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The Public Engagement Journey

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In this blog post, CDE Co-Director Prof. Cristina Leston-Bandeira reflects on the different elements entailed within the concept of public engagement and why it is useful to think about it as a journey rather than as a linear succession of steps. 

I started writing this blog post about a year ago. But a little thing called ‘pandemic’ happened and I’ve been on catch-up mode ever since. Plus, I really don’t like writing, so although I’ve spoken about the public engagement journey many times and I even have a pretty graph for it (see below), actually writing it down just takes time for me. But here I am. Our International Parliament Engagement Network annual conference is taking place this Friday, which has finally prompted me into motion to fit this in somehow. If you’re into public engagement, read on; if not, then I’ve probably lost you by now in any case:).

This is a post about what public engagement entails – simply because it’s one of those terms so commonly used now, but with so many understandings. I identify some of its elements below, but also how they relate to each other; and why it seems more meaningful to talk of a journey of public engagement, than about a ladder of engagement. And that engagement is not participation – often these are used interchangeably.

My context of research is parliament, so I’m thinking specifically about public engagement with parliament. But actually the starting point of the reflection for this post is exactly that public engagement is not a political thing; if anything, it’s more of an education thing really - when all is said and done, it’s about empowering people in relation to their surroundings. Public engagement is regularly used as if there is a common understanding of what the thing entails; whilst simultaneously being used to refer to lots of different types of activities. It is also commonly assumed as a well-established concept regardless of culture, when many languages don’t actually have a term for public engagement (love Brazilians, in absence of the term in Portuguese, they’ve adopted the English one and there we have it, the birth of “engajamento”;)).

Despite its obvious connections with politics, public engagement has been a strong concept in other disciplines, namely in the arts and the sciences (e.g., Devonshire and Hathway 2014, Meehan 2012, Shein et al 2015). As politics, the sciences and the arts can be perceived as subjects for the elites, necessitating a pro-active approach to public engagement in order to make these more accessible to the general public. The very concept and practice of public engagement “is often credited as emerging from the sciences where, since the 1970s, there have been concerted attempts to nurture public understanding of science” (Sanders and Moles, p.24). The sciences’ focus on public understanding is such, that it constitutes a sub-discipline in itself, with its own journal and acronyms (Public Understanding of Science – PUS). In both the sciences and the arts, there is a core discussion around the extent to which disseminating information can be termed of public engagement, or if this requires a more active involvement from the public; something that chimes with many discussions I’ve been part of, within political engagement. The discussion is reflected in a move over the last decade from the PUS paradigm (Public Understanding of Science) to the PEST one (Public Engagement with Science and technology) (got to love the acronyms) (Davies 2013). In many ways, this reflects some of the tensions inherent to public engagement with parliament, and its multiplicities of expression.

Public engagement has also been approached, however, as a primarily participatory activity. This is clearly expressed in urban studies, where public engagement emerges as a way of involving the public in community matters (e.g. Arnstein 1969; Glass 1979). This literature may in fact not use the term of “public engagement” but more of “public (or citizen) participation”. The key driver here is about promoting communities that are planned and developed with a more inclusive involvement of all those affected. Naturally, here there has been a stronger focus on the mechanisms that may enable listening to people’s views and possibly integrating these into decision-making processes. But also within these studies there is a recognition of different elements of public engagement, from information to citizen control or representational input. In parallel of course the vast literature on democratic theory also has direct relevance to the understanding of public engagement, namely the scholarly contributions on participatory democracy (e.g. Pateman 1975) and the deliberative turn (e.g. Dryzek 2002).

The adoption of the concept of public engagement to political institutions draws from this wide range of contributions and, naturally, it reflects different types of activity. These may be more at the level of informing and educating the public about the institution’s role and activity, which may encapsulate mainly communication and publicising activities. It may however also refer to activities whereby the public has a say on a policy, or may even be co-producers of this policy. So, although they may translate into very different types of activities, they are all about public engagement.

In order to encapsulate this diversity, I’ve identified before five elements to public engagement with parliament:

  • Information: citizens have access to information about parliament.
  • Understanding: citizens engage with this information developing an understanding of the parliament (the understanding can be at its simplest form, such as recognising the difference between legislature and executive).
  • Identification: citizens can see parliament's relevance and are able to link parliamentary activity to their own lives and experiences.
  • Participation: citizens feel compelled to participate in a parliamentary output to act on an area that matters to them.
  • Intervention: citizens lead a participatory process and engage with parliamentarians in the discussion that contributes to a parliamentary decision.

Besides the types of elements, processes or activities that engagement entails, another common discussion is how they relate to each other and, specifically whether citizens need to be first informed and educated, to then be able to participate. It’s what’s often referred to as the ladder of engagement or the hierarchy of engagement. I prefer to speak of the journey of public engagement, as shown in the figure below:

Figure – The Public Engagement Journey

The Journey of Public Engagement

The journey aims to (1) differentiate several elements of public engagement and (2) emphasise an inter-connectedness between these elements, rather than a path, hierarchy or linear relationship. In my original conceptualisation of public engagement, I spoke of steps – again following the idea of a ladder – but the more my research developed, the more I’ve spoken to participants involved in public engagement, the more I’ve become convinced of the non-linearity of these elements. Rather than talking about different steps and a linear relationship between different stages that people need to accomplish, I find it more useful to talk about a cycle (journey) with inter-connected elements of engagement, which do not always need to happen - different types of activity may refer to separate elements of the public engagement journey. Putting this into practice means that some people may decide to create a petition because they are really fed up with an issue; and not necessarily because they know how the political system works or because they woke up in the morning with a burning desire to participate. However, without the information and the understanding of the system, they’re unlikely to achieve a lot. Likewise, educating young people about parliament doesn’t mean they will eagerly start leading campaigns. The different elements of the journey are inter-connected and supplement each other.

So there you have it – not sure it was worth waiting a year to finish this, but here you are, some reflections on the different elements of public engagement; the need to speak of a journey and of inter-connected elements of engagement, rather than separating them out and focusing just on information, or just on participation, for instance; and to value how citizens process the information, how they reflect on it and how they act on it. And ultimately the fact that public engagement is not necessarily about politics; it’s about empowering people in relation to their surroundings.

 

Prof. Cristina Leston-Bandeira tweets as @estrangeirada.