Abstract
This article presents the concept of dialogic public policies using a case study of the Integrated Plan for the Roma People in Catalonia. For centuries, the Roma people have been considered one of the most socially excluded and discriminated groups across Europe. Several public policies have been promoted to achieve greater social inclusion and reverse this situation. In this context, from 2001 onward, the dialogic public policies began to be developed, which indicated the beginning of the Integrated Plan for the Roma People in Catalonia. The egalitarian dialogue between the Roma people and the scientific community started with the WORKALO project. This research funded by the V Framework Research Programme of the European Commission that generated a political impact and prompted unanimous recognition of the Roma people on the part of the European Parliament and some of the parliaments of the member states. The dialogic public policies had two defining points: they had to be made using an egalitarian dialogue with the Roma people, and they had to base themselves on actions indicated by the scientific evidence to provide the best possible results.
Introduction
Tomás was a young Roma from a municipality in Barcelona. His daily routine involved going to the market to work, helping his family and sharing pleasant moments with his friends in the neighborhood, in his spare time. He was very pleased with his family and personal life and was aware that the work in the market was difficult and not suitable for the stability of his family. At times, he thought about what his life would be if he had not given up his studies during his adolescence. One day in his neighborhood, someone commented that the Department of Social Welfare and Family of the Catalan Government organized access to a university course for people over 25 years of age who wanted to resume their studies. Juan, who was a Roma colleague from his neighborhood, attended the course in the previous year. This year, he began taking courses at the university. His eyes suddenly dazzled when he imagined himself in the same situation as Juan—why not dare, then? After calming his doubts about whether this opportunity awaited him, he decided to take action and requested relevant information. After a few days, he was on his way to a class given by a young Roma university teacher with a backpack full of books. After considerable effort and long hours of daily study, Tomás managed to pass the university access examination and enrolled in the sociology program at the University of Barcelona.
Due to the Integrated Plan for the Roma People in Catalonia, Tomás and Juan became reference points for other young Roma women and men who regarded education as a way to overcome social exclusion and stereotypes about their people. Thus, the Integrated Plan for the Roma, which was based on the dialogical model of public policy, is achieving remarkable results in its objective to socially and economically equate the Roma population and the non-Roma population in Catalonia. As an example, only an estimated 2% of Roma people have access to university studies in Spain (Laparra, 2011, p. 50). However, the Integrated Plan for the Roma People in Catalonia, which offers access to a university course for Roma people over 25 years of age, who comprise the University Access Group (UAG), achieved a passing rate of 29.16% in the 2016–2017 Academic Year (Museo Virtual del Pueblo Gitano, 2017). Currently, 18 Roma people are studying at Catalan universities due to the actions of the Integrated Plan.
The Integrated Plan has applied the model of Dialogic Public Policies. To detail the Dialogic Public Policies, their relationships and social impact, this article is divided into three sections. Dialogic public policies and their essential elements are explained in the first section. The role of scientific evidence with social impact is emphasized. In the second section, we describe how the Integrated Plan for the Roma has applied this approach based on the communicative methodology in its design, implementation, and evaluation. In the third section, we propose relevant conclusions and future research action lines.
The Dialogic Public Policy
Origins of the Dialogic Public Policy
The WORKALO project, The creation of new occupational patterns for cultural minorities: the Roma case (2001–2004), was funded by the V Framework Programme of the European Commission to enable citizens, particularly Roma people, and researchers to collaborate on design innovative strategies for social and economic development oriented toward social cohesion in Europe (Sordé et al., 2013). The European Parliament unanimously approved the conclusions of WORKALO at the final conference held on September 29, 2004, in Brussels. Due to interventions by the Roma people and researchers in the Chamber and dialogue between an elderly female Roma and a Spanish MP, a proposal to recognize the Roma people in the country Parliament of Spain was presented on April 7, 2005 (Espinel et al., 2017). This space of egalitarian dialogue in the European Parliament was developed throughout the entire project, which was based on the principles of communicative methodology from the moment of its inception. The joint work between researchers and the Roma people, from the beginning of the presentation of the final results in the Parliament, concluded with a remarkable political impact (Soler, 2017).
