Half the challenge is to rip the mask from the face. Now that has happened. After months of the Troika’s unrelenting, unrealistic demands on the Greek people, it has become clear what this conflict is really all about: maintaining the supremacy of the neoliberal market/state alliance. The Greeks must be punished for wishing to explore serious alternatives.
Creditors, having conveniently socialized their losses through taxpayer-funded bailouts, are now using their hammerlock on state power to keep the lid on neoliberal austerity. That’s their only plan: their idée fixe. Democracy? Political stability? Social or humanitarian need? Secondary details. This negotiation is not about reviving the Greek economy, which has only worsened after five years of enforced fiscal austerity and credit-dependency (which is why it’s absurd to continue with the same policies). It's about which vision of the future shall prevail.
Syriza, armed with a democratic mandate to reject further bailouts and austerity cuts, is locked in a fierce struggle pitting raw financial power and neoliberal policies against democratic sovereignty and a nascent vision of something better. We know who generally wins such struggles (e.g., Chile in 1973). Will it be different this time?
A lot rides on whether the Greek people, in the face of desperate circumstances, are willing to stand up to reclaim their self-determination or whether abject realities will simply force them to surrender and become a colony dependent on European creditors.
The Troika surely wants to send a strong cautionary message to the citizens of Spain, Portugal, Italy and other European countries with problematic finances. If that means imposing further unemployment, social disintegration and trauma on the Greeks, without offering a credible plan for the country’s economic revival, the Troika and its European backers are clearly willing to go there.
The Economist magazine captured this insane choice with a darkly humorous cover, “Acropolis Now.” Angela Merkel enters the “heart of darkness” of subduing the Greeks, only to discover the unanticipated costs. “The horror, the horror.”
Every year, our good friends at the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) host something called International Facilitation Week – an event aimed at showcasing the power of facilitation to new and existing audiences and at creating a sense of community among facilitators and our groups worldwide – and we strongly encourage NCDD members to consider participating!
This year’s International Facilitation Week (IFW) will be celebrated from October 19th – 25th, 2015. Facilitators from around the world and across the NCDD network can celebrate IFW by organizing trainings or showcases, publishing articles or blog posts, beginning collaborations or projects – the list goes on. Basically, participate however you’d like to, and gain exposure for your work by the affiliation to IFW.
Here’s a bit of what IAF says about the Week and some of their suggestions for how you can participate:
The IAF is simply the catalyst for International Facilitation Week. The invitation to celebrate the week is open to everyone.
Generally, the Association holds its virtual Annual General Meeting during IFW, as well as a number of international live Twitter chats. We also announce our new inductees to the IAF Hall of Fame. IAF regions and chapters hold numerous activities too, both virtual and face-to-face.
Here are some ideas to inspire your activities:
Publicise your best facilitation case studies – now is the time to write those up and announce them on your own and your clients’ websites! Get creative – use video and podcasted interviews.
If you are an internal facilitator, encourage your employer to showcase how you use facilitation for the benefit of your organisation. Hold a “lunch and learn” or “coffee break case study” in your workplace during the week.
Organise a training or learning event with others who also work on collaboration, dialogue, mediation, conflict resolution and group process.
Set up an event for potential clients in which you showcase the benefits of facilitation. Need inspiration? Consider interviewing recipients of the Facilitation Impact Awards.
Offer free or discounted facilitation services to groups who could benefit from professional facilitation. Use IFW to announce a commitment to doing some new pro-bono work, or to release the results from some previous pro-bono work.
Approach your local school, college, university, teaching hospital or training providers to see if they’d like to collaborate on an IFW event or program.
Talk to your local or national health and social care organisations to discuss the possibility of a training or other facilitation event during the Week.
Use your networks – What other professional organisations do you belong to that might be interested in joining in celebrating IFW?
Make use of the media. Local papers and radio stations are may include coverage if given a strong local angle or link to issues currently in the news.
If you blog, make sure you write about facilitation in the run up to and during the Week. Think of an especially strong example or compelling facilitation story.
And of course, you can always come up with your own creative way to participate in IFW! The IAF keeps an international calendar of facilitation events taking place and encourages IFW participants to add their events to it. All you have to do is send the details of your event (who, what, where, when, and how) to conference@iaf-world.org.
