Interview with Simon Burall

Simon Burall is the Director of Involve. He has long and extensive experience in the fields of democratic reform, governance, public participation, stakeholder engagement, and accountability and transparency. He has worked at the national level in Africa, Asia and Europe as well as on related issues of global governance and democracy.

You are the Director of the Charity Involve, could you tell us about what the organisation does and why it is important? 
Involve is a charity that undertakes research into public engagement and public engagement processes, particularly to try to help policy-makers to understand how public engagement will make their decisions more effective and efficient.

The reason that it is important is because while the world is always changing, the pace of this change has been qualitatively different in the last 10-15 years. We have had changes in science and technology that are impacting more deeply in people’s lives. The change of pace in information and communication technology in particular has radically changed the relationship between citizens and Government. Alongside this, partly driven by these two factors but by others as well, is that there has been a decline of trust in Government, specifically in representative Government. This is at the same time as the rise in importance of supranational institutions. All of this has led to the sense that old institutions of Government are not working and are not delivering. So, we were set up to explore the role that public engagement and participatory democracy can play in public decision-making at every level; at the local, national and global level.

For us, public engagement is about providing mechanisms and structures for the public to have their voice heard and affect decision-making. It is partly about transparency and the provision of information, as much as it is about hearing public opinion. It operates across a whole spectrum ranging from consultation through to empowerment where Government gives up control totally.

You are also a steering group member for Sciencewise-ERC. Do you see any key differences between Government and civil society approaches and aspirations in relation to engagement?
I see a difference and a similarity. Government in all its forms is primarily interested in engaging the public in order to provide an additional input to policy-making. So, Government takes into account all sorts of evidence as it makes policy decisions. Over time it has become increasingly interested in having public input as part of this decision-making process. It is however difficult for Government to do engagement as politics is the art of coalition and consensus building; giving one actor, even if that actor is the public, greater say or promoting them above other actors makes the challenge of building coalitions amongst the different stakeholders really very difficult. In the end, for many types of Government decision engagement is about providing another input to decision-making.

On the whole, by contrast, civil society is interested in public engagement for community building, building ownership, and for more traditional forms of empowerment. Both sectors do the other - Government does empowerment, and the Big Society rhetoric is partly about that, and civil society does engage in order to help it to make decisions. What I have outlined is a difference in emphasis.
The similarity is that there is a tendency that an underlying motive for both is to build legitimacy. This thread of legitimacy can be seen underlying both. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it can be a valid purpose, but all too often this aim becomes an overriding aim and that’s when it becomes problematic and self-defeating.

What’s corrosive however to the field of public engagement is when actors, Government or civil society, embark on public engagement without being clear, both internally to the organisation and externally, about why they are doing it, what their purpose is. If purpose is clear, in turn they can be clear externally.

The Big Society is a concept that Government has promoted on many levels over the past months. You have commented on the Big Society and on the Government’s early engagement efforts such as ‘your freedom’. In relation to this, what do you see as the likely impacts of the Government’s key ambitions and values in relation to public engagement in policy-making?
It is difficult and many people are sceptical about the Big Society because the concept, I think almost deliberately, has been left undefined by the Government. But there are some key aspects of it which to me are clear, although I think many people would disagree with me. In the end, what the Government believes is that state has played far too big a role in people’s lives and, as a result, has taken agency away from them. What I think the coalition wants to do is find ways for Government to step back so that communities and individuals can find the space to define their own needs and assets, and their own wants and solutions to them.

I think that is very clear, what I think is much less clear is what the role of Government is then in supporting communities. Particularly for those who will find it difficult to work together to define their needs and turn them into action. How does the Government support that while stepping back?

We’re so used to thinking about what Government does to make things happen; the change that the coalition has made is that it has said that we want to identify what we shouldn’t do in order to make things happen. It is how this pulling back of the state can make things happen that is a very different way of thinking. Many people, very obviously at a time of financial recession are finding this difficult because they are worried about their communities and their families. They have understandable concerns that the Big Society will be unable to fill the gaps that the state has filled until now.

You have recently written a paper for Sciencewise-ERC that synthesises the views of citizens who have engaged in deliberations about complex national policy issues. Why is this topic important in your view and what did you learn about the public’s take on engagement on national policy?
Well, it is important because not everything happens locally and there are indeed decisions at the national level, for example about what technologies to invest in, such as nanotechnology or the bio medical advances that will extend life and change society deeply. These issues have the potential to set our society on different trajectories depending on what decisions are made now. It seems to me that we need to have conversations with citizens about their visions for that future to help guide Government decisions now about investments in technologies. These are decisions that once taken will be difficult to undo. The five year election cycle makes it difficult to have those decisions, as a recent speech by Nick Clegg, highlights. I think that public engagement offers part of the answer for dealing with these longer term issues and decisions that need to be taken by Government.

From this report we can see that the public who have taken part in public dialogues around national decision-making think that it is important that they did so, but they also think it is important that they are not the ones taking the decision. I think that is really crucial because all too often the misconception of many policy-makers about public engagement is that if you involve the public they are going to want to take the decisions, but they just want a role.

In your view how does structured dialogue and deliberation fit with the Big Society and the new Government’s agenda?
I think at the moment, the overwhelming majority of people involved in the conversations about the Big Society are looking at and thinking about it in relation to local decision-making. So that link to complex national dialogues is quite hard to make. The link isn’t direct, but it seems to me that a link is there.

The most compelling reason is that, the decisions that Government makes at the national level, particularly around the licensing of technologies, will impact a lot on local level. For example, if the Government approves the planting of GM crops, and in a particular area a Big Society type group springs up and doesn’t want it, but the Government says you have to have it, there is the potential  for the Big Society to be undermined. The challenge for the Government is how it builds a sense of ownership and at least consensus around those national decisions that will lead to local level acceptance.

How are the coalition Government’s new agendas for citizenship such as the Big Society, and increased openness and transparency, affecting the relationship between the public and policy makers?
It is definitely far too early to tell how the Big Society is affecting that relationship. But, the Government is doing a number of things at the national level that might well change the relationship a lot sooner. Firstly, it does seem to be instinctive that the Government wants to engage the public. It has done these three big crowd sourcing attempts, which I highlighted at the beginning of the interview – and they are, particularly the spending challenge, different to anything that I am aware of because the questions are very very open. There are lots of criticisms – and indeed I have criticised them in relation to how they have been framed – but they are still bold attempts to engage the public, and all the indications are that the Government isn’t going to pull back from that, that it means it. That does have the potential to change the relationship quite significantly.

The second thing that has changed in the relationship is the Government is moving further and faster than the previous Government was around open data. It is a step change, particularly around local Government and the transparency of spending. The question for Government is how it places open data in context that means that it can be understood so the links can be made positively and the public can use this data effectively.

But undeniably, even without any of the Government’s agendas, the mere fact that we are going through the spending cuts will change the relationship between the Government and the state. My predecessor Richard Wilson always says that if you really want the public to engage one of the best ways is to cut public funding. So, we will see greater public engagement and involvement in policy-making by the mere fact of the impact of the cuts on frontline services. To untangle which bit of the Government’s agenda is causing a change in engagement is going to be very difficult, but it will definitely change.