Citizen participation,agency and voice

Melinda and Melinda

In many European countries, citizen participation has become one of the main topics on the institutional agenda and involves different sectors of public action, particularly at a local level. Just think, for example, of the burgeoning procedures for taking part in local policies dealing with social inclusion, urban renewal, development, the environment, health and the social services as well as the experiments in participative budgets promoted by numerous city authorities, inspired by the models of local democracy which have been gaining ground since Porto Alegre (Fung and Wright, 2003a; Baiocchi, 2005; Beaumont and Nicholls, 2008).

Participation takes place in contexts of considerable and fairly complex change in public intervention. The policy approaches spreading through many European countries side by side with rescaling processes stress the need to intervene in an incisive, coordinated way in scenarios where problems emerge, emphasizing criteria such as territorialization/integration and trust in the possibility of mobilizing networks based on sharing and cooperation (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2004b).

Though there is a fair consensus over understanding participation as direct citizen involvement in public decision-making, the interest that this idea arouses both in scholarly debate and with the general public is on a par with its vagueness. Besides the still very fluid and experimental form of its realizations (della Porta, 2008), participation implies a variegated spectrum of models and procedures involving different actors and powers (Blondiaux, 2005). Furthermore, participation is affected by a ponderous body of normative theory stemming from two distinct lines of thought. One concerns participative democracy and stresses citizen inclusion in decision-making processes, while the other regards deliberative democracy and underlines the importance of dialogic rationality (Papadopoulos and Warin, 2007).

The starting point of this article is Woody Allen’s film Melinda and Melinda (2004). The gist of the plot is as follows: before going to a funeral, four friends gather around a restaurant table and show off their storytelling skills by narrating the tale of a woman – the same woman seen from two different angles, two Melindas, in fact. But while one version is tragic, the other is comic. In the first, Melinda encounters grief and despair, while in the second she ends up moderately happy. Thus, the outcome of Melinda and Melinda can indeed be an effective way of indicating the complications arising when analyzing certain social phenomena which clearly demonstrate features which are both negative and positive.

Participation is deeply affected by such complications. In scholarly and public debates, supporters and sceptics confront one other with the same kind of vigour. Seen from a comic point of view, the vicissitudes of participation are complex and not always edifying, though they may count on a happy ending. While recognizing the difficulties involved, supporters tend to underline the positive aspects, such as more efficient mechanisms of consensus and an improved democratic process. Denigrators have just as many arguments in favour of a tragic ending, highlighting the fact that participation practices rarely fulfil the theory’s most ambitious promises. They also object that participation generally involves only a few subjects, and selected ones to boot. Finally, it is pointed out that by giving priority to the construction of social ties, the emphasis on participation can lead to neglecting the re-distributive aims of social justice and to devaluing conflicts that are perceived as too ‘political’ (Tissot, 2007).

What this article holds is that we should not consider differing stories of participation as conflicting, but understand how they meet and blend in an empirical social reality. There, in fact, participation practices tell not just two stories, but many more. Research not only fuels debate between supporters and critics but also constructs maps to help orient on the path of participation. Arnstein’s ladder (1969), the most famous categorization, paves the way for analyses centred on different typologies of participation. ¹ As Bishop and Davis observe (2002), the problem is that Arnstein’s analytical schema and the classifications formulated in its wake tend to consider participation as a continuum, thus incorporating value judgements and the presumption that not all forms of participation are ‘real’. But participation is discontinuous interaction:

Participation is shaped by the policy problem at hand, the techniques and resources available and, ultimately, a political judgment about the importance of the issue and the need for public involvement. Participation arrangements tend to be local and ad hoc, and any realistic categorization will reflect diverse and unrelated practices. (2002: 21)

Analytical perspectives

There are different approaches and many arguments for analyzing agency in the processes of participation and collective aggregation, far too many to mention here. So, in a somewhat selective way, this article will favour two interconnected points of view.

