Bowling Together

Online Public Engagement
in Policy Deliberation

Stephen Coleman & John Gøtze

> About the report

> Introduction

> Representation, Engagement and Democracy

Two-Way Governance

> Connected Citizenship

> Appropriate Technologies For Online Engagement

> Global Case Studies

> References

> PDF (2.5MB!)

Chapter Two

Two-Way Governance

Having said that representative governance is not threatened with extinction by online public engagement, it would be mistaken to conclude that the political process can remain unchanged in the face of greater citizen involvement. Indeed, the worst-case scenario for online engagement is one where politicians and bureaucrats tokenistically adopt all kinds of e-initiatives, such as online consultations and discussion fora, but retain existing structures of policy formation, so that the public's input is 'worked around' by powerfully entrenched institutions. Engaging the public in policy-making is a transformative process that will result in a model of two-way governance which is incompatible with a political culture of bureaucratic elitism.

Models of public engagement

What does engaging the public actually mean? The OECD has devised a three-stage model:

Information: a one-way relation in which government produces and delivers information for use by citizens. It covers both 'passive' access to information upon demand by citizens and 'active' measures by government to disseminate information to citizens. Examples include: access to public records, official gazettes, government web sites.

Consultation: a two-way relation in which citizens provide feedback to government. It is based on the prior definition by government of the issue on which citizens' views are being sought and requires the provision of information. Examples include: public opinion surveys, comments on draft legislation.

Active participation: a relation based on partnership with government, in which citizens actively engage in the decision- and policy-making process. It acknowledges a role for citizens in proposing policy options and shaping the policy dialogue - although the responsibility for the final decision or policy formulation rests with government.

Dr Sue Goss, of the UK's Office of Public Management, has devised a broader model of public engagement:

Rather than seeing these as competing models of engagement, they should be regarded as a spectrum of participatory strategies. There is not a 'one-size-fits-all' solution to involving citizens in policy-making; considerable thought needs to be given to the appropriateness of the method selected for the citizens involved and the nature of the policy issue they are being asked to consider.

A range of innovations in methods of public participation in policy-making have been developed. These include:

Citizens' Juries: Group of representative citizens, who take evidence over an extended period, deliberate and recommend to government, which still takes the final decision. This produces an informed and collective view, resulting from deliberation

Citizens' Panels/ Standing Research Panels: Ongoing panels, maybe of 1,000-2,000 representative citizens, surveyed several times a year, usually by post or phone. Once some or all participants become more knowledgeable, they become less representative.

Formal Written Consultation: Formally setting out the issues and proposed approaches in a written document, and inviting comment.

Forums and Panels: Meetings involving citizens in discussion with officials and/or representatives. May focus on particular services or be more general. Membership may be invited or open. Agenda may be set in advance or formulated at the time according to participant concerns.

Focus Groups: An established market research technique where an issue is explored in depth for 1 or 2 hours through structured but open-ended discussion by a group of around 8-10 people, representative of a particular sector, led by a trained facilitator. Keeping similar types of people together helps reduce inhibition and promote discussion.

Opinion Polls: Random or chosen representative samples are used. In one variant (deliberative polling) participants have the opportunity to learn about and discuss the issue, questioning experts, so they can make informed and thought through judgements. 250 to 600 people might meet over 2-4 days with polls taken at the beginning and end of the event.

Referendums: Asking a question of the whole population. May be carried out using normal election machinery, by post etc. If not binding, more likely to be called 'Citizens' Poll'.

Petitions: A citizen adopts a position on an issue, and invites others to signal their support. In some variants, the process is interactive, with exchanging ideas and evolution of the proposition. The end result is submitted to a representative body (e.g. a Parliament), or to government (e.g. a local authority), in the expectation that the level of support will influence its decisions.

Active Interest in Policy: Citizens - or groups of citizens - register their interest in an area of policy or service. Government and/or representative bodies then proactively inform them of facts, events, progress etc; and ensure they are engaged in some form of consultation when the time is right.

The various models for policy engagement can be plotted on a spectrum ranging from snapshot votes to deliberative voice mechanisms, as shown below:

Objections to public engagement

Some politicians and officials are fearful that online public engagement might comprise a threat to effective policy-making and good governance. These concerns should not be dismissed lightly. Outlined below are seven distinct objections and our responses to them:

Selection and representation

How are participants selected? If there is no overt selection process and anyone is allowed to participate in an online policy-making exercise, the self-selected sample is likely to comprise citizens who are more confident, articulate, engaged and politically motivated. If the participating sample is selected, who selects it and by what criteria? Self-selection is in danger of resulting in an unrepresentative sample and selection in a sample that represents the interests of the selectors.