James and the CDD have been advancing the technique and process of deliberative polling for years. They have recently been experimenting with deliberative polling in Tanzania around questions of how to spend the African nation’s forthcoming natural gas income, and the process has been filled with expected and unexpected challenges, which the article explores.
Here’s how the article starts:
It’s Not A Come-On From A Cult. It’s A New Kind Of Poll!
You get a visit by someone you’ve never met before. You’re invited on an all-expense paid trip to your country’s biggest city for a two-day meeting on natural gas policy.
Oh, and if you show up you get a free cellphone!
It might sound sketchy. But it’s actually an innovative strategy that is being tested by researchers at a Washington, D.C.-based think-tank, the Center for Global Development, or CGD, to help the African nation of Tanzania decide how to spend its expected windfall from new discoveries of natural gas.
Participants listened, they asked questions and then they went home, where they’ll be polled on their views.
The approach was actually first developed in the late 1980s by James Fishkin, a professor at Stanford University. Fishkin has devoted his career to persuading leaders to consult their citizens before making difficult policy decisions. But he says you can’t just do a poll.
“If you have ordinary polls people usually are not well-informed. You don’t want to follow public opinion when the public just has a vague impression of sound-bites and headlines.”
So Fishkin created what he calls a “deliberative poll.” You gather a representative sample of a population for a one- or two-day meeting. You give them tutorials on the issue and a chance to question experts from all sides. Then, you send them home and poll them…
The article gets much more interesting from there as it goes into the challenges of literacy and low education rates in Tanzania as well as some of the unusual cultural hurdles that James and his team had to overcome in getting rural Tanzanians to participate.
The 38-page study, Effects of the Internet on Participation: Study of a Public Policy Referendum in Brazil, by Paolo Spada, Jonathan Mellon, Tiago Peixoto and Fredrik M. Sjoberg, was published February 2015. It explores how online voting increases voter participation during an annual participatory budgeting vote in Brazil and what factors were influential for citizen engagement. You can download the paper here.
From the Abstract
Does online voting mobilize citizens who otherwise would not participate? During the annual participatory budgeting vote in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil — the world’s largest — Internet voters were asked whether they would have participated had there not been an online voting option (i-voting). The study documents an 8.2 percent increase in total turn-out with the introduction of i-voting. In support of the mobilization hypothesis, unique survey data show that i-voting is mainly used by new participants rather than just for convenience by those who were already mobilized. The study also finds that age, gender, income, education, and social media usage are significant predictors of being online-only voters. Technology appears more likely to engage people who are younger, male, of higher income and educational attainment, and more frequent social media users.
More about Paolo Spada
Paolo is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions at the University of British Columbia. He specializes in comparative public policy, with a focus on policy diffusion, policy analysis and institutional design. Check out his site here.
More about Jonathan Mellon Jonathan is a Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Oxford – Nuffield College, working on the British Election Study. He also works for the World Bank as a data scientist analyzing online civic engagement in developed and developing country contexts, for the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, running statistical analysis of election observer reports, and for the BBC on their election night coverage.Check out his wordpress here and follow on Twitter: @jon_mellon.
More about Tiago Peixoto
Having worked for 10 years as a practitioner and researcher in the field of ICT and participatory governance, Tiago is currently an open government specialist at the ICT4Gov program of the World Bank’s Open Government cluster. Read his blog, DemocracySpot, which is focused on the intersection of participation and technology. Follow on Twitter: @participatory.
More about Fredrik M. Sjoberg Dr. Fredrik M Sjoberg is a data analyst and political scientist with extensive experience in the developing world. He currently manages a research team on Digital Citizen Engagement at the World Bank and is a Research Affiliate with Data-Pop Alliance. Learn more about him here and follow on Twitter: @fsjoberg.
We are cross-posting an interesting study that we found on NCDD member Tiago Peixoto‘s blog, DemocracySpot. The post details some of the findings from a recent study on the effect of technology on public participation in Brazil. You can check it out below or find his post here.