The presentation of the conclusions of the WORKALO project coincided with increased attention to Roma issues in Europe. The European Union launched the Decade of Roma Inclusion initiative (2005–2015), in which 11 countries of the European Union committed to implementing public policies to reduce social and economic drawbacks of the Roma population in their territory (Brüggemann & Friedman, 2017). From 2004 to 2009, the European Parliament worked on the rights of the Roma people, and in 2008, issued a resolution in which it called on the European Commission and the Council to adopt a European Roma Strategy (European Parliament, 2008). Subsequently, in 2011, the European Parliament issued a resolution (European Parliament, 2011) that proposed seven priority areas and 30 objectives for the development of a Roma Inclusion Strategy. As a result of this process of dialogue among politicians, scientists, and society, the European Commission launched the National Roma Integration Strategies: Common European Framework for 2020 in 2011. Member countries of the European Union must include programs in their political framework that are aimed at improving the situation of the Roma people in their territories.
In a pioneering manner, the Social Policy Commission of the Parliament of Catalonia approved a resolution in which the identity of the Roma people and the value of the Roma culture for Catalan society were recognized (Resolution 1046/VI, Comissió de Política Social, 2001). This resolution represented a milestone by breaking with a long European tradition of separation between States and ethnic identities, which hindered any legal or governmental recognition of ethnic groups (Kymlicka, 1995). As a result of this recognition and awareness of the inequalities that existed between the Roma population and the non-Roma population of Catalonia, another resolution was enacted, in which the Catalan Government was bound to elaborate an Integrated Plan for the Roma population of Catalonia to revert their situation of social exclusion (Resolution 1045/VI, Comissió de Política Social, 2001). After months of work, the First Integrated Plan for the Rome in Catalonia was approved in 2005.
For the elaboration of the First Integrated Plan for the Rome in Catalonia (2005-2008), the Study on Roma People in Catalonia (Sánchez et al. 2005) was commissioned to analyze the situation of the Roma community in Catalonia from a rigorous and transformative perspective. This study also implied a turning point in relation to the research on the Roma People, since use of the communicative methodology of research enabled an in-depth analysis of the situation of social exclusion suffered by the Roma people in Catalonia via the collaboration between scientists and civil society, which changed the previous approach to research “on the Roma people” (Macías & Redondo, 2012). Based on the results of the study, the First Integrated Plan was elaborated.
From the beginning of the elaboration of the Integrated Plan, the model of dialogic public policies was applied. This model established an equal dialogue among politicians, researchers, and civil society. On the part of civil society, grassroots Roma people, cultural associations, Roma, University, and other associations and organizations participated (Generalitat de Catalunya, 2006). The Integrated Plan simultaneously established the basic administrative structure, which was maintained in subsequent editions. The Plan advocated to maintain the communicative approach that was employed to organize and conduct the WORKALO research.
In the next section, we analyze the defining and essential methodological elements of the Dialogic Public Policies.
Definition of the Dialogic Public Policy
Marshall Ganz, who is a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, gave a presentation on July 4, 2011, as part of a conference on Dialogic Policy organized by the CREA Research Center (University of Barcelona), in which he discussed how people who may not have political and economic power to influence decisions and obtain results can achieve their goals by articulating their motivational, relational, strategic and action skills and activating “leadership practices” in other people. The importance of social movements to succeed create a strategy in which they explain a story, or a “public narrative” (Ganz, 2009). By explaining public narratives, Ganz suggests that social movements are capable of constructing new identities and inspiring action. From this very element, the dialogical aspect of organizing in politics, which has meaning and a shared leadership, is recognized. Classic authors of the theory of deliberative democracy (Barber, 1984; Elster, 1998; Gutmann & Thompson, 2009) also emphasize the need to incorporate in policymaking the participation of social groups that were affected by the intervention of a particular public policy. Thus, the dialogic public policies were conceptualized based on deliberative democracy and emphasize the need for citizen participation in policymaking and the egalitarian dialogue among politicians, citizens, and experts (Banyan, 2007).