The first follows the line of studies highlighting the normative and cognitive cultural dimensions of policies. The debate on public policies has paid attention in various ways to ideas and their performative effects ever since Peter A. Hall (1993) and his distinction between objectives, strategies and instruments. Briefly put, ideas count, as do the effects they produce in tracing the course of implementation and defining the interpretative schemes of problems and solutions, either inducing or holding back change. From a common viewpoint, cultural approaches for studying public policies pay attention to different objects and fields. For example, how the instruments for governing are chosen, forged and deployed (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2004a) or how the relation between knowledge and action in ‘the informative bases of policies’ is structured (Salais, 2008).

The second is centred on neo-institutional approaches privileging explanatory keys based on co-determination between actors and institutions. It is well known, in fact, that the debate on factors favouring participation has traditionally been dominated by approaches centred upon individual actors. Nevertheless, approaches based on the interaction between individuals and institutional contexts have been growing in importance for some time. These approaches, on one hand, identify significant elements in the resources of action available in specific contexts and their degree of aggregation and integration. On the other, they hold that what matters are institutions, which create rules of influence, transmit organizational models and provide incentives, levers for action and power resources (March and Olsen, 1998; Skocpol, 2003).

As far as participation practices are concerned, it is the context above all that must be taken into consideration. Though institutional approaches tend to emphasize a bent towards conservation and uniformity, discussing contexts means highlighting processes of differentiation. In fact, attention to institutional dimensions is not incompatible with recognizing the relevance of the dynamics of ‘translation’ (Czarniawska and Sevon, 1996). Powell (1991) contributes indeed to developing the concept of isomorphism, but he also asserts that institutional environments give life to a heterogeneous and variable spectrum of responses. Whatever, context is a fairly generic term, so much so that research normally takes the following factors into consideration:

Time. Attributing importance to time means paying attention to mechanisms of path dependency, though without embracing deterministic options. Historical vicissitudes help us to understand the past that participation practices bring with them, so to speak, a past which has an influence, but one from which they may also to a certain extent distance themselves. For example, the comparative analysis between France and the United States developed by Donzelot et al. (2003) clearly demonstrate not only the influence exercised by different political and institutional traditions on policy framing and practices of participation, but also the interweaving of persistence and change over a long period of time.

What agency?

The above summary points to the embeddedness of individual agency. From this viewpoint, the powers and freedoms of participation have to be analyzed with reference to social and institutional aspects and not just the rationality of the actors (Blakeley and Evans, 2009).

Participation is in fact an integral part of the changes in public action which have taken place over the past few decades and is an important key for understanding the agency theories they incorporate and empower. These theories generally stress the importance of an active, responsible individual: the organizing image of an independent autonomous individual, the ‘self-possessed and self-directing subject’ (Clarke, 2008). This cognitive and normative matrix has forged public action in its recent, tortuous evolutions. It furnishes the background to the policies inspired by ‘active welfare’, whether dealing with recognizing the citizen-consumer’s freedom of choice or triggering processes of social inclusion via work.

What needs to be underscored is that this matrix, nourished by the various liberalisms which permeate European social and institutional life, is not monolithic, but includes numerous elements of ambivalence and tension. The idea of participation grows stronger when placed side by side with the typical references of economic liberalisms (the model of market and utilitarian individualism), and space is taken up by action directives centred on collaboration, community involvement, etc. (Geddes, 2010). The English case can be considered paradigmatic, because of the policy practices it has inspired, featuring an increase in programmes based on the regeneration of communities which have adopted participative methodologies. But the same move towards participation is to be found elsewhere, for example in a country like France, where there is little inclination to enhance the community and its involvement (Bacqué et al., 2005).

There are, however, at least two complications to be taken into consideration. First of all, the frameworks of public action are all askew and full of incoherence. Second, the ideas incorporated in policies are socially embedded, and rooted in time and place. The models of agency outlined above are linked, therefore, to the social dynamics through which the freedoms and powers of today’s typologies of individuality are developed, as well as their tensions and contradictions (Paci, 2007). This is a quite neglected area of analysis. Yet an investigation of the relationship between public action and social models of agency would reveal how policies contribute to shaping and organizing social life and also the opposite, how repertoires of different social materials are imprinted in policies. I will limit myself here to mentioning just a few of the issues.

