structure the relationship between the people and their government. In many societies, the universalism of normative values and motivations, such as inclusion, equity, representation and equality, is fallacious – they are inherently Eurocentric! Irrespective of how expertly designed a citizen panel or mini public might be, it would not work well in many collectivist societies in non-Western contexts, where people do not prioritise values such as equality, individualism and personal freedom. For example, participatory activities in non-Western governance settings, such as the United Arab Emirates or Singapore, are not aiming to tackle a democratic deficit, accomplish egalitarian objectives or wholly enhance governmental accountability. In those contexts, while the purpose of a mini public might very well be public service improvements for all, however they are not intended to provide a platform for collectively debating political questions behind services and policies, nor to strengthen inclusion, equality or equity beyond particular segments of the population – as it might be in the West.
Different strokes for different folks
Being clear about the normative foundation of participatory and deliberative events in non-Western settings requires a holistic understanding of the respective local context, or life world, which is a state of affairs in which the everyday world is experienced by the people, who simultaneously create social reality while being constrained by it. For instance, the Balinese life world is based on viewing the cosmos as a grand hierarchy, wherein animals and demons are at the bottom, gods and god-kings are at the top, and ordinary mortals are distributed throughout an elaborate assortment of fixed status ranks in between. The often cantankerous nature of Western-type citizen panels that assume every human being is equal and has a right to pursue his or her self-interest could be viewed as an incomprehensible and disrespectful exercise that causes more damage than good to the community and established hierarchies. Similarly, the press in Arabic Bedouin societies often portrays Western-style democratic innovations with their explicit advocacy and public naming and shaming as ‘uncivilized’. The Bedouin culture of ‘saving face’, loyalty to the leader and respect for his ‘God-given’ mandate, safeguarding family honour and tribal traditions is not compatible with the reform-seeking debates and critical tirades that can typify Western-style citizen juries. Under the vantage point of bedoucrats (those who believe in Bedoucracy, which proffers a model of Arab public management that originates in the Bedouin tribal culture and joins traditional bureaucratic design with tribal power culture), many Western-type democratic innovations amount to little more than a ‘narcissist circus’. However, the Bedouin culture of mediating by means of patience and forgiveness and seeking compromise, which signifies some synergy with Western-style citizen juries, has ensured that there are a number of age-old traditional institutions in Arab Bedouin societies that can be built upon for the purpose of engaging members of the public in participatory and deliberative exercises.
This was done in a Taiwan Buddhist village. Aware of the foreign (Eurocentric) norms that underpin the theory and design of democratic innovations, a team of facilitators who were tasked with conceiving and facilitating a citizen assembly to explore public service challenges and policy solutions in a Taiwanese Buddhist village, had no other choice but to construct and formulate from scratch not a democratic but a culturally appropriate innovation by building on traditional institutions. Given that the citizens’ life world was particularly characterised by a collective emphasis on ‘belonging to one large family’ and ‘respecting social hierarchy’, the facilitators knew that those agreeing to participate in the citizen assembly would not be willing to raise problems for fear of being seen as disrespecting the family and its established hierarchy. Hence, the facilitators framed the act of problem exploration as a co-operative endeavour along Buddhist concepts, such as the ‘eightfold noble path’ and ‘cause-condition-effect’ and developed a buddhicratic approach to delivering and facilitating a citizen assembly with a normative foundation that was in harmony with local worldviews, values, ethics and social contracts.
What now?
Having unmasked the Eurocentricity of DI’s normative foundation, how do we then begin the process of radical renewal with a view to construct a new, broader, postcolonial normative foundation that allows for an increasingly pluralistic approach? Is it even possible to reconsider the legitimacy and comprehensiveness of the established knowledge on democratic innovations by applying the hermeneutic resources and referencing the precepts of the very theories we criticise? As with all wicked and intractable issues, we may have to accept that there is no one panacea. Instead, theorists and practitioners will need to undergo a paradigm shift and prepare themselves to accept and engage with a rich variety of truths, and their underpinning values, social contracts and hierarchies of power. Given the current dearth of non-Western theories and practical templates on public participation and deliberation, we will need to work on a case-by-case basis in constructing locally sensitive and culturally appropriate innovations that are not necessarily and inevitably aspiring to be democratic, but depending on the case perhaps buddhicratic, bedoucratic or othercratic. Importantly, by capturing the empirical observations from each case and theorising the insights gained on platforms such as this blog, or in special issues such as the one on ‘Decolonising the Public Administration Curriculum’ (link to Call for Abstracts here), or in journals that explicitly focus on promoting knowledge exchange across vastly different contexts and episteme such as Public Administration & Development, in time, we might be able to consolidate empirical regularities and develop new, postcolonial theoretical models.
Abena Dadze-Arthur is Assistant Professor at the School of Government (INLOGOV), University of Birmingham, and Associate Editor of the Wiley journal Public Administration & Development. Combining the experience of an international policy practitioner with the robust theoretical approach of an academic, Abena’s research and teaching focus on decolonizing and transforming approaches to public management and governance, and contributing to the development of indigenous solutions and sustainable change.
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