However, the new conceptualization of the dialogic public policies, which began its generation in Dialogic Policy Workshops that have been progressively implemented in the Integrated Plan for the Roma, emphasized that debate had to be articulated based on these measures during the formulation of alternative public policies and that the scientific evidence had shown to yield the best results, that is, that they had already demonstrated to have a relevant social impact. Thus, the debate was not established based on the particular interests of the participants or chosen based on ideas without a scientific guarantee of success. Text was added to the previous definition regarding a fundamental aspect to define the dialogic public policies as follows: Dialogic Public Policies as those public policies that emerge from an equal dialogue between decision makers, end-users and experts, and dialogue is based on the scientific evidence that achieves the best results.
Based on this definition, the process of elaboration of dialogic public policies starts from the premise that implemented actions must have a scientific and social guarantee. The participation of researchers is necessary by contributing to the deliberation of actions detected by science that provide the best results, and therefore, have a social impact. However, the participation of researchers is not exclusive. The dialogic public policies require the informed and decisive participation of the receiving population. The daily and direct interaction of the target population with the issues provides them with an overview about the problems that enable them to participate in the debate that offers knowledge to ensure that the alternatives from scientific research can be successfully implemented. Finally, the participation of politicians contributes to the dialogue political and administrative expertise, which allows setting in motion the institutional mechanisms to solve these issues.
Since researchers, politicians, and end-users are three different collectives, each collective provides a different type of knowledge during the policymaking process. Hierarchies do not exist among different types of knowledge due to their diverse nature. The key to defining the validity of the evidence within the dialogic public policies is that the scientific evidence must demonstrate that it has had a social impact, and therefore, that it has been successfully implemented in other contexts. Via an intersubjective and egalitarian dialogue among researchers, politicians, and end-users and based on the pretensions of validity but not based on the pretensions of power (Habermas, 1984), the implementation of this alternative and its execution to achieve the best possible results. Thus, using the premise that was previously defined in WORKALO, the scientific knowledge, the voices of the recipients, and the political decision makers, in constant interaction, set in motion the public policies that will subsequently reach different social realities (schools, hospitals, town halls, neighborhoods, and civic centers). Therefore, we note the dialogical leadership that is shared among the different agents that participate in the debate and discussion process, which encourages the search for a consensus (Redondo, 2016).
The Case of the Integrated Plan for the Roma People in Catalonia
Data Collection and Analysis
This article is framed within a line of research on Romani Studies developed by the Centre of Roma Studies (CEG) of CREA-UB, which is composed by Roma researchers and non-Roma researchers. The main aim of CEG is to respond to the needs of the Roma community by generating scientific, rigorous and critical knowledge about the situation of the Roma people, promoting their social and educational inclusion, and struggling against “anti-Gypsyism.” Initial CEG investigations primarily focused on the field of adult people education (end of 1990s). Over time, investigations’ topics diversified to topics such as employment, Romani women and the Romani feminism-gender perspective, transnationalism, and Roma migrants. Common criteria that are employed in CEG investigations are developed using the communicative methodology, because it enables the participation of the Roma people from the very definition of the research questions (for instance, by the creation of Advisory Councils) to the very end of the project (at the dissemination or implementation of the results, whichever is applicable).
To determine how the egalitarian dialogue among researchers, end-users and policymakers occurred in the design of the Integrated Plan, we analyzed four semi-structured interviews conducted with a communicative orientation. This field work has informed the doctoral dissertation of one of the co-authors of this article (García-Espinel, 2016) and was employed in this study. The interviewees are profiled as follows: a Romani adult woman, a sociocultural promoter who has participated in the Plan’s working groups, two male policymakers, a Roma research member of the CEG, and a member of the Drafting Team of the Plan 20124-2016.
The analysis of the information has been performed in a communicative manner by identifying the exclusion and transforming dimension (Pulido et al., 2014). In this case, the exclusionary dimension would be formed by elements that enable the Roma people to access a service or a due right. If these barriers cease to exist, applying the elements that arise within the transformative dimension and access to a service or right would be possible. In the case of research with vulnerable groups, this methodological approach highlights situations of social inequality that have perpetuated for years. The analysis of these situations has historically been based on a diagnosis and description of inequalities without searching for alternatives to overcome this exclusion situation.