Concerns about representativeness are allied to concerns about replicability. Just because one group of citizens arrive at a particular policy position, after due deliberation, does not necessarily indicate that they represent what a deliberating public would think; another group of citizens, under similar circumstances, might arrive at quite different conclusions.

Politicians are particularly concerned about participants seeking to undermine representative governance by claiming unique legitimacy in speaking on behalf of fellow citizens. As suggested in chapter one, public engagement in the policy process is often seen as opening the floodgates to direct democracy. However, there is a danger in expressing reservations about public participation within policy-making as if it were the same thing as the public making decisions instead of elected representatives. Policy-making and decision-making are linked, but separate roles.

As the objective of online deliberation is to inform elected representatives, then the selection of participants need be less preoccupied with representativeness and more concerned to recruit a broad range of experience, expertise and interests. So, when survivors of domestic violence were enabled to give evidence online to the UK Parliament, individual contributions were not evaluated in terms of their capacity to reflect the experiences of all survivors of domestic violence, but their ability to reflect their own experience in ways that could inform the decisions of legislators.

Managing expectations

Politicians worry that, having been consulted, citizens will expect too much. A major difference between politics as a general practice and single-issue policy debates is that the former tends to involve compromises and trade-offs to a much greater extent than the latter. Having deliberated about a single policy issue - or even a set of issues - citizens are likely to be disappointed that their efforts and apparently wise conclusions are outweighed by wider budgetary, party political, legal or cultural considerations. If such unmet expectations result in public frustration and discontent, might it be argued that involving the public in the policy process could actually serve to increase political alienation, disenchantment and cynicism?

The key to avoiding such disappointment is transparency. As long as citizens are told absolutely clearly at the outset what can and cannot be expected from an online policy deliberation, they are unlikely to be frustrated by the process. Frustration arises from unclear objectives or exaggerated claims as to the importance of the public's input. Transparency relates not just to purpose but also to outcomes: it is vital that participants receive a clear response to their deliberations, so that they can assess the extent to which they have actually informed or influenced policy.

Apathy

Politicians sometimes argue that the public is too apathetic about politics to be bothered with time-consuming deliberation. After all, if significant numbers of citizens do not even vote, what evidence is there that they want to enter into policy debate?

It is undoubtedly true that most people are not interested in most policy issues. But it is equally true that all are interested in some, particularly when they affect them or when they have specific expertise or experience. The objective of deliberative exercises is not to create a permanently deliberative citizenry, but to generate civic discussion around those issues where citizens do have real concerns, knowledge and relevant life experiences.

Nina Eliasoph, in her intriguing study of how American citizens avoid talking about politics in public, refers to a strange dichotomy between refusal to discuss political issues in public settings and willingness to state political views within the quiet whispers of informal conversation. (Eliasoph)  The cultural informality and personal invisibility of online discursive space offers a possibility of allowing the conversational whispers of conventionally private conversation to enter the public debate.

Lack of public information

Research findings overwhelmingly suggest that members of the public are uninformed, often about the most elementary aspects of civic and political knowledge. (Dimock and Popkin 1997) The case of the US Public Affairs Act of 1975, which one third of American respondents expressed an opinion about when polled, even though the Act was entirely fictitious, is often cited as an example of the public's gullibility and willingness to comment upon matters it knows nothing about. (Bishop et al) Politicians may well fear that an ill-informed - or misinformed - public would not be up to the task of policy deliberation.  They are right about this. But currently it is just such influence that uninformed citizens have, via opinion polls, referenda and other snapshot measurements of non-deliberative opinions.

Deliberative exercises depend upon a willingness by participants to become exposed to new and balanced information. If citizens are to inform their representatives, then they in turn must provide informed input. For many citizens, being invited to deliberate about policy will present a challenge to a lifetime of not being required to think very much about political issues. Just as people start to take an interest in how their car works once it breaks down - and often acquire considerable expertise once they become involved in it being fixed - there is also evidence that people who need to find out how the political system works in order to use it for their own purposes can learn very quickly. Of course, not all participants in deliberative exercises will absorb information to the same extent (this applies also to representatives), but the evidence from online policy consultations so far is that participants who seek to have the most influence make sure that they are well informed.

