Lessons on Long-Term Participation Efforts from PBNYC

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We wanted to share an insightful article from NCDD member org the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation that shares lessons we can learn about avoiding pitfalls of long-term public participation projects from participatory budgeting in NYC. The piece focuses on PBNYC, but breaks down universal issues in engagement like waning interest from politicians and the ever-important problem of scaling up. We encourage you to read the piece below or find the original here.

How can PBNYC reduce the resource strain – without threatening its inclusive process?

To engage those often left out of democratic decision-making, Council Member district staffs and their volunteers rely on resource-intensive outreach work. They hand out flyers, knock on doors, staff booths at neighborhood events, and host information sessions at community centers.

Each district runs at least three events targeted to areas with less mobile populations or marginalized communities, such as NYCHA housing developments or senior centers. These face-to-face interactions have built trust – and proven crucial to engaging a rich cross-section of the city.

Behind the scenes, the City Council Speaker’s office offers centralized resources and guidance to help each participating district run its process. Meanwhile, nonprofit partners such as the Participatory Budgeting Project and Community Voices Heard spend hours building resources, running volunteer trainings, and evaluating the results of the process.

All of this work adds up to a voter base that is more representative of New York’s diverse population than general elections or other political processes. In 2014-2015 (the last cycle to produce detailed demographic data), 57% of PB voters identified as people of color, compared to 47% of local election voters.

Nearly a quarter of PBNYC voters would have been ineligible to vote in general elections, including 12% who were under 18 and 10% who were not U.S. citizens. It’s a dynamic and inclusive process that more and more Council Members want their districts to join.

Yet as PBNYC continues to grow to more districts and more voters, the long hours and large volunteer commitments become less and less sustainable. It would be tempting to use digital outreach to reach more residents more efficiently. But analysis of past PBNYC cycles shows that tactics like social media and emails from Council Members engage a disproportionately white, highly-educated, and high income group, to the detriment of more diverse voices.

The city faces the challenge of including more residents in the process without drowning out the voices PB was meant to raise up.

In meeting this challenge, PBNYC has rightly put its values first, continuing to emphasize the type of face-to-face outreach that pulls in new participants. The task going forward is to translate those values into new outreach tactics.

For instance, the city should explore digital technologies that expand participation rather than limiting it: using SMS texting rather than online applications, and providing communal digital resources at libraries and community centers. Central staff should continue streamlining their processes and reducing resources needed on the back end. Partnerships that let grassroots organizations continue to take the lead will allow PBNYC to bypass red tape and avoid getting stuck in bureaucratic slowdowns.

Now that the initial excitement has worn off, how can PBNYC continue to improve?

City Council districts vary widely in their demographics, physical characteristics, and needs. Each district’s staff and volunteers must decide what a successful PB cycle looks like. Should they provide translated ballots for those who speak the 5th most common language in the district? The 6th? The 10th? In a world of limited time and resources, how much outreach is enough?

In addition to this district variation, the devolution of decision-making to the district level makes it challenging for central staff to oversee performance or hold districts accountable to any particular standard. In the past, central staff have worked to ensure accountability and consistency through personal relationships. Districts that strayed from best practices were given extra attention and guidance. But as more districts participate, this level of oversight becomes difficult.

Meanwhile, political incentives have inevitably shifted. The original flurry of media attention and public praise has died down. And while there are plenty of incentives for a new Council Member to set up a PB process in her district, doing it well – engaging more voters and ensuring the process is truly inclusive – may seem to offer diminishing returns and little public recognition.

How can PBNYC build structures and incentives for accountability? One promising approach would be to provide more transparency for the public, in the form of open access to PB data. Central staff have considered posting a PB project tracker online to help the public track the progress of projects that have won funding.

The tracker would serve as a focal point for district-by-district praise or analysis, both of which would incentivize districts to continue improving their process. Publicizing yearly statistics on vote counts and other metrics would also help the public judge their districts’ performance and encourage improvement over time.

With the initial excitement worn off and longer-term results not yet visible, the program risks entering a dead zone of usefulness to politicians. As a particularly resource-intensive process, PB needs to start demonstrating tangible benefits or risk being on the chopping block.

Tracking and sharing longer-term results could provide evidence for the broader benefits that advocates have touted – benefits like more equitable government spending, happier communities, and more engaged citizens. Such results have started to come in from PB processes that began several years ago in Brazil. Evidence of longer-term benefits to communities would help re-engage politicians in the process, and would bolster New York City as a national leader in the civic engagement space.

