Votes and Voices at the Local Government Association
I was at the Local Government Association last night, at the launch of Votes and Voices, a pamphlet on the complementary nature of representative and participatory democracy. The NCVO were the partners for the publication and the launch event.
The main thing I took away from the event was a very positive mood among local government around the participation agenda. The audience list was hefty. Paul Coen, the LGA Chief Executive, was enthusiastic. Points from the panel and the floor were forward-looking.
The pamphlet itself was less impressive. It was described as a series of essays, though a series of articles would be more accurate, touching on the complementary nature of participative and representative democracy. This description led me to expect a light philosophical treatise - along the lines of the Empowerment White Paper, in fact - but the essays divided between big unchallengable statements on the importance of participation, and descriptions of political engagement work in a couple of local authorities. There was little that made me sit up and take notice, although in fairness this may be because I work on this every day, and I doubt that I was the target audience.
In some ways it was not surprising that the pamphlet underdelivered on the speeches. There is a rhetoric gap around participation and engagement at the moment, with people picking up on the ideas in the Empowerment White Paper, but not yet really doing anything with them. I hope that the gap is a simple time lag. My worry is that the new enthusiasm for participation will be a flash in the pan, and either nothing will happen and local government will move on, or participation will be redefined to mean ‘the things we were going to do anyway’.