Digital exclusion

In most countries of the world only a minority of the population has home access to the internet.  Even in countries where most citizens are connected, the consequence for those without access is to exacerbate their disconnection from communicating with and influencing power. Politicians may fear that online policy deliberation will merely serve to amplify the voices of the digital 'haves' at the expense of the 'have-nots'.

The solution to the problem of digital exclusion does not lie in abandoning the internet as a tool for democratic engagement and consultation, but in creating new opportunities for connecting citizens without home access to the internet. Such opportunities can be provided by public kiosks, cyber-cafes and community centres, as well as via TV and other digital platforms.  As well as these channels for digital inclusion, wider aspects of usability need to be addressed - as discussed in chapter four.

The problem of scale

The internet's capacity to enable many-to-many discussion is questioned by some, who argue that deliberation is best conducted in face-to-face settings involving relatively small numbers. The communication theorist, John Durham Peters, quoting Plato's belief that 5,040 is the ideal number of citizens to participate in a true democracy, argues that:  'Dialogue can only be dialogue if strict rules are imposed on the number of participants.' (Glasser, p.104)

Essentially, such critiques question the possibility of genuine deliberation on a large scale. Certainly, within the traditional model of face-to-face, synchronous dialogue, there are formidable obstacles to a deliberative process involving several hundred or thousand participants. That said, most national parliaments and assemblies comprise a deliberating membership of several hundreds: 669 in the German Bundestag; 659 in the UK House of Commons; 626 in the European Parliament; 435 in the US House of Representatives.  Not all members of these assemblies can speak in any one debate and rarely are they all present at the same time, but this does not make them inefficient or inadequate as deliberative bodies.

It is the asynchronous nature of online engagement that makes manageable large-scale, many-to-many discussion and deliberation. In an online discussion, the gaps between utterance, reception and response are fundamentally different from those in face-to-face or other synchronous settings. In online discussion listening (and lurking) can be just as important a function as speaking (message-posting) and the best deliberative results are often achieved when messages are stored or archived and responded to after readers have had time to contemplate them. Online deliberation can be regarded as deliberation without the crude and suffocating constraints of time that often render synchronous discussions futile, facile or over-heated.  Of course, mechanisms of moderation and mediation are crucial to the success of many-to-many, asynchronous dialogue, just as rules, procedures, protocols and habits are essential to the success of face-to-face debates. 

Empowering the bureaucracy?

Some politicians fear that policy deliberation exercises are a means of sidelining them from their role as interpreters of the public will or mood. After all, a competence of elected politicians is their ability to feel the public's pulse. As elected representatives, politicians claim a special relationship with the public who have given them their power. The danger of government ministers - or even unelected bureaucrats - using public involvement in policy-making in order to push a particular policy agenda is one that representatives generally wish to resist.

The solution here is not for elected representatives to reject public engagement as a challenge to their legitimacy, but to use public engagement themselves as a way of strengthening the quality of their representative mandate and developing more informed, publicly supported policy options as counterweights to executive monopolies on policy formation. In short, public engagement exercises need not only be the tools of the executive, but can become a key tool for legislatures in their role of holding governments to account, scrutinising policies more effectively and serving as democratic conduits for informed public views. Arguably, online engagement with the public could offer a major opportunity for elected representatives to enhance their legitimacy as political mediators of the public voice.

The importance of moderation and mediation

There are crucial distinctions to be set out between an online free-for-all and a deliberative policy exercise. The former requires no rules or regulation, no attempt to reach a conclusion, no summary of what is said and no feedback. In free-for-all discussions anyone can say anything, but no-one can have much expectation of being heard or of influencing policy outcomes.

Deliberation requires trusted facilitation. In short, it does not just happen. Those facilitating online engagement in policy deliberation will only be trusted if they:

1. set out clear and transparent rules for participants, e.g. maximum length of messages; maximum frequency of messages; attitudes to offensive language and defamation;
2. regulate the discussion, both by implementing agreed rules and adhering to ethical principles, such as data privacy, political neutrality and non-coercion;
3. moderate discussion messages, ensuring that any participant with a point to make receives a fair hearing and that the discussion is conducted on a fair and friendly basis;
4. help discussion participants to reach conclusions (not necessarily shared ones) rather than incessantly rehashing old arguments;
5. summarise the deliberation so that key points of evidence and main conclusions are set out in a balanced and accessible form;
6. seek to ensure that there is feedback to the participants, so that they do not feel that they have contributed to the policy process without any response from the policy-makers.