The PBNYC example reminds us that pilot programs are useful testing grounds, but promising experiments are unlikely to translate into large-scale successes without careful effort. Such a transformation requires shifts in strategy and tactics, matched with steadfastness in mission and values. Those interested in government innovation can learn a lot from watching PBNYC as it charts this course for participatory budgeting processes around the world.

You can find the original version of this piece from the Challenges to Democracy blog at www.challengestodemocracy.us/home/pbnyc-the-challenges-and-opportunities-of-scale/#sthash.Hp0uKvoD.dpuf.

fighting Trump’s populism with pluralist populism

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In lieu of a substantive new post here today, I’ll link to an essay of mine on the Oxford University Press blog, “Fighting Trump’s populism with pluralist populism.” It concludes, “We need a dose of populism that neither delivers power to a leader nor merely promises fair economic outcomes to citizens as beneficiaries. In this form of populism, diverse people create actual power that they use to change the world together.”

fighting Trump’s populism with pluralist populism

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In lieu of a substantive new post here today, I’ll link to an essay of mine on the Oxford University Press blog, “Fighting Trump’s populism with pluralist populism.” It concludes, “We need a dose of populism that neither delivers power to a leader nor merely promises fair economic outcomes to citizens as beneficiaries. In this form of populism, diverse people create actual power that they use to change the world together.”

Piano di gestione del rischio alluvioni del Bacino del Po [Flood risk management plan of the Po River Basin]

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Case: Piano di gestione del rischio alluvioni del Bacino del Po [Flood risk management plan of the Po River Basin]

Jan 23 '17
Author: 
Alessandro Mengozzi
Il Piano di gestione del rischio alluvioni compete all'Autorità di bacino del Po. La Direttiva Europea 2007/60/CE, recepita nel diritto italiano con D.Lgs. 49/2010, ha dato avvio ad una nuova fase della politica nazionale per la gestione del rischio di alluvioni, che il Piano di gestione del rischio di alluvioni...

Saturday’s democratic vistas

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The ideal of democracy gets weak support today.

Republican presidents from T.R. to George W. Bush presented the United States as a champion of democracy. But a current conservative talking point holds that the US is meant to be a republic, not a democracy, and only the opposition party favors democratic forms of government.

It’s my anecdotal impression that not many Democratic voters are all that enthusiastic about democracy, either; they see a population that likes Donald Trump enough to give him a near-majority, and they are not sure they want that majority to rule.

Overseas, the suppression of the Arab Spring, the frailties of the EU, the rise of popular ethno-nationalists in many countries, and the strong performance of  China’s authoritarian regime have left small-d democrats with a hangover. Julia Ioffe is just one of many well-informed commentators who recalled recent failed democratic uprisings when she observed this weekend’s marches. “Talking to the protesters in Washington today, it was hard not to hear the echoes of the weakness of the Moscow protests five years ago: a vague, unstructured cause; too much diversity of purpose; no real political path forward; and the real potential for the meaning of the day to melt into self-congratulatory complacency.”

Meanwhile, impressive scholarly evidence continues to build that people make political choices on the basis of social identities, not by forming independent opinions of issues; that our conflicting moral views have unconscious bases that are “nearly impregnable to arguments from outsiders“; and that voters are badly uninformed. Walter Lippmann (1925) and Joseph Schumpeter (1942) already held this general view, but the accumulating evidence must be taken seriously.

Many thoughtful people have accepted the diagnosis in full. They are aware of democracy’s real maladies. Unfortunately, their commitment to finding cures is much weaker.

After all, any political system is only as good as we make it. There are generic arguments in favor of core principles of democracy, such as “voting equality at the decisive stage” (Dahl 1989), but there are also generic problems with it, such as majority-tyranny, propaganda, free-riding, motivated reasoning, the “iron law of oligarchy,” and polarization. An actual system based on voting equality will work well only to the degree that we build institutions and norms that can counter its weaknesses. For instance, a city newspaper can address low information and polarization in a metro area–as long as it finds a market and uses its revenues to inform the public. A grassroots political party can overcome free-riding problems by getting citizens involved–but only if it engages citizens.

