‘People power means a public services lottery’…what a load of rubbish!

A while ago I wrote a blog saying that the financial crisis might actually turn out to have rather positive unintended consequences: one being the need to re-think the nature of public services and in particular the relationship between the state and citizen in which people and communities have far greater power and influence over key decision-making and public services.

A while ago I wrote a blog saying that the financial crisis might actually turn out to have rather positive unintended consequences: one being the need to re-think the nature of public services and in particular the relationship between the state and citizen in which people and communities have far greater power and influence over key decision-making and public services.

What we are talking about here is a shift from public involvement to civic action. This should be enshrined in newly negotiated local contracts between citizen and state. But we should go further and also establish binding practices of solidarity and shared commitment amongst citizens and between citizens and their communities. This could take the form of ‘pledgebanks’ (or some other pledge scheme) in which people are encouraged to come up with solutions to local problems and publicly commit to behaviour change. This can work across a broad spectrum of public policy issues from climate change to anti-social behaviour, public health to the educational attainment of young people.

Some are sceptical, I know, and for good reason. Elites tend to hoard power and individuals are often more than content to redistribute their responsibility as citizens (and therefore influence) to others whether that is other people, public services or government agencies. But the academic and exploratory work on declarative norms though public agreement is strong enough to suggest that it might be one way of facilitating the explosion of community programmes and civic action needed to build more resilient and dynamic civic spaces.

This all comes back to the collective imagination of people. With this in mind, the Guardian Public Services Summit has  just taken place. One of the key findings was the emphasis on turning the current squeeze on public services into a driver of innovation and decentralisation (or localism).

As part of the reporting of this, the editor of Society Guardian, Alison Benjamin, has written an interesting piece this week making the argument that ‘people power necessarily means a public services lottery’. She concludes by outlining a preference for innovation through new technology and efficiency as demonstrated through Total Place initiatives. All important things but utterly ineffective as a strategy (on their own) for developing the types of public services local communities need today – responsive to individual need but capable of generating civic commitment and attachment by offering a genuine sense of ownership of public services.

This argument Alison Benjamin puts forward is based on two legitimate concerns. The first is to do with outcomes. The fear is that a ‘new settlement’ between state and citizen based on ‘people power’ would disadvantage the most vulnerable in society (i.e. most in need of support and public services). This tends to be the case with our current ‘consumerist’ model of public services which disproportionately benefits and reflects the views of the most vocal and noisy. The second is to do with intentions. People power might be used to justify a more traditional Thatcherite agenda of cutting back the state (and therefore financial support) under the pretence of empowerment.

The classic Tory line of replacing the ‘state with society’ will nearly always disadvantage the most vulnerable in society. There are many reasons for this. The challenges people face will always be more complicated and require more extensive support and time than the pooled resources of ‘charity’ can ever hope to meet. It also wrongly assumes an ‘equality of capability’. People are not equal in their capacity to realise their capabilities.

Despite what our reactionary populist press splash across their front pages on a daily basis, all people have capability in some form of another that is valuable to society. But it is plainly wrong to argue that all capabilities are recognised, valued equally (if valued at all) or cultivated in anything like an equal way. Society tends to operate according to what Bourdieu calls the ‘logic of exclusion’. All systems of social norms do. But the goal is not to make everything equal. The goal is, however, to ensure the different capabilities of people are cultivated and enabled to flourish.

Precisely because of this the Weberian or managerial state (or something closely resembling this) is clearly not a viable alternative! Precisely because it tends to be disempowering, inefficient and driven by the kind of top-down logic that cripples the creativity and invention of people to make a difference.

The problem with Alison Benjamin’s piece is the conclusion. People power is not an argument about the size of the state. It’s an argument about the nature of it. To what extent does it reflect the interests and hopes of the collective good - this is the real question. The argument outlined in the Guardian article is predicated on an impoverished vision of what public services and a ‘new settlement’ between the state and citizen might and should look like.

The argument remains trapped within a hyper-individualised account of public services as an ‘open’ market place with people consuming public goods as if they were magazines or chocolates on a supermarket shelf.

Giving people more control does means localised differences. It does not mean a public services lottery because the difference is not likely to be quality of service. What links local differences is the right and responsibility of local people and communities to shape the direction and substance of their place. This is ultimately the most effective way of delivering high quality public services which meet the needs of the common good.

Developing a new generation of public services owned by local people and communities who ultimately desire the responsibility, investment and reward that comes with this is the way forward. This will require a big shift in the mind-set of public services and local people. Many talk of co-production between service users and providers, which is something I fully support.

But something more fundamental is needed. So we better start now, and with the gusto and vision for what that future should be rather than what it is based on current patterns of behaviour and thinking! What a pious preacher… Let me know what you think!