Unusual Suspects? Effects of Technology on Citizen Engagement
What is the effect of technology on citizen engagement? On the one hand, enthusiasts praise the prospects offered by technology: from real-time beneficiary feedback to collaborative policymaking, the possibilities for listening at scale seem endless. Skeptics, on the other, fear that unequal access to technologies will do nothing but favor the “usual suspects”, empowering the already empowered and reinforcing existing inequalities. While the debate sometimes gets heated, a common feature unites both sides: there is limited evidence to support both views.
Providing evidence to better inform practice at the intersection of technology and citizen engagement is one of the core goals of the Bank’s Digital Engagement Evaluation Team (DEET). And, to contribute empirical data to the debate on the effects of technology on participatory processes, the team has been carrying out a number of studies, some of them covering as many as 132 countries.
The results of one of these studies have just been published, looking at the effects of Internet voting on the world’s largest participatory budgeting exercise, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Every year, over one million people participate in the state-wide process, where citizens can vote either online or offline for projects that are to be included in the public budget. In this study we present the results of a unique survey of over 22,000 Internet voters, focusing on three key research questions:
Does an opportunity to vote online increase participation?
If so, what is the socioeconomic profile of new voters?
And finally, what is the level of pre-existing engagement of these online voters?
Anticipating some of our results here, nearly two-thirds of respondents answer the first question affirmatively, saying they would not have taken part in the vote if online voting (i-voting) was not available. This evidence supports the view that technology increases participation among individuals who would not have voted otherwise. In parallel to this, our study shows that introducing i-voting does not lead to a substitution effect, meaning that for the most part, those who vote offline will continue to do so, despite the introduction of i-voting.
On the second question, a picture of the “usual suspects” of online engagement emerges: all else equal, i-voting seems more likely to engage individuals who are younger, male, of higher income and educational attainment, and more frequent social media users. However, from a civic engagement perspective i-voting seems to engage rather unusual suspects, boosting inclusiveness and engaging individuals who were previously uninspired by traditional politics and community activities.
In short, i-voting increases participation among previously non-engaged strata of the population, promoting the inclusiveness of the process as a whole. However, these new participants – the online-only voters – are likely to be socio-economically more privileged: a compelling reason for combining multiple avenues (online and offline) for participation.
In the study we analyze these findings in light of the literature on convenience voting, participatory governance and collective intelligence. We conclude with the implications of the findings for future practice and research.
Here is an inspiring five-minute video about the quest for a new post-growth economic system. "Better, Not More," was produced by Kontent Films for the Edge Funders Alliance, and was released last week at a conference in Baltimore. The video is a beautiful set of statements from activists around the world describing what they aspire to achieve, especially by way of commons.
The vocabularies and focus for the idea of "better, not more," obviously differ among people in one country to another. Buen vivir is the term that is more familiar to the peoples of Latin America, for example. But as the growth economy continues its assault on the planetary ecosystem, cultivating an ethic of sufficiency -- and developing the policies and politics to make that real -- is an urgent challenge.
As public engagement practitioners, many of us have talked with public officials who want to know how engagement will improve a municipality’s bottom line. That’s why we appreciated NCDD member Tiago Peixoto‘s recent blog post on the first experimental – not just observational – evidence that our work can help cities collect more taxes. We encourage you to read Tiago’s post below or find the original here.
You can find the paper on the experiment by clicking here. There are caveats in the findings, but we hope this new evidence will help you strengthen your case with hesitant officials the next time you’re pushing for engagement.
New Evidence that Citizen Engagement Increases Tax Revenues
Quite a while ago, drawing mainly from the literature on tax morale, I posted about the evidence on the relationship between citizen engagement and tax revenues, in which participatory processes lead to increased tax compliance (as a side note, I’m still surprised how those working with citizen engagement are unaware of this evidence).
Until very recently this evidence was based on observational studies, both qualitative and quantitative. Now we have – to my knowledge – the first experimental evidence that links citizen participation and tax compliance. A new working paper published by Diether Beuermann and Maria Amelina present the results of a randomized experiment in Russia, described in the abstract below:
This paper provides the first experimental evaluation of the participatory budgeting model showing that it increased public participation in the process of public decision making, increased local tax revenues collection, channeled larger fractions of public budgets to services stated as top priorities by citizens, and increased satisfaction levels with public services. These effects, however, were found only when the model was implemented in already-mature administratively and politically decentralized local governments. The findings highlight the importance of initial conditions with respect to the decentralization context for the success of participatory governance.