If we want to build the new institutions and norms that can make democracy work in the 21st century, we need a lot of people to see its potential. We must be hard-headed designers and reformers of institutions, our eyes open to human limitations; but we must also hear old Walt Whitman’s music:

The purpose of democracy … is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures, to illustrate, at all hazards, this doctrine or theory that man, properly train’d in sanest, highest freedom, may and must become a law, and series of laws, unto himself. …

Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruits in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between men, and their beliefs — in religion, literature, colleges, and schools — democracy in all public and private life, and in the army and navy. I have intimated that, as a paramount scheme, it has yet few or no full realizers and believers. I do not see, either, that it owes any serious thanks to noted propagandists or champions, or has been essentially help’d, though often harm’d, by them. …

I submit, therefore, that the fruition of democracy, on aught like a grand scale, resides altogether in the future.

Whitman saw glimpses of that future in his own time, and I think hundreds of thousands of people–including me–scanned new democratic vistas on Saturday. That was the first essential step toward actually repairing our democracy together.

Resistance

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I’ve been thinking lately of John Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down. It’s a tale of resistance. The story of how a a small town is swiftly conquered by an overwhelming force whose power is so absolute there is nothing the people can do to resist.

Then slowly, steadily, something changes. Resistance builds. The people who have been stripped of all power find that it is in fact their conquerors who have no power at all. In the slow fight for freedom; it is the conquered who will always win.

I excerpt a long passage below:

The days and weeks dragged on, and the months dragged on.  The snow fell and melted and fell and melted and finally fell and stuck.  The dark buildings of the little town wore bells and hats and eyebrows of white and there were trenches through the snow to the doorways.  In the harbor the coal barges came empty and went away loaded, but the coal did not come out of the ground easily.  The good miners made mistakes.  They were clumsy and slow.  Machinery broke and took a long time to fix.  The people of the conquered country settled in a slow, silent, waiting revenge.  The men who had been traitors, who had helped the invaders – and many of them believed it was for a better state and an ideal way of life – found that the control they took was insecure, that the people they had known looked at them coldly  and never spoke.

And there was death in the air, hovering and waiting.  Accidents happened on the railroad, which clung to the mountains and connected the little town to the rest of the nation.  Avalanches poured down on the tracks and rails were spread.  No train could move unless the tracks were first inspected.  People were shot in reprisal and it made no difference.  Now and then a group of young men escaped and went to England.  And the English bombed the coal mine and did some damage and killed some of both their friends and their enemies.  And it did no good.  The cold hatred grew with the winter, the silent, sullen hatred, the waiting hatred.  The food supply was controlled – issued to the obedient and withheld from the disobedient – so that the whole population turned coldly obedient.  There was a point that food could not be withheld, for a starving man cannot mine coal, cannot lift and carry.  And the hatred was deep in the eyes of the people, beneath the surface.

Now it was that the conqueror was surrounded, the men of the battalion alone among silent enemies, and no man might relax his guard even for a moment.  If he did, he disappeared, and some snowdrift received his body.  If he went alone to a woman, he disappeared and some snowdrift received his body.   If he drank, he disappeared.  The men of the battalion could sing only together, could dance only together, and dancing gradually stopped and the singing expressed a longing for home.  Their talk was of friends and relatives who loved them and their longings were for warmth and love, because a man can be a soldier for only so many hours a day and for only so many months in a year, and then he wants to be a man again, wants girls and drinks and music and laughter and ease, and when these are cut off, they become irresistibly desirable.

And the men thought always of home.  The men of the battalion came to detest the place they had conquered, and they were curt with the people and the people were curt with them, and gradually a little fear began to grow in the conquerors, a fear that it would never be over, that they could never relax or go home, a fear that one day they would crack and be hunted through the mountains like rabbits, for the conquered never relaxed their hatred.  The patrols, seeing lights, hearing laughter, would be drawn as to a fire, and when they came near the laughter stopped, the warmth went out, and the people were cold and obedient.  And the soldiers, smelling warm food from the little restaurants, went in and ordered the warm food and found that it was oversalted or overpeppered.

Then the soldiers read the news from home and from the other conquered countries, and the news was always good, and for a little while they believed it, and then after a while they did not believe it any more.  And every man carried in his heart the terror.  “If home crumbled, they would not tell us, and then it would be too late.  These people will not spare us.  They will kill us all.”  They remembered stories of their men retreating through Belgium and retreating out of Russia.  And the more literate remembered the frantic, tragic retreat from Moscow, when every peasant’s pitchfork tasted blood and the snow was rotten with bodies.

