Citizen Engagement in development research - Essay Example

Citizen’ Engagement in development research The issue of development has been, without a speck of doubt, the most discussed and rigorously debated topic at the international forum since several years. Various groups of people from politicians, diplomats, economists, sociologists, scientists and many others have thought prolifically, planned and applied numerous theories at this context with a primary prospect of stabilizing and hence improving the society. The term ‘development’ will seem like a ridiculous and empty word if it does not involve people and if it fails to prioritize them as the most important elements in the dynamics of planning and implementing developmental policies. It is imperative for the government, the other concerned authorities and administrative bodies to involve citizens, at least to an intensive extent, in all possible spheres for maneuvering the functioning of the societal structure as a whole and for stimulating growth with desired positive results, taking into account both short term and long term developmental goals. Grossly speaking the term citizen engagement can be referred to as a process, an initiative that integrates citizens from every possible corner of the society for helping in the betterment of public policy. A more formal definition of the term is given as "interactive and iterative processes of deliberation among citizens. Its purpose is to contribute in meaningful ways to specific public policy decisions in a transparent and accountable manner". (Phillips, 2002) Around the period centering 1970s, the different governments, especially of the Western nations, more profoundly thought of extending the responsibilities of the citizens and gradually increased and spread the application of the plans in various arenas primarily including the social and infrastructural bodies to address more deeply the quintessential aspects of education and health. Citizens were encouraged to intensively participate and monitor in many small developmental projects and related campaigns in their respective community areas. Lack of substantial civilian involvement at that period prompted many theories to be developed and scrutinized at this very context. There have been several approaches and detailed theoretical study and discussion regarding literature of public involvement in developmental affairs of the governance. Many such views were studied exhaustively and dissected minutely to frame administrative policies across the nations of the world. One such view to understand the role of civilians in attaining developmental goals was the neo-liberal market approach. The main argument of the neo-liberal market approach is a continually sustained moderation of the government authority through a proper mix of privatization and decentralization policies (Gaventa, 2007). In this particular framework, the main critic is the civilians are mechanically transformed into mere customers, who present their respective preferences only via given sets of market choices, with scopes of co-provisioning their desired preferences at the local level. The loophole lies in the fact that in this case the citizens have negligible opportunities to explore their democratic rights to have a say in the government policies. Another interesting and dominant view circumscribing this matter gives sufficient importance properly restructuring the procedural and corresponding functional aspects of democratic rights and powers, from the strong perspectives of constitutional foundations and effective electoral endeavours. This view is considered to be superficially biased toward the citizens for the fact that they are allowed to exercise their rights to a limited extent and are liable to be questioned or victimized in cases of interfering with the authority in matters of political association and private ownership of property. There’s also an independently formulated third approach related to this liberal representative model which is based on the foundations of age old traditions of unhindered participatory democracy. This particular view is generally referred to as the approach of ‘deepening democracy.’ (Gaventa, 2007) According to the basic elements of this approach of ‘deepening democracy’, the democracy is not merely comprises of an institutional structure with certain laid out norms and regulations and constitutional rules, but an intricate process which compulsorily gives the civilian the foremost priority in development in the path of development of the society and thus in nation-building propagandas. The purely citizen-centered movements and corresponding discussions and planning since the 1970s have been occurring apparently due to many intersecting forces on the social frontier. One of the forces is definitely the growing prominence of awakened citizenry. The dynamics on this respect has enabled the citizens to voice their opinions against the authority when they observe probable lapses in the governance, irrespective of any sort of spectrum of any political party. The force of awakened citizenry has begot the element of neo-conservatism, which, to a considerable extent, allows the citizens to compel the government to press for more efficiency by thinking and applying the policies in an improved manner. For instance, taking the case of USA, groups of ‘citizen-militia’ were formed to interact more closely with the concerned authorities and too influence them in revising the tax structure in favour of the common people. The third force, which has intertwined with the previously mentioned socio-political forces, is mainly a prospect from a philosophical angle. It imbibes in itself the facets of postmodern approach in citizen-centric movements. It opens up the horizon of deep introspection about the issues of governance, their proper interpretations and both immediate and long lasting effects on the society from an overall perspective. Due to the combined impression of these forces, revival in popular education occurred and hugely eventful liberation movements in the mid-seventies in both the less developed and developed nations shaped the attitude of the people to dominate the framework of policy making by the government. (King, 2005) Engaging the citizens in building a wholesome society that includes all the residents irrespective of their caste, creed, sex, age, economic status, colour, and other background history is undoubtedly a very challenging task on part of the administration. The general framework of civic engagement on which continued research has been going on comprises of policy development structure, dynamics of budgeting, the process of implementation of the policies and plans in tandem with the aim of improving conditions of citizens and the crucial aspect of proper accountability of the decisions taken and the extent of the results achieved. Since the late 1980s the role of two very crucial societal components can’t be denied in enhancing the process of evolution of citizens’ engagement in development and research. One of them is the extensive network of non-government organizations (NGOs) which are the results of the initiatives by none other than the ordinary civilians. NGOs have diligently tried to ensure that the basic necessities of the marginalized and the poor are paid attention to by the government and are positively considered while framing and applying developmental policies. These social institutions have been providing technical support and cost-effective expertise in various sectors across the economy. The number of international NGOs has increased from around 6000 in 1990 to approximately to 26000 in 1999 (U.N.Report, 2008) .The other societal component is