Activating Empowerment
This report provides a detailed account of many of the mechanisms local authorities and public services can use to empower local communities. Activating Empowerment shows how empowerment mechanisms - such as participatory budgeting and deliberative forms of engagement - have the potential to restructure the relationship between service providers and users, state and citizen, and with it the very nature of political decision-making in the twenty first century.
"Local people often know what the solutions to problems in their area are - but too often we don't include them in the process. If we want the highest quality services that really meet people's needs then we need to find better ways of hearing what they have to say and put communities in control of the services that affect their lives" Hazel Blears MP, 2008
This report is based on extensive desk research undertaken by Ipsos's Participation Unit and Involve. The research was commissioned by Communities and Local Government (CLG) in 2006 to understand the main theories of citizen empowerment and what this means for local authorities at the practical level of developing, improving and implementing effective community engagement strategies.
The publication of this report comes at a time of new developments in local government policy. The introduction, for example, of Comprehensive Area Agreements and the new Place Survey, means that more than at any time in the past, local authorities are now being assessed on their success in engaging, consulting and ultimately empowering their local communities. In this report, we begin to develop an evaluative framework to enable local authorities and other public service providers to better meet their obligations to involve and empower citizens and service users.
The key finding of Activating Empowerment is that empowerment mechanisms work - they empower citizens. But they do so in different ways, at different levels and to different degrees. But what is clear from our research, is that the fundamental benchmark of success for any initiative or innovation that aims to empower citizens, is the degree to which they offer local people real opportunities to influence change in policy and the public services they receive (de facto empowerment), and ensure that people feel and understand this to be the case (subjective empowerment).
More than an academic study of what the principles and theories of empowerment are, Activating Empowerment (2008), offers a detailed review of a selection of empowerment mechanisms - such as participatory budgeting and deliberative forums from across the world - that local government can use to empower communities and give local people increased power and influence over the decisions that impact on their everyday lives.
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