And they knew when they cracked, or relaxed, or slept too long, it would be the same here, and their sleep was restless and their days were nervous.  They asked questions their officers could not answer because they did not know.  They were not told, either.  They did not believe the reports from home, either.

Thus it came about that the conquerors grew afraid of the conquered and their nerves wore thin and they shot at shadows in the night.  The cold, sullen silence was with them always.  Then three soldiers went insane in a week and cried all night and all day until they were sent away home.  And others might have gone insane if they had not heard that mercy deaths awaited the insane at home, and a mercy death is a terrible thing to think of.  Fear crept into the men in their billets and it made them sad, and it crept into the patrols and it made them cruel.

The year turned and the nights grew long.  It was dark at three o’clock in the afternoon and not light again until nine in the morning.  The jolly lights did not shine out on the snow, for by law every window must be black against the bombers.  And yet when the English bombers came over, some light always appeared near the coal mine.  Sometimes the sentries shot a man with a lantern and once a girl with a flashlight.  And it did no good.  Nothing was cured by the shooting.

And the officers were a reflection of their men, more restrained because their training was more complete, more resourceful because they had more responsibility, but the same fears were a little deeper buried in them, the same longings were more tightly locked in their hearts.  And they were under a double strain, for the conquered people watched them for mistakes and their own men watched them for weakness, so that their spirits were taut to the breaking point.  The conquerors were under a terrible spiritual siege and everyone knew, conquered and conquerors, what would happen when the first crack appeared.

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ILG Releases Results of CA Public Engagement Survey

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We encourage our members on the West Coast to take note of the results of a survey of local public engagement in California recently conducted by NCDD member organization the Institute for Local Government. The survey results show that local governments need more support in key areas that many of our members work in, which hopefully means more opportunities are on the horizon! We encourage you to read ILG’s post about the survey results below, or click here for more on their effort.

ILG Public Engagement Program Releases Findings from Self Evaluation Effort

“When citizens are actively involved in their civic and democratic institutions, their community and nation are stronger, more just, and more prosperous.”  — Alan Solomont, Dean, Tufts University

As public engagement is a foundation of our democracy, the Public Engagement Program has been a foundation of the Institute for Local Government (ILG).  A key component of our organization’s vision is to work toward a future where “all segments of the community are appropriately engaged in key public decisions.”

We’ve been working on this vision for more for a decade. But last year we decided to pause, assess our effectiveness and look at how we can best assist local governments. We retained outside consultants to help us undertake an ambitious, objective assessment of where we stand, what our local government partners need and how we can help them achieve their goals. The result was an in-depth evaluation resulting in informative infographics and accompanying narrative reports: “What We Did and What We Learned” and “Electronic Survey Results.”

These reports provide insight into the process used and input considered to assess the effectiveness of our program, while a complementary document, “The Future of Public Engagement Work,” outlines 10 recommended steps for the Public Engagement Program to take in order to better engage communities and local governments.

What We Did & What We Learned

ILG engaged with stakeholders across California to discuss what our public engagement program is doing well, how it can better serve local governments, and the challenges that local governments often face in making policy decisions. The result was a number of key observations, for example:

  • The public engagement field is still developing;
  • While local governments in California have made strides towards more inclusive public engagement in decision-making, they continue to report significant challenges; and
  • ILG is uniquely positioned to expand training and technical assistance to local governments in California.

The Program also completed a resources inventory that includes the publishing of more than 500 resources and 200 conference sessions since 2005. In addition, we interviewed 11 similar organizations, providing a nationwide scan of the field. During these interviews, many key themes were expressed, including the importance of a practitioner support network and the need to share lessons learned at a national level.

Statewide Electronic Survey Results

In conjunction with our consultants, we also conducted an extensive survey that was completed by more than 250 stakeholders representing counties, cities, special districts, and public engagement champions in 42 of California’s 58 counties. The survey provided ILG with insight on the impact of the Public Engagement Program; for example, 83 percent of those who had participated in an ILG learning opportunity reported that it increased knowledge and/or capacity to engage people.

The survey also provided many insights into the challenges that local government officials face in making local policy decisions. Among the most cited problems were “it’s the same people who always participate” and a “lack of staff and/or financial resources.” Participants stated that they believed a public engagement model for policy decision making is best applied to the following areas: parks and recreation, land use and planning, transportation, and infrastructure.