In my opinion, this paper is important for a number of reasons, some of which are worth highlighting here. First, it adds substantive support to the evidence on the positive relationship between citizen engagement and tax revenues. Second, in contrast to studies suggesting that participatory innovations are most likely to work when they are “organic”, or “bottom-up”, this paper shows how external actors can induce the implementation of successful participatory experiences. Third, I could not help but notice that two commonplace explanations for the success of citizen engagement initiatives, “strong civil society” and “political will”, do not feature in the study as prominent success factors. Last, but not least, the paper draws attention to how institutional settings matter (i.e. decentralization). Here, the jack-of-all-trades (yet not very useful) “context matters”, could easily be replaced by “institutions matter”.
Our friends at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation recently shared a great post on their Challenges to Democracy blog highlighting five examples of democratic innovation from Participedia that we found quite interesting (one even involves an NCDD member organization!). It’s invigorating to see concrete reminders that our work is making real changes, so we encourage you to check out the list below or find the original post here.
Looking for Inspiration? Five Noteworthy Innovations in Public Participation
Participedia is an effort that hopes to become a key resource for scholars, activists, policy makers, and citizens who are interested in new democratic practices and institutions. And it is always worth looking back to some of the most interesting cases recently added to Participedia for some inspiration. This selection from the frontlines of participatory innovation reflects both the diverse nature and the global span of Participedia.
1) Argentina – DEMOS
The purpose of the DEMOS project was to enable civic participation in the debate about high-profile law proposals in the Buenos Aires Legislature in Argentina, using the DemocracyOS software of the Democracia en Red foundation. The web app used was demos.legislatura.gov.ar and the initiative was open to civic participation for 35 days in November and December 2014.
In the project’s first phase, citizens were invited to rank their interests about 16 bills that had been introduced in the legislature, corresponding to 12 political parties. The goal was for citizens to chose which were the 3 most important bills that should be debated online. And in the second phase, the top 3 bills were submitted for online discussion, both at an overall level and broken down into the sections of each bill.
Over 13,000 citizens visited the app and almost half of them signed up to participate. The online debate phase produced several interesting outcomes: there was one bill (about nurses’ working conditions) which received overwhelming support mostly because of the mobilization of activists from the party sponsoring that bill, and there was another very controversial bill (about informal parking guards) that led to high levels of polarization and disagreement among participants.
The DEMOS pilot was an unprecedented participatory initiative in Argentina’s history using online tools, and was relatively successful in terms of citizen turnout. The project was very innovative in enabling civic engagement in real-world bills that are important to the day-to-day life of citizens. One of the most interesting characteristics of DEMOS was that it was a success story of partnership with a government institution and with politicians from the whole political spectrum.
2) Australia – Tasmanian Deliberative Democracy on Biobanks
Biobanks – which store and catalog human tissue specimens (such as purified DNA, saliva, blood, and plasma) using genetic markers and other traits such as age, gender, blood type, and ethnicity – have come to play an increasingly important role in biomedical research. As biobanks have become more common, critical bioethical questions of privacy, ownership, and commercialization have also surfaced. A number of deliberative events have been conducted to address these questions, with the goal of enhancing communication between the research community, regulators, stakeholders, and the public.
One such process was recently conducted in Tasmania. This event brought 25 participants together to deliberate. It was led by faculty at the University of British Columbia and the Menzies Research Institute Tasmania. While the selection process was random, quotas were used to ensure that relevant demographic groups were adequately represented in the process. Participants learned about the issues in various ways. They were provided with an information booklet, they had access to a private portal on the project’s website, and during the first days of the process, they listened to presentations by experts and asked questions.
Deliberation over a period of two weekends in April 2013, with a 12-day break of dialogue and information in between, led to 17 conclusions on eight topics. The participants showed strong support for the continued existence of biobanks in general, and a Tasmanian biobank in particular. Throughout the deliberations, participants became part of the policy-making process as opposed to mere observers of decisions made elsewhere, and this helped create a strong sense of personal involvement and commitment to the process among participants. The use of random processes to select participants helped ensure that the process included those who might not be involved in more traditional consultation processes, and this, in turn, helped ensure that a diverse range of viewpoints and opinions were expressed.