Becoming real the motto of Roma people “nothing about, without us.”
Since international governments have highlighted that the incorporation of Roma people in policymaking is crucial for promoting policies to increase their social inclusion and fight against Roma discrimination (UNDP, 2002), the Third Integrated Plan for the Roma People in Catalonia (2014–2016) has included the participation of the Roma people from the beginning through the creation of Working Groups that were organized and connected to the four areas established by the Roma 2020 Strategy (education, work, housing, health, and work). The Plenary of the Advisory Council of the Roma People considered that three additional working groups should be organized in the areas of youth, women, and culture due to the existing differences in inequality in these areas between the Roma population and the non-Roma population in Catalonia. Each working group consisted of Roma people, researchers, a representative of the Department of the relevant subject, and a representative of the Department of Social Welfare and Family. Policymakers from 11 different Departments participated in the project (Generalitat de Catalunya, 2014, p. 26). Each working group was guaranteed to include Roma participants who were traditionally absent from political deliberation. This aspect was extraordinary since the National Strategy of Roma in Spain had not been previously elaborated in this manner. A young Roma participant, a member of the Center for Roma Studies of the University of Barcelona and a member of the editorial team of the 2014–2016 Comprehensive Plan explains the process as follows: The Integrated Plan for the Roma in Catalonia is the first one in the participation aspect. The National Strategy of Roma itself has not been elaborated in this way. Yes, they have taken into account representative Roma organizations, but the Plan has the added value of having incorporated ordinary people at the grassroots level. These people are there because of the role they occupy in their communities, in their neighbourhoods thus, their voice has been taken into account in the elaboration of policies. It is about incorporating not only the Roma members that because we already participate due to our position, but those people who are not usually involved in political and decision-making processes. They bring up to the table the reality of the neighbourhood. (García, 2015, p. 142)
We observe how, for the first time, the voice of the Roma people is considered when discussing issues that directly affect the community. Key aspects of these discussions are the egalitarian dialogue among political representatives, ordinary people, plan technicians, and representatives of Roma associations. An adult Roma woman who performs tasks as a mediator in a municipality of Catalonia explained how her participation was considered: In the past they did things in good faith but they did not quite fit in with the Roma community. Usually, it did not happen that we could say to the administration: this is not going to be good; this is best done like this. The things that were offered did not go well. Sometimes they asked you questions, but then they did not take into account their opinions, they had a sort of a pattern that got repeated over and over again, but without positive working results. (García, 2015, p. 139)
Policymakers also considered that the Roma people’s participation in the process of elaboration of the policies was crucial for their success, as the Roma contributed with their lifeworlds, which was entered into dialogue with the scientific evidence of the policies that worked to improve their living conditions in different areas. One of the policymakers expressed the following opinion: The assessment of the participation of Roma people in the design and execution of the Integrated Plan policies is very positive, since it has allowed the beneficiaries of these policies to influence the decisions that affect them; identifying which policies should be executed and obviously, which ones shouldn’t, but also about the way in which they should be implemented, this is, on their implementation methodology. (García, 2015, p. 140)
Incorporating the voice of the Roma people in the formulation of the policy increased the effectiveness of the government intervention due to the Administration’s knowledge of the reality of the Roma people, and therefore, to create policies for the target population. A policymaker provided the following explanation: At the same time, this participation enriches the action of the Public Administration, which acquires knowledge and methodologies of approaching the target population that they do not know in-depth, a fact that allows public action to be more effective when it comes to achieving its objectives, along it approaches public policies to the beneficiary citizens [. . .] (García, 2015, p. 143)
The participation of the Roma community in the process of elaboration of the policies in a dialogical manner has also contributed to improvements in the praxis and the administrative structure of the Integrated Plan.