The first issue concerns the overriding idea that there exists an active, autonomous individuality, full of initiative. In today's ‘spirit of capitalism’, the ideas of freedom and autonomy have in fact assumed an unprecedented importance as the principles of organization and re-organization of society. According to Boltanski and Chiappello (1999), these ideas have been taken into the new economic order with justificatory argumentations legitimizing today’s capitalism, and so softening its impact. Ehrenberg (1998: 4) upholds that ‘a new normativity’ is pervading late-industrial society, urging each person ‘to become himself/herself’. What is happening is that changes under way question the real possibilities individuals have of being in charge of their own projects Borghi (2011). As Robert Castel (1995, 2003) highlights, autonomy becomes a very cogent principle just when the social supports of individuality tend to weaken, namely collective rights, resources and regulations that have historically nourished individuality in organized Western modernity. ²

Second, we need to understand which freedoms individuals have today. The prevalent forms, developed in the wake of the metamorphosis of the economy and work, tend to accentuate isolation and the poverty of relationships (Sennett 2003; Borghi and Rizza, 2006). These features are the consequences of the compulsion to get ahead, which spurs on individuality today. To grasp the real reach of such freedoms, we need to refer to the classic distinction between negative and positive freedoms: the former defined by the absence of external constrictions and limitations, the latter identified by the possibility to do and achieve something concrete (Berlin, 1969). It is also necessary to understand what the freedoms actually are to take part in the public spaces of democratic life, freedoms that individuals formally have as citizens.

In the third place, though they are offspring of the different kinds of individualism characterizing modernity and late modernity (Lukes, 1973), some forms of individuality favour associated action and nourish specific features of our times, such as the freely chosen, composite and reversible nature of aggregation (Dekker and Van den Broek, 1998; Ambrosini, 2005). ³

As far policies are concerned, interventions that theoretically aim at increasing participation can increase ambiguities and contradictions, for example, counting on the activation of individuals where resources are inadequate, stressing personal responsibility at the cost of a substantial increase in citizen power, etc.

The picture is not easy to put together. Precisely for this reason participation ‘should not be taken off like the smiling face of neo-liberalism’ (Newman and Clarke, 2009: 86). It brings together a very diversified range of perspectives, strategies and possible developments.

Agency and voice

The concept of voice can help unravel the tangle. In Albert Hirschman’s (1970: 16) classic definition, voice belongs to the domain of politics and is radically different from ‘exit’, which belongs to the domain of economics. It is messier because it can be graded from manifestations of faint grumblings to violent outcry, implies critical rather than private opinions, and is straightforward rather than indirect.

As already said, I will be concentrating on the way the concept of voice is drawn into the reflections of Amartya Sen and Arjun Appadurai on capabilities and capacities, and will be tackling two issues: what freedom is implicated in participation and how agency is constructed.

First, freedom is a central theme in Sen’s approach to capabilities. He holds that capabilities ‘concentrate at once on freedom in itself … and identify the concrete alternatives we have’ (Sen, 1992: 6). Briefly, capabilities represent the individual freedom to acquire well-being. ⁴ It is a substantive freedom: the freedom to live the life we attribute value to and we have reason to give value to (Sen, 1999: 24).

In line with his anti-utilitarian position, Sen distances himself well from the de-socialized concept of freedom that characterizes the present culture of capitalism. Individual capabilities are decisively linked to social and institutional opportunities which allow them to grow and be practised (infrastructures, economic possibilities, institutional, legal, political powers and set-ups, and so on). ⁵ At the same time, collective action increases the possibility of individual choices, setting up new ends and means for getting there (De Munck, 2008).

As Robert Salais (2008) emphasizes, there is a constitutive link between Sen’s idea of freedom and power. Salais quotes Sen (1985) on an example of two different ways of being free in an environment freed from the risk of epidemics. The first consists of giving individuals the freedom to stay or go, while the second is to realize public policies which wipe out any risk of epidemics, so that people have the power to live in a healthy environment. Policies of this kind access the possibility of real freedom and power for all, right at the moment when people lose individual choice when faced by the risk of an epidemic.