3) United States – Boston’s Youth Participatory Budgeting
In 2014 the City of Boston launched “Youth Lead the Change,” the first participatory budgeting process in the US focused exclusively on youth. Its goals included civic education and engagement, and the inclusion of youth voices that are typically excluded from politics in the City’s capital planning process. Participants were primarily from Boston public high schools, and participation rates were high among young people of color from low-income neighborhoods.
The process, which was implemented by the Participatory Budgeting Project organization, had several key stages. First, a Steering Committee made up of youth organizations was established, and this Committee created a rulebook to guide the process. Second, youth assemblies were held in neighborhoods throughout Boston to generate ideas and identify priorities. This stage of the process generated 473 ideas and funding proposals, which were then divided into six categories by organizers. Third, a core group of young people was engaged as Change Agents to turn the ideas identified in the youth assemblies into specific investment proposals. They engaged in a dialogue with City officials who helped determined whether or not the ideas were eligible and feasible. The City also provided cost estimates for individual proposals.
The Change Agents made collective decisions deliberatively using a decision matrix that considered various factors including feasibility, impact, and need. Ultimately, 14 proposals were identified as priorities. At the end of the process, the Change Agents held a vote to determine which 7 priorities would be funded through the 1 million dollar youth budget.
Vouliwatch was launched on March 16, 2014 and went viral on the same day on Greek social media. As of January 2015, the project had 44,470 unique visitors. So far, 1,048 participants have submitted 409 questions to their representatives and the site has generated 25 crowdsourced policy ideas. Importantly, representatives have also embraced the project. They have, thus far, provided 50 official answers to questions raised by citizens.
The web application has five main functions: 1) it provides individuals with an opportunity to ask their representatives questions; 2) it functions as a source of crowdsourcing; 3) it helps citizens monitor the voting behaviors of representatives; 4) it provides users with a direct newsfeed of Parliamentary events; and 5) it provides an online debate forum that is, in effect, a “live” political chat lab.
Two additional features were introduced for the 2015 general election: 1) a “Policy “Monitor” function that allows voters to compare and evaluate party platforms; and 2) a “Candidate Watch” function which makes it possible for citizens to interact directly with candidates.
Despite widespread public skepticism of political institutions in Greece, the reticence of Greek politicians to engage their publics, and the divide between those with easy access to the internet and those without, Vouliwatch has managed to establish itself as a credible, non-partisan and independent source of information that extends beyond the limits of traditional online organizing efforts. In addition to partnering with numerous civil society organizations to promote open government (both locally and abroad), Vouliwatch has also sought close cooperation the Greek Parliament’s administrative system and the Ministry of Reform and e-Government in particular. Organizers and proponents of the site have been asked to join the Forum of the Open Government Partnership, which will assess opportunities for institutional reform in Greece.
5) Tunisia – Civic Participation in the Constitution Drafting
Tunisia’s democratic transition was one of the more successful revolutions associated with the 2011 Arab Spring. Tunisia has a new constitution that was developed through an extensive, representative, and participatory process. The participatory components of the process were supported, in part, by the expertise of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
As part of this effort, the UNDP sponsored and organized a dialogue between elected officials, individual citizens, and civil society organizations in Tunisia’s 24 governorates. In total, 80 members of the National Constituent Assembly were involved in the process. They were trained in the art of drafting legislative and constitutional clauses, and they were introduced to different public consultations techniques and procedures. In turn, more than 5,000 individuals and 300 civil society organizations participated in the dialogue. The fact that public officials were meaningfully engaged (and committed) to the process helped ensure that the contributions of citizens and their organizations were taken into account during the drafting of the new constitution.
The UNDP process also aimed to include two groups who are typically underrepresented in Tunisian politics: 1) young people; and 2) women. The Ministry of Higher Education worked with universities to encourage students to participate in the process, and a total of 320 students made contributions to the dialogue. The process might have been made even more representative if young people outside the university system were encouraged to participate as well. The representation of women was encouraged by a parallel UNDP program, which trained 4,200 women and sensitized them on democratic processes, with a focus on the constitutional process. This effort to include women is notable given the region’s track-record on women’s rights.
