Empowerment, as Archon Fung explains, is the “expectation that citizens’ participation and deliberation will directly affect public action.” ([1], pp. 118-19) Citizen empowerment is inherently associated with – albeit in varying degrees dependent upon the depth of engagement – a disturbance of the existing power structure and methods of decision-making and agenda-setting. Authority is decentralised, with those citizens affected by or concerned with a decision or policy awarded influence. What determines depth of engagement or level of influence is the degree to which deliberative empowerment is pursued. In the nomenclature of eDemocracy, this translates to whether the consultative model or deliberative-participatory model is adopted. Deliberative empowerment draws upon deliberative democracy theory, and thus is concerned with the establishment of a deliberative and critical public sphere. This public sphere is characterised by “inclusive, fair, well-informed and well-researched public argumentation, the mutually acceptable resolution of which provides the substantive content of and serves as a moral justification for mutually binding decisions at the policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation stages.” ([2], p. 138). Deliberative empowerment itself can be divided in to two categories:
The individual branch of deliberative empowerment sees citizens as empowered through the engagement of personal skills – for example, analysis, story-telling, critical thought, discussion, persuasion, and so on – as well as the further development of – and thus the capacity to wield – those skills. This development is fostered by the individual, the state, the third sector, and the deliberative public sphere itself. Similarly, the institutional branch of deliberative empowerment is characterised by the actions of government and the public sector in relation to establishing avenues for citizen engagement, and simultaneously fostering an environment that is conducive to active citizenship.
Empowering
citizens and dramatically expanding civic engagement wields a number of
potential benefits. A wide range of sources – from academic and third sector,
to government reports – have identified the capacity for community engagement
to heighten the nature and quality of policy and programs. It can harness the wealth
of individual and community knowledge to better design, target and deliver
services that are truly localised and a product of grass roots participation
rather than centralised command. Similarly, the opportunities
to crowdsource – which Iceland has recently employed to draft its constitution – allows the government to learn from and positively harness the expertise of the citizenry. A report from the UK has adopted this notion as its key theme, advocating for “experimental partnerships between major departments and user generated sites in key policy areas.” (p. 5). Similarly, the Australian Federal Government report ‘Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0’ affirms that “technology now offers the opportunity for policy development and service delivery to be simultaneously more democratic and more expert.” (p. 31) Further, it argues that while a new approach should not disregard the proficiency of public servants and professionals, through broadening the range of consultation and empowerment, such an approach would cultivate a “more open, diverse knowledge base from which to draw to improve the chances of seizing an opportunity or solving a problem.” (p. 31)
An active, informed and engaged citizenry, coupled with a decentralised state, strengthens representative democracy itself. Not only by augmenting the quality of policy, programs and service delivery, but through cultivating a respect within both state and society for recurrent civic participation, as well as revitalising trust in the institutions of government. Empirical data has demonstrated that there is a correlation between capacity to influence government policy and trust in government (pp. 13-15). Similarly, otherstudies have suggested that merely having one’s views meaningfully acknowledged and considered is conducive to greater belief in the efficacy and legitimacy of government and public services. Additionally, an enhanced conception of citizenship has the capacity to cultivate social capital, public knowledge, individual skills and self-esteem,
and greater empathy [3].
For more on deliberation, social capital, and empathy, see these three videos:
Deliberative experiments, either partly or entirely online, have been conducted successfully in academic and government environments, from Canada to New Zealand. Results have demonstrated a correlation between the design of the experiment and success, which is further discussed here. Overall, the point behind expanding empowerment online, aligned with deliberative empowerment principles, is to establish a public sphere with agenda-setting and decision-making procedures that allow for the acknowledgement of individual and community interests, and reconcile competing interests in a mutually-satisfactory manner. It does not intend to achieve consensus on all issues; rather, it seeks to establish a legitimate and justifiable process through which competing interests can be considered, coerced by no force except that of the better argument. For a more practical discussion of how this plays out, please move on to the Role of Government section.
[1] Fung, A., 'Deliberative Democracy, Chicago Style: Grass-roots Governance in Policing and Public Education' in Fung, A. and Wright, E. O. (eds.), Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Government, Verso, London, 2003.
[2] Johnson, G. F., 'The Limits of Deliberative Democracy and Empowerment: Elite Motivation in Three Canadian Cases', Canadian Journal of Political Science, vol. 44, no. 1, 2011, pp. 137-59.
[3] Jones, S., Hackney, R. and Irani, Z., 'Towards e-Government Transformation: Conceptualising Citizen Engagement',Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, vol. 1, no. 2, 2007, pp. 145-52.