the unprecedented rise in the might of the media. The media has played a very crucial role of a solid civic forum and effective mobilizing agent. It has tried to render services like a watchdog to monitor the accountability, and the aspect of transparency in governance. A very good example of the initiative taken and extended by media to involve the citizens to make the society more balanced is ‘The Teach India Movement’ organized and monitored by ‘The Times Group’ which entails opportunities to the civilians for independently providing free education to the poor children, thus addressing the education system in India in an indirect fashion (Times, 2008) An extremely significant aspect of the ongoing discussion, which inevitably comes into foray, is the failure of civic involvement in the network of governance related matters. Crudely speaking, such a situation can be considered as a serious social deficit on part of democracy. (In many countries, especially in West Asia and Africa, where the authorities are chiefly the proponents of autocracy, the world forum has repeatedly failed to establish democratic system). In many of the newly democratized countries the electoral system is just a nominal representation when it comes to the issue of addressing the problems of the common mass and the so called elections merely gives a valid stamp to the economy of the country. Such democratic deficits loom large in any potential developmental set up of mainly the economically weaker countries and put hurdles in the plans of engaging citizens in improving the conditions of the society. But it’s, at first place, a social prerogative to involve the civilians, from all sections, for welfare of the society. Substantial priority should be given to the poverty stricken people, as stated by Blair – “Increased involvement of poor and disadvantaged citizens in local government decision making and resource allocation is considered by many analysts to be a desirable outcome in its own right.” (Blair, 2000) People from other strata of the community should be involved according to their convenience of providing effective social services to the machinery of fruitful developmental strategies. The crucial point to be pondered at this context is the communication between the citizens and various layers of the government, ranging from the central authority, the provincial administration, to the local municipal bodies (Robinson, 2004). The presence of intensity in the mutual interaction between the ordinary citizens and the government representatives is a must to channelize the potentiality of the citizens in several different pockets of the society to accelerate the process of growth from an overall viewpoint. Engagement of the citizens in matters of public finance has also been projected as a strong mechanism to bolster the economy and make the democratic functioning more sound (Tumukunde, 2006). Post 1990s and still growing strong is the relationship between the civilians and the aspect of e-governance. The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has successfully made its prominence felt across the numerous sections of the society. The ICT infrastructure is effective in the sense that it enables to record and monitor and shares several thousands of information about governmental policies and operations (Clift, 2004). The activities of the administrative authorities are documented in a formal way via the dynamics of ICT, which can be viewed on online portals to have ideas regarding the progress and the failure of the government. (Clift, 2004) The consequences of the more and more direct and indirect involvement of the citizens in affairs of governance and administrative policymaking are undoubtedly very promising. The literacy rate of several local regions across the world has increased which has further evolved the precious sense of social responsibility. In many cases, it’s due to the unprecedented participation of the citizens that the aftereffects of a natural disaster have been subdued. There’s also the factor of protecting the environment from being degraded, and the participatory role of citizens has huge potential to address this very relevant issue. Moreover, the loopholes in the democratic infrastructure in case of few states are being compelled to be rectified by the constant scrutiny of the civilians. Rigorous involvement of the citizens in the developmental process also decreases the administrative costs of the government and increases the scopes for the concerned authorities to allocate the saved resources to rationally prioritized sectors more effectively. At this context, the relationship between the government bodies and the citizens are mutually inclusive, constantly influencing the progress of one another. Citizen engagement has ample capacity to finely tune the effectiveness of government policies and tackle the problems of corruption across different administrative sections. The educational and corresponding social platforms are the indispensable parts of this continuing process of engaging citizens in the developmental path and achieving the fruits of overall welfare of the society. It is a known truth that the local governments, public agencies, community organizations, and of course the central government are able to take better decisions and can impact the society more positively when they tend to promote the diversity, frequency and intensity of engagement of the citizens (Love, 2004). References 1. Phillips, S.D. & Orsini, M. (2002) Mapping the links: Citizen Involvement in policy processes, Canadian Policy Research, available at < http://vp.gov.ns.ca/about/engagement> (accessed on March 26, 2009) 2. King, C.S. & Martinelli, A.S. (2005) Innovations in Citizen Engagement and Empowerment: beyond boundaries, The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector innovation journal, volume 10(1) available at: < http://www.innovation.cc/volumes-issues/king-segers-martin.pdf> (accessed on March 26, 2009) 3. Gaventa, J. et.al & Cornwall, A & Schattan, V & Coelho, P. (2007) Spaces for Change? The politics of citizen participation in new democratic arenas, Zed Books 4. Tumukunde, H. & Kiessel, J. & Khawar, A. (2006) Promoting Citizen Engagement in public revenue: Rwanda, UNDESA, available at: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/Resources/244362-1170428243464/3408356-1194298468208/4357878-1206561986056/Rwanda.pdf (accessed on March 26, 2009) 5. Clift, S.L. (2004) E Government and Democracy, Publicus, available at: http://www.publicus.net/articles/cliftegovdemocracy.pdf (accessed on March 26, 2009) 6. World Public Sector report, (2008) UN, available at: http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/UN/UNPAN028608.pdf (accessed on March 26, 2009) 7. The Times of India, (2008) Teach India movement, available at http://teach.timesofindia.com/ (accessed on March 26, 2009) 8. Robinson, M. (2004) Resources, citizen engagement and democratic local Governance, Background paper, Institute of Development Studies http://www2.ids.ac.uk/logolink/resources/downloads/RobinsonResources_en.pdf (accessed on March 26, 2009) 9. Love, A & Muggah, B. (2005) Using Democratic Evaluation Principles to foster Citizen Engagement and strengthen neighborhoods, volume XI, No. 3, Evaluation Exchange, available at: http://www.hfrp.org/evaluation/the-evaluation-exchange/issue- archive/democratic-evaluation/using-democratic-evaluation-principles-to-foster- citizen-engagement-and-strengthen-neighborhoods (accessed on March 26, 2009) 10. Blair, H. (2000) “Participation and Accountability at the Periphery Democratic Local Governance in Six Countries”, World Development, Vol. 28, No.1. available at: (accessed on March 26, 2009) Read More