Furthermore, the freedoms that are dear to Sen include citizen involvement in the public debate in which options and priorities are discussed and fixed. The point is that this debate involves the attribution of values in which the substantive freedoms are rooted. As Sen (1999: 15) puts it, “the exercise of freedom is mediated by values, but the values in turn are influenced by public discussions and social interactions, which are themselves influenced by participatory freedoms”. Public participation is therefore essential for sustaining the debate on values and value judgements incorporated in the collective decisions on well-being. In fact, when the choice regards pre-determined options, Sen holds there is no real freedom: ‘The relevant freedoms include the liberty of acting as citizens who matter and whose voices count, rather than living as well-fed, well-clothed and well-entertained vassals’ (1999: 288).

It is in this light that voice assumes relevance as the ‘political’ expression of capabilities. More precisely, the capability for voice is ‘the capacity to express one’s opinions and thoughts and to make them count in the course of public discussion’ (Bonvin and Thelen, 2003). It is equivalent to powers of choice, and at the same time a premise for, and result of, public democratic debating. In this sense Sen emphasizes that voice is neither an alternative nor an accessory, but operates as an integrating part of well-being. The conditions for voice expression are complementary to the conditions necessary for good health, proper nourishment, etc. Based on these terms on the value of freedom, the capability approach throws light on voice as an attribute of agency. ⁶

To turn to the second issue and show how agency develops, I will now take into consideration the link between capabilities and aspirations from the viewpoint put forward by Appadurai. In search of ‘a cultural counterpoint’ for the amplification of the idea of the welfare state operated by Sen, Appadurai bases his concept of the capacity to aspire on voice and the production of agency. The capacities to aspire concern ‘how human beings engage their own futures’ (Appadurai, 2004: 63) and the normative frameworks from which desire and imaginations of the future take form. They are tied to the possibility

to have a more complex experience of the relation between a wide range of ends and means, … to explore and harvest diverse experiences of exploration and trial, because of their many opportunities to link material goods and immediate opportunities to more general and generic possibilities and options’ (p. 61).

Like Sen, Appadurai details this concept by focusing on the topics of development and poverty in India, in situations where opportunities for imagining a future are few and far between. He is interested in revealing how such opportunities can be developed in order to overcome one of the major obstacles to the realization of projects of well-being for the poor, i.e. ‘a binary relationship to core cultural values, negative and skeptical at one pole, over-attached at the other’ (p. 75).

This outlook illustrates the original way in which Appadurai understands culture, emphasizing, on one hand, an orientation to the future, ⁷ and, on the other, a pragmatic dimension. The capacity to aspire, in fact, ‘thrives and survives on practices, repetition, exploration, conjecture and refutation’ (p. 66). Put differently, by means of voice, which is precisely ‘the capacity to debate, contest, inquire, and participate critically’ (p. 79). Appadurai is very clear on the relation between capacity to aspire and voice. He feels that one of the most serious forms of poverty is not being able to have voice: ‘how can we strengthen the capability of the poor to have and to cultivate voice?’ (p. 63). All his thinking is directed towards showing in what sense voice and capacity act together and reinforce each other. ‘It is through the exercise of voice that the sinews of aspiration as cultural capacity are built and strengthened, and conversely, it is through exercising the capacity to aspire that the exercise of voice by the poor will be extended’ (p. 83).

The experiences he refers to show very clearly how voice enters into play in the construction of the capacity to aspire. His analysis of the home exhibitions and toilet festivals demonstrates that the crucial point is to create spaces for public sociality and official recognition which are accessible to poor families. Thanks to the exchange of ideas they activate, these events become public and political, besides being occasions for socialization and enjoyment. They stage a visibility politics which reverses the conditions of invisibility to which the poor are normally subjected. In this sense the capacity to have aspirations is to be considered not only a cultural capacity but also a public and political one.

This means that the capacity to aspire cannot be considered a condition for interaction. On the contrary, the practices, thanks to which this capacity is produced, must be brought to the fore. Appadurai refers particularly to ‘public dramas’ and ‘ritualized social performances’, i.e. to practices generative of ‘new states of feeling and connection’ which change the terms of reciprocal recognition. In these situations, the capacity to aspire can be activated by working a change involving the collective and normative context in which action and imagination take form.