We look forward to another year of great new ideas and insights from these and other innovations in public participation in 2015. If you have an idea you would like to share, contact us or add it to the comments below!
Also note that the Ash Center will soon announce the finalists for its special Innovations in American Government Award recognizing government-led innovations that best demonstrate enhanced public engagement and participation. A key feature of the Ash Center’s Challenges to Democracy public dialogue series, the winner of the Roy and Lila Ash Innovations Award for Public Engagement in Government will receive a $100,000 grant to support replication and dissemination activities.
We want to make sure that our NCDD members know about the upcoming North American conference of the International Association of Facilitators this May 14-16 in Banff, Canada. Regular non-IAF member registration is $860 for this great networking and capacity building gathering. You can read more in IAFNA’s announcement below or at www.iafna2015.com.
Climb towards new heights and seek out new vistas! The picturesque mountain scape of Banff Alberta Canada inspires a conference program that gives you opportunities to explore and elevate your facilitation knowledge and skills. The Conference theme is: Innovating, Promoting and Applying! Seeking New Facilitation Heights and Insights.
Innovating – learn about new trends, research, and creativity in facilitation
Promoting – communicate and market facilitation profession and services
Applying – learn, practice and improve facilitation skills
NOW is a great time to register for IAFNA 2015 in Banff to take advantage of current economical fees that increase the longer you wait. Your THREE general steps are:
1)Register for the Conference – read descriptions below and select applicable button that link to easy online forms and flexible payment options.
2) Book Accommodations – for greatest convenience and solid value on-site at The Banff Centre, book using link available at end of Conference Registration process.
3)Select Workshops – watch for a notice about where, how and when (approx. March 10+/-) to select your preferred workshops, subject to available space.
The Bologna Symposium on Conflict Prevention, Resolution, & Reconciliation is held at the John Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Bologna Center and is direct training by world leaders in: international negotiation, mediation, facilitation, strategic nonviolent action, social entrepreneurship, project planning and design, trauma healing, economics of peace, and more. It is recommended for exceptional professionals, graduate students, or accomplished undergraduates. Optional M.A. credits offered from Johns Hopkins SAIS.
Today’s conflicts are incredibly complex. As an effective peace leader, you need a core toolkit of essential practical skills and a diverse global professional network. In the Bologna Symposium, you go through an intensive training process with the world’s top practitioners/academics in those core skills and join the ever-expanding IPSI family of over 500 alumni.
From ISPI…
In cooperation with The Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the Bologna Symposium bring together the globe’s brightest minds from top academic institutions, NGOs, international organizations, grassroots peace movements, and the armed services. Over a four-week period, participants undergo intensive training by the field’s premier political leaders, academic experts, practitioners, and advocates in the practical skills necessary to foster peace and security in their communities and the world.
All participants receive an IPSI Post-Graduate Certificate in “International Conflict Management” upon successful completion of the course. Participants who choose to undertake additional rigorous assignments alternatively have the opportunity to earn an IPSI Post-Graduate Certificate in “International Conflict Management with Distinction.” In addition, qualified participants may apply to earn graduate-level MA course credit from SAIS, one of the world’s premier graduate schools for international affairs.
Find out more about the Bologna Symposium curriculum here.
More about IPSI The International Peace & Security Institute (IPSI) empowers the next generation of peacemakers. Founded on the core belief that education can mitigate violent conflict, IPSI facilitates the transfer of knowledge and skills to a global audience from the world’s premier political leaders, academic experts, practitioners, and advocates. The Institute develops comprehensive training programs, advances scholarly research, and promotes efforts to raise public awareness of peace and security issues.
s of enforced fiscal austerity and credit-dependency (which is why it’s absurd to continue with the same policies). It's about which vision of the future shall prevail. 
the legislature, corresponding to 12 political parties. The goal was for citizens to chose which were the 3 most important bills that should be debated online. And in the second phase, the top 3 bills were submitted for online discussion, both at an overall level and broken down into the sections of each bill.