Trusted facilitation is the basis for democratic mediation. Technology enables connections to be made between representatives and the represented, but technology on its own does not facilitate deliberative engagement. Facilitation is a cultural-democratic function. The facilitator's role is to provide discursive focus, stimulate groups into interacting constructively, build a sense of team spirit or community, referee, troubleshoot and keep time.

To give a sense of some of the variety of host or facilitator roles, White and Boettcher have conducted a number of short interviews with hosts of online communities in Hosts on Hosting (2000). On the same theme, Powazek's Design for Community (2001) ends each chapter with an interview with a community expert. People have created many metaphors to describe the role of online facilitators. White lists a number of different facilitator roles:

The social host - The social host or 'host as innkeeper' is the most well-known online facilitation model originating out of long time discussion communities like The Well, Electric Minds and Salon Table Talk. As a dinner host brings together the elements of a successful party, a social host helps create an environment where the members feel comfortable to participate. Part conversationalist, part counsellor, part role model and sometimes even part bouncer. They are also usually part of the conversation.

Key skills include: greeter; social skills; conversation stimulator (content, style, process); sometimes utilises a persona or a 'character'; and conflict resolution (particularly in open, public online communities)

The project manager - In communities with a strong task, work orientation or subject focus, the project manager pays attention to adherence to focus, timelines, task lists, commitments and process. This can be a leadership and/or support role. This can be aided by the use of static web pages to organise information, the combined use of linear and threaded conferencing space, and the regular use of summaries and reviews.

Key skills include: traditional project management skills; writing and summarisation skills; technical skills such as HTML to create information and summaries with visual impact; and ability to abstract information and process it for the group

The community of practice (CoP) facilitator - CoPs share and build knowledge around a practice. Part of this process is being a group - having identity and reputation, being able to have agreements and some sense of accountability to the group. Facilitating CoPs online can focus on some of these 'sociability' and relationship issues. This includes helping members get to know each other, articulating and making visible agreements, and watching/nurturing group dynamics.

Key skills include: group facilitation skills; a working knowledge of CoPs; cybrarianship; passion for community; ability to facilitate facilitative behaviours within the community

The cybrarian - Cybrarians represent the gift of knowledge and information. They are 'topical' experts. Cybrarians help members find information internally and externally of the community. They organise information and make it accessible. And they stimulate interaction with the introduction of or pointer to new and relevant information.

Key skills include: web-savvy research; strong organisational bent; and love of learning and information

The help desk - In online interaction spaces where there is an ongoing influx of new members, there is often a repeated need for simple help pointers on using the software or understanding the community purpose and guidelines.

Key skills include: technical understanding; patience; and clear communication skills

The referee - Good cop or bad cop, this is the role of bringing attention to and/or enforcing community norms, rules and procedures. Referees help the community regulate, protect members and deal with problems. For example, if a community has a policy of no posting of advertising, the host has the job of deleting offending posts and asking the poster to refrain from posting ads. The clearer the rules, the easier the job. Likewise, where there are no clear rules, this job is often perceived as authoritarian and arbitrary. Referees are often not 'regular members' who are 'just part of the conversation,' but a role apart. These tend to be employees of online community sites and have rather small facilitative impact on a group.

Key skills include: thick skin and a slow fuse; internet experience; and familiarity with common nettiquette

The janitor - It can get messy in cyberspace, as we leave our words in conferences and topics. The janitor tidies up forgotten topics by freezing and archiving, redirects activity if it is in the wrong area, and generally tidies up. 

Key skills include: familiarity with software and attention to detail

Learning to listen and respond: the challenge for politicians and civil servants

Rightly or wrongly, citizens believe that governments do not listen to what they say. For example, the October 2001 Eurobarometer asked European citizens whether they would like to take part in a 'dialogue on Europe.' 26% said that they would, but 62% said that they would not - with 29% agreeing with the statement that: 'My views would not be taken into account anyway' and 17% agreeing that: 'It would be a waste of time.' The US Harris poll asks an annual set of questions about public alienation. In the late1960s, at the height of the Vietnam war, barely one third of US respondents agreed with the statement that: 'What I think doesn't count very much any more'; in the 2000 poll 56% of respondents agreed with this statement. 