As a consequence the production of agency has an exquisitely collective dimension. Appadurai points out that capacities are never isolated and always belong to local groups of values, ends and means. The imagination itself is ‘a collective social fact’, the property of the collectivity and not only an individual faculty. It is indeed at this point that the dialogue with Sen becomes more intense. ‘Freedom, the anchoring good in Sen’s approach to capabilities and development, has no lasting meaning apart from a collective, dense, and supple horizon of hopes and wants. Absent such a horizon, freedom descends to choice, rational or otherwise, informed or not’ (Appadurai, 2004: 82).

The capacity to aspire, therefore, connects Sen’s freedoms with ‘norms that frame social lives’ (Appadurai, 2004: 66), recognizing in the poor the power to articulate them or draw fuel to desire and realize other possible lives.

Though this perspective prioritizes situations of dire poverty, it can be applied to a far wider range of circumstances. The imagination, as Appadurai (1996) emphasizes in another very well-known text, is an essential driving force of collective mobilizations. What is valid in ‘normal’ situations, is even more valid in extreme conditions, where mobilization is all the more necessary and complicated. In fact, from his point of view, the way out of poverty comes from a context of interactions in which visions of the future, agency and voice are simultaneously constructed:

Since the work of development and poverty reduction has everything to do with the future, it is self-evident that a deeper capacity to aspire can only strengthen the poor as partners in the battle against poverty. This is the only way that words like participation, empowerment, and grass roots can be rescued from the tyranny of cliché. (Appadurai, 2004: 82)

Conclusions

Both Sen and Appadurai conceive of voice as an integral part of agency, positioning it in the general table of conditions which favour development and democracy. Both, furthermore, highlight opportunities and obstacles – social, institutional and normative – that agency meets in this table and therefore help in interrogating on the conditions for participation. The capability for voice clarifies the relation between agency, freedoms and the power implicated by substantive freedoms. The capacity to aspire leads to an understanding of the sense in which the construction of agency calls into play the collective horizon which both surrounds and fuels action and the imagination.

How can we use in empirical analysis these concept and the perspectives they are linked to? A useful starting point can be some questions: Who is participating? Why? Where? These questions concern: (1) the subjects; (2) the freedoms and the powers; (3) the spaces of participation and the level of acknowledgement, visibility and stability they are given. I have addressed these questions in some research on local social policies and urban regeneration interventions in Italy (Bifulco and Centemeri, 2008; Bifulco et al., 2008). From an experimental programme carried out in a northern Italian city, it emerged that in the case of seriously underprivileged persons, agency and voice acquire force thanks to a combination of very personalized assistance measures and the creation of the context of public sociality (Bifulco et al., 2008). Sometimes this combination takes the form of fairly simple activities. For example, after following a gymnastic course held by some professional physiotherapists, a group of elderly neighbours set up their own do-it-yourself course. In other cases, the initiatives have had greater visibility, as when some residents mobilized to retrieve a square and enhance the living conditions in their quarter. The analysis also confirmed the role that institutions play, not only as external factors but also as actors that may use and induce various means of capacitation, sustaining people’s freedom, voice and desire.

Unlike Melinda and Melinda, the stories that can be told about participation are many, more or less pleasant or disappointing. But if we concentrate on the relation between participation, capabilities and capacities to aspire, it becomes clear that the differences depend on freedoms and powers, the conditions for exercising voice and the possibilities of mobilizing in order to think and realize one’s future. Therefore, it must be observed if and how policies that more or less directly insist on participation nourish agency and voice, freedom and desire.

In concrete practices, voice is not as frequently found. Some actions that are undertaken under the flag of participation simply justify inequalities and the lack of individual power. But there are cases in which people really decide on changes and bring them about in future. This does not mean being optimists. Indeed, in some areas of the world, the most widespread attitude to the future seems to compromise the possibility to nourish and cultivate the capacity to aspire. But as Blondiaux and Sintomer (2002) suggest, we must take participation seriously. This means analyzing practices without harbouring illusions, but also without thinking they are all repeat performances of the same script.