Deliberative democracy and the devolution of power in Camden.
| Author | Gould, Georgia |
Deliberative democracy has the power to counteract division and lack of trust in politics, deliver more radical solutions to problems, and involve communities in tackling those problems. We talked to Georgia Gould, leader of Camden Council, about the transformative potential of deliberative democracy at a local level.
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite (FSB): What was the problem that you were hoping that deliberative democracy would solve?
Georgia Gould (GG): There is huge distrust at the moment in our political process in general, and fragmentation within our political debate; often issues are approached as single issues which impact on different groups, and there aren't forums where people from different backgrounds, and different communities, come together.
We also felt that some voices end up getting lost or missed out of the debate in Camden. We're an incredibly dynamic and diverse borough, we have so many people who want to get involved in politics; but there are other people who don't have as much time, or as many resources, or who for reasons of language aren't always able to be part of that dialogue. I didn't want any one voice to dominate decision-making. Citizens' assemblies are a powerful way of ensuring that different voices are heard, but also of allowing different communities to come together and discuss trade-offs, and be part of the political process collectively.
What was really interesting in our first big citizens' assembly--on the future of Camden--was how much social isolation emerged as a key issue. People really value Camden's diversity and community, but there was a sense that communities were being pulled further apart, that there was a rise in hate, that community spirit was at risk. Having a place where we come together as citizens to hold political dialogue helps address that. My long-term ambition is that every citizen in Camden will go through the process in some way--so that each will have been part of that process of collective dialogue, collective imagining of the future we want. Whether that's about the future of their neighbourhood, or a big issue--we've got a citizens' assembly on the climate crisis at the moment. I think that if this was replicated nationally it would transform the trust and understanding of our democratic process.
FSB: Honing in on this term citizenship--this is something research on deliberative democracy really highlights, that when people come together to discuss an issue in their capacity as citizens, rather than as an individual, or as a consumer, you get different outcomes. (1) Have you seen that in practice?
GG: Absolutely. When we provide services we often use terms like 'customer', or 'service user', and I talk a lot about the need for us to think about people as citizens. Not all our residents in Camden are citizens of the UK, of course, but everyone who lives here is in a broad sense a citizen of Camden.
In citizens' assemblies, the dialogue is about what we as a council can do, but it's also about what communities themselves can do. And we really find that the discussion goes in that direction. If it's just someone coming with an issue to the local authority, then the discussion is what can you do in local government about my problem? But when people come together as citizens to discuss an issue, we end up with a discussion about what the council can do, but also what the community can do--so you get to a completely different place. Citizens set the agenda, determine what they want to do about it, and how the council can support them in that.
And whatever the issue, we find that the solutions always involve an element of connectedness--of neighbourhoods coming together. Things like street parties are really important--they're ways of being together in the real world. We've found in the process of doing these assemblies that there is a huge desire to be part of and contribute to Camden.
In fact, the assemblies have been just one part of a broader suite of forms of civic engagement. We did a community survey, led by our community researchers--local people from diverse communities in Camden who are paid to do research within those communities--and 80 per cent of the people surveyed said they wanted to work with their neighbours to improve the place in which they live. That's a really significant desire. If we can enable and support citizens' forums they can be really powerful.
At the moment, we're trying a neighbourhood assembly in the north-west of the borough on health and wellbeing. There's a lot of change going on in the health and social care system at the moment--but a lot of the work to deliver greater integration of services is driven by the people running those services, not the users. So we thought we should see what happened if this process was led by a social movement for health. What would that look like? How could we create it?
The neighbourhood assembly is made up of people from the...
To continue reading
Request your trialCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