Given this overwhelming evidence of public distrust of governments' listening abilities, the last thing that governments should do is promote online policy engagement exercises and then prove the public right by not appearing to take account of what they say. Unless online policy engagement results in meaningful responses and policy outcomes, the process will lose credibility and democratic legitimacy. Governments are recognising this important point. The recent Government Online (GOL) eDemocracy Report concludes with the following remarks:

... interactive consultation is a newcomer ... to traditional democratic systems. These systems have arranged for the voice of the citizen to be heard mainly via elections and elected representatives. Civil servants traditionally used their professional expertise, scientific research and knowledge of the public realm and public opinion as a basis for their policy proposals. Citizens wrote letters, which were answered along certain bureaucratic procedures. All these processes are turned upside-down in the age of online interactive debate between citizens, elected officials, journalists, civil servants, civil society professionals and scientific scholars. What's the mandate of a civil servant provoking the debate in an online environment? How does a minister account for the accurate development of a policy proposal, when so many voices have been speaking? Must he take them all seriously? And what if parliament disapproves of his carefully interactively drafted proposal? Such questions will in the future become more relevant. Online consultation makes them a reality, which will confront us with demands for answers. At this stage, we have found that this has not yet been urgent for governments. If the practice of online consultation by governments is to move ahead, that will undoubtedly soon be necessary. (GOL-IN eDemocracy Report (2001). http://governments-online.org)

The UK's e-commerce minister, Douglas Alexander, in a keynote speech about e-democracy, stated that:

In order to attract people to get involved in online consultations and discussions, it is vital that government and representatives demonstrate their commitment to listening to and learning from the contributions that are made and to respond to them in a timely and transparent way. As millions of people log on and speak out, the challenge to elected representatives is clear. There are vital issues to consider here; not least of which will be the resources that will be required to handle increased participation.

Public concerns about the extent to which they will be taken seriously in consultations and other engagement exercises have little to do with trust in the internet and much to do with lack of trust in government. In short, most public doubt about the value of online policy engagement results from unsatisfactory experience of participating in offline policy consultations. Research into government officials' perceptions of the impact of participation initiatives tends to support these doubts. Research for the UK Government, conducted by De Montfort University in 1998, surveyed local authorities to find out their perceptions of the impact of participation initiatives. 40% of respondents reported that such initiatives had very little impact on policies or merely confirmed prior policy decisions; 36% of respondents considered that such initiatives led to better informed decisions or strongly influenced final decisions.

For public engagement in policy deliberation to become more than a token gesture, politicians need to engage with the public during the deliberative process. In short, there is a need for greater integration between public policy deliberation and political decision-making. In most policy engagement or consultation initiatives, elected politicians are conspicuous by their absence. Of course, politicians are operating within intense time constraints and cannot be expected to engage in a permanent conversation with the public. But evidence indicates that citizens are far more likely to take policy deliberation seriously if political decision-makers are prepared to interact with them for at least some of the time.  For example, in a post-online consultation survey of participants in Womenspeak, which involved survivors of domestic violence, 32% of the women considered that: 'the MPs were interested in what was said during the discussion', but 68% were either unsure or thought that the MPs were not really interested; 28% believed that MPs would use information gained from the consultation to make changes, but 57% did not. (Coleman and Normann, 2000)

Conclusions

- There is a broad range of ways in which the public can be engaged in policy-making. It is important to select the right model of participation for the right situation.

- Deliberative engagement is fundamentally different from other models of participation in that it is preference-forming rather than simply preference-affirming.

- There are several well-rehearsed objections to involving the public in online policy deliberation, most of which concern the public's ability to represent its own views in an informed fashion.

- Online policy deliberation must be mediated, rule-based and well-moderated if it is to contribute to the democratic process.

- Governments should not offer online consultation as a gimmick; they must be committed to integrating evidence gathered into the policy process and being responsive.

Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in Policy Deliberation by Stephen Coleman & John Gøtze
Read more:

> About the report

> Introduction

> Representation, Engagement and Democracy

Two-Way Governance

> Connected Citizenship

> Appropriate Technologies For Online Engagement

> Global Case Studies

> References

> PDF (2.5MB!)

... or visit the authors' weblog and join the discussions. You can also email the authors.