Citizen engagement supports development, report concludes

Over the past ten years, the Development Resource Centre and the Institute of Development Studies have been running 100 research programmes in nearly 20 countries to explore how citizen engagement supports development around the world. Their paper, So What Difference Does It Make? Mapping the Outcomes of Citizen Engagement, was published in October 2010, and found that there was a positive impact on development in 75% of their case studies on engagement. By this, they meant that those engagement projects had contributed to the construction of citizenship, strengthened practices of participation, built responsive and accountable states, or created more inclusive and cohesive societies. Moreover, the researchers found that engagement contributed to measurable Millennium Development Goals in health, education or sanitation.

While the study was overwhelmingly positive in the case for engagement in development, there were caveats. As one would expect, there were some negative outcomes where tokenistic engagement created a sense of disempowerment. The authors were also surprised at how often citizens could face reprisals when voicing opinions, in the form of state violence or denial of resources. Furthermore, even where the outcomes were not negative, they often did not lead directly towards development outcomes, but rather created a tapestry of outcomes which were ‘highly iterative, rarely linear and often uneven.’

Evidence that increased engagement contributes to the construction of citizenship is also provided in a recent Sciencewise publication, What the People Say. The authors worked with participants who had been involved in dialogue processes and found that deliberative engagement can ‘provide an opportunity to support the development of democratic capabilities in the citizens involved and increase the likelihood of the public getting involved in future policy discussions.’ This will be particularly important in the development of a Big Society which will rely on active and engaged citizens.