The incorporation of scientific evidence in the dialogue
Because the key to the definition of Dialogic Public Policies that arise in this article is the egalitarian dialogue among politicians, researchers, and end-users based on scientific evidence, the Third Integrated Plan for the Rome in Catalonia (2014–2016) has incorporated the scientific evidence into the egalitarian dialogue between policymakers and end-users. The inclusion of evidence in the deliberation generated via the communicative organization was considered an essential requirement. The knowledge accumulated by science, the needs of the target population, and the daily practice of politics united in a constant egalitarian dialogue prompted the implementation of various concrete actions aimed at improving the living conditions of the Roma people. This situation was synthesized by a politician: The key is to add the needs of the Roma people and the needs that we detect from the administrations. The challenge is to combine these two actions. To combine what they feel is necessary with a scientific analysis. We need the impulse of the three: the Roma populations, the universities and the administrations. (García, 2015, p. 137)
The Third Integrated Plan had, for the first time, the participation of members of the Centre of Roma Studies of CREA-UB. Their participation in the deliberation enable the guarantee of the success of the debated proposals to be compared by avoiding the selection of alternatives that the scientific evidence had already deemed unsuccessful. From the contributions of the FP7 INCLUD-ED project, which identified and analyzed the educational successful actions (SEAs in its English initials) included in the Third Plan for the area of education actions in the training of community-based agents in SEAs, such as interactive groups, dialogic literacy gatherings, or family training.
The incorporation of scientific evidence in the dialogue enabled the discarding of actions that had only reproduced stereotypes and perpetuated the inequalities of the community, although they were often implemented based on witticism. A Roma researcher summarized the situation as follows: In some of these meetings people from another Department of the Catalan Government were represented; they put some proposals forward that I would not describe as discriminatory, but they were obsolete measures, which were not in line with the results of scientific research and which continued to reproduce the same discourse. [. . .] Thanks to this framework of high expectations and scientific references [by the Department of Social Welfare], arguments could be refuted and the reproductive measures were not included in the final document as successful actions. (García, 2015, pp. 156–157)
When Roma ordinary people gain access to the policymaking process in a nonbiased manner and evidence of policies that worked to improve the living conditions of the Roma people (evidence-based actions with proven social impact) is included in the deliberation, a real egalitarian dialogue is generated, which hinders the emergence of exclusionist perspectives and actions.
Conclusions
In this article, a new conceptualization of the dialogic public policies has been presented. The dialogic public policies were conceived only as an egalitarian dialogue among end-users, policymakers, and researchers. However, the new conceptualization combines scientific evidence with social impact, which enables the implementation of actions due to a deliberation and ensures that the implemented actions have a scientific guarantee of success, since they have been shown to have a remarkable social impact.
The dialogic public policies differ from the evidence-based policies approach in a key aspect, that is, their design and implementation require the direct participation of the people affected by a political decision and the egalitarian dialogue among researchers, end-users, and policymakers. The dialogic public policies are a response to authors who regret the lack of direct representation in the decision-making processes of the evidence-based policy (Boaz et al., 2015) and criticize the technocratic drift of this movement, which excludes citizens from this process (Hoppe, 2005; Martson & Watts, 2003; Weingart, 1999).
However, the case of the Integrated Plan for the Rome in Catalonia is an example of how the dialogic public policies are not an ideal and unattainable theoretical conceptualization but a “real utopia” (Wright, 2010). Thus, we experience an example of a public policy that is created with and for the Roma people in a dialogical manner with ordinary Roma people as protagonists. In a field such as public management, where the Roma community has traditionally been excluded because the majority of this community are not considered to be academics because they achieved few contributions, currently they are the driving force of change and transformation (Freire, 1996). As the protagonists of the transformation of their community, they observe how a larger number of Roma boys and girls achieve educational success or how the first Roma Network University in Catalonia (CampusRom) already exists as a result of the actions with social impacts implemented with the Plan. The Roma people, who demonstrate an alternative to exclusive public policymaking, pave the way to public dialogic policies with real social impacts.
Footnotes
Authors’ Note
Gemma Álvarez is now affiliated with Generalitat de Catalunya. Escola d’Administració Pública de Catalunya and Emilia Aiello is now affiliated with Harvard Kennedy School.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.