The Future of Our Public Engagement Work

Additionally, the consultants recommended 10 possible “next steps” for the Program to consider pursuing. Highlights included:

  • Increasing in-person outreach to discover local government needs and how ILG can assist;
  • Establishing new cross-sector partnerships to expand effective public engagement practices; and
  • Expanding the Public Engagement Program’s training opportunities and developing new tools.

The evaluation was conducted by our project consultants: Deb Marois, Converge CRT, and Adele James, Adele James Consulting. We thank The James Irvine Foundation for their generous support in making this assessment a reality, as well as in sharing our vision regarding the value of effective public engagement.

At ILG, we are excited about the future of our Public Engagement Program, and we are ready to put our consultants’ recommendations into practice.

You can find the infographics and their accompanying narrative reports on the Institute for Local Government’s website at: www.ca-ilg.org/PE2015Evaluation.

a plea to conservatives

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The new president derides almost everything you claim to defend. You say you are for limited government and the rule of law over men; he denies all limitations. You say you are patriots; he praises a foreign kleptocrat while abusing his domestic critics and public servants. You speak of an independent free market; he intervenes daily with threats and blandishments. You remind us of the importance of norms and moral constraints, grounded in traditions. He seeks public attention by violating interpersonal, institutional, even sexual norms. You honor faith; he demonstrates ignorance of his own religion and contempt for others. You stand for cultural excellence and depth–he is a shallow vulgarian.

It will be tempting, nevertheless, to embrace this man because he aligns with you on certain matters that you are entitled to hold dear: taxes, Supreme Court nominations. Besides, liberals and progressives with whom you have a long and bitter feud hate him, and that inclines you to sympathy. His critics sometimes go beyond principled judgment to demonstrate bias against him. That makes you want to take his side. Your fellow travelers who have never struggled to understand or honor the hard principles of your movement–opportunistic politicians and performers who don’t know Hamilton from Madison or Burke from Hayek–are already jumping aboard. They have cast their lots and sold themselves that they might drink.

Liberalism will be fine. Liberals will lose favored policies, and as a result people will suffer, even die. But as a movement, liberalism will emerge unscathed, indeed, more unified, determined, and popular. It is conservatism that it’s at risk. And that is a problem for the country, which needs a conservative counterweight.

If you don’t stand explicitly against him, he will define what you stand for. Conservatism will mean Trumpism for generations to come. If you are very lucky, his administration will perform well enough that you will survive to continue your battle with the left and center-left. But if he leads the nation into a crisis or ruin, you will own that, too. And deservedly, because his mistakes will flow from his arrogant abuse of state power, which you, as champions of limited government, should have blocked.

“For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision” (Joel 3:14). Even in a century or more, it will be remembered where you chose to stand. Blow ye the trumpet, sound the alarm.

Committing to Building Our Nation’s Capacity for Democracy

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Today is Inauguration Day, and the scene in the nation’s capitol is one of stark differences. The country’s new administration is officially taking power amid both large protests and large celebrations, and the picture clearly reflects to us that, over the next four years, we in the field of dialogue and deliberation have our work cut out for us. A functioning democracy depends on people who disagree, often deeply, still having the capacity to listen and talk to one another and make decisions together. And today in DC, the need – and the opportunity – for the D&D field to work on building that capacity is on full display.

To help us reflect on the work ahead we wanted to share a piece penned by NCDD member Kyle Bozentko of the Jefferson Center that, though it was written shortly after the election, still holds much truth for today as well. We encourage you to read the piece below or find the original here.

The Future of Our Democracy

Regardless of your feelings about its outcome, this election has brought the divides in our country into sharp relief – divisions that threaten the health and vibrancy of our shared democracy.

Together, our country faces serious challenges. These challenges take different forms in different communities. We know, though, that communities have the capacity to address these issues and advocate for themselves.

That’s why our work envisions a different kind of democracy. A democracy where civic participation extends beyond the ballot box. A democracy that empowers citizens to solve problems, develop policy, meaningfully influence decision making, and inspire action. A democracy where all citizens, regardless of their differences, join together to create stronger communities and a thriving nation.

Today, we reaffirm our commitment to an inclusive democracy. We will continue to strive for accountability in our democratic institutions, for action and policy that responds to the ambitions of all Americans, for a unified expression of our power as citizens to shape the course of our lives…

Whether you’re feeling excited about the possibilities for change in America, or anger and despair at the uncertainty of our shared future, or both, there’s work to do today. Let’s get to it.

You can find the original version of this Jefferson Center blog piece at www.jefferson-center.org/the-future-of-our-democracy.