nine - New directions for policy and practice

Summary

What we need, then, are ‘real utopias’: utopian ideals that are grounded in the real potentials of humanity, utopian destinations that have pragmatically accessible waystations, utopian designs of institutions that can inform our practical tasks of muddling through in a world of imperfect conditions for social change. (Olin Wright, 2003: vii)

How feasible is it, we asked at the outset of this book, to call on ordinary people to come forward and take part in decision making, not just locally but in relation to the institutions of central government? Is there a viable space for participating citizens at the centre of the institutions of a democratic state? Visions of politics with places for citizens – both locally and at the centre – have loomed ever larger in recent years. Chapter One charted the rise and rise of citizen participation initiatives in Britain, the growing quest, through citizens’ juries, people's panels and more, to find ways of engaging not just the organised stakeholders or those directly affected by the outcome of an issue in political debate, but of creating opportunities to inform those without an immediate personal interest in the outcome, and to observe how they might approach an issue, and what arguments might be persuasive in their ears. Would what we have called ‘unhyphenated citizens’ – those without a pressing interest as residents in an area, for example, or as users of a service – come forward at all? Could they and would they engage in deliberation? And if these questions could be answered satisfactorily, what would this mean for existing lines of authority and relations of political accountability? Just where does democratic deliberation fit in 21st-century forms of democracy?

The prominent group of scholars in the US who came together under the banner of the ‘Real Utopias Project’, as the opening quotation implies, were resolutely positive in their answers to questions such as these (Fung and Olin Wright, 2003a). And yet, a volatile mix of hope and doubt currently surrounds citizen participation. Politicians from traditions on the Left and on the Right declare faith in citizen capacity, and call for citizen empowerment and partnerships in the development and delivery of public policy.