Government, Citizens, and Power

by Kent Aitken

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A fairly basic element of our entire governance model is changing. Governments have decision-making power, and they're increasingly called upon to share it with citizens. 

Albeit in a range of ways, some more comfortable and certain than others. One way of conceptualizing this is the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Spectrum of Engagement:

I'll draw your attention to the Empower idea, where final decision-making authority rests with the citizen. I'd like to make a case that, while empowering citizens seems uncertain or risky, it's likely often the best approach and actually solves several systemic issues that we talk about on CPSRenewal.

The experimentation problem

When the system is that government listens, considers, then decides, it's responsible and accountable for the process, the accepted ideas, the rejected ideas, and the outcomes - with all the limitations and scrutiny of government. If the system is, instead, that final decision-making power is in citizens' hands - in well-defined and inclusively agreed-upon parameters - the risk calculation is very different. Government is held to account for the decision-making system, not the outcomes.

The recommendation problem

Along most of the IAP2 Spectrum the problem is that citizens' role is relegated to that of recommender, and I'll argue that this is, more often than we think, a bad deal for both governments and the citizens themselves.

A while back I argued against potentially polarizing systems based everyone getting an opportunity to make recommendations (see: How Organizations Plan). Alternatively, making stakeholders responsible for the final decision does a number of things:

1. Forces recommenders to think through the implementation of their recommendation, not just the goal
2. Makes recommenders accountable for the outcomes, not just the conspicuous promotion of the agenda they represent
3. Removes recommenders' safety net of knowing that someone else is going to further study and assess their recommendation, motivating diligence
4. Encourages compromise and consensus

An aside: I think the above applies internally, as well: I suspect most employees would submit markedly better work if it went straight into production, instead of being reviewed by a half-dozen others.

In both cases we have a vicious cycle of X (government or an executive) having to keep control because they don't know what would happen otherwise, and they'll never know what would happen otherwise because they keep control.

Assumptions about power

Lastly, I want note that empowering stakeholders is likely less risky than it seems, partially because we misunderstand the level of risk in the status quo because of our assumptions about power. I opened with a believable line: "Governments have decision-making power, and they're increasingly called upon to share it with citizens", but it's actually far less ironclad than it seems.

An IAP2 Canada member, Steph Roy McCallum, put it nicely in a post on Re-imagining the IAP2 Spectrum, and I'll leave it at that (emphasis mine):

“The IAP2 spectrum needs to be re-thought because it is presented as if the decision-maker has the control, and that the Inform and Consult levels are irrelevant at best in our complex, controversial world, and at worst are part of the problem by contributing to polarization and conflict through suggestion that those levels are acceptable in situations where there may be an outcry to be heard, but that the organization doesn’t want or is unable to meet the demands. I think I probably also said that the “empower” level suggests that the organization or decision-maker has the ability to empower others, without considering that communities and individuals have power of their own that is not conferred on them by the decision-maker.”

How Organizations Plan, and Why It Shouldn't Be Institutionalized Advice

by Kent Aitken

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The last couple posts have been working through a question about how organizations plan. The long story short:

• We've institutionalized oversimplification (a symptom being the "Elevator Pitch")
• Correcting that oversimplification is likely an unrealistic goal
• The solution (according to Charles Lindblom) is letting policy decision-makers throw rational planning out the window and "try stuff"
• To avoid unfairness, policy proposals will be closely watched by an ecosystem of stakeholders: groups responsible for related goals in government, lobbyists, NGOs, and think tanks

On the surface, this sounds like the zeitgeist: experimentation, innovation, and collaboration. However, the "try stuff" here refers to large-scale national policy, not pilots: "trying stuff" on, say, tuition subsidies has a massive impact on people's lives. And the role of that "ecosystem of stakeholders" isn't collaboration: it's recommendation, or advice.

Recommendation-Based Governance

In the last post, I linked to Yves Morieux, who breaks down the economics of multi-stakeholder decision-making: where one person owns the decision, but not the inputs required to make it. He paints a portrait of a car manufacturer, in which the lead designer must satisfy the organizations' experts in noise reduction, fuel efficiency, repairability, safety, and much more. It's easy to imagine how fuel efficiency and safety could be at odds: do you make a car lightweight, or an urban armored personnel carrier? So we have a designer, whose bonus but not core salary depends on performance pay that is based on competing goals decided by 26 different people. Which makes their incentive to care about any individual one of those goals very close to zero.

Recommendation-based systems do nothing to address the asymmetry between the incentives of those involved. Put simply: recommenders don't get paid to contribute to the best outcome. They primarily get paid to promote the variable they represent, as loudly and voraciously as possible. They do not get paid to look for compromises, concede when others make valid arguments, or even to develop long-term relationships and credibility. In the above example, the safety expert's concern is chiefly to understand the optimal outcome from a safety perspective; it's the designer's job to worry about how to square that with fuel efficiency. 

Why is this? It's partially innocent bias: people care about what they know about. I'm sure far more than 50% of the population thinks their expertise is of above-average importance. But more so, it's that the people that hold recommenders to account are a step removed from the decision space themselves, and likewise rely on oversimplified elevator pitches for setting goals. It doesn't help that recommenders rarely receive any feedback about the results of their role in the decision.

Recommendations exist in a partial vacuum, whereas decisions exist in an ecosystem. 

So what's the solution? Morieux proposes six elements (paraphrasing):

1. Ensure that players in the ecosystem understand what the others do
2. Reinforce integrators
3. Remove layers
4. Increase the quantity of power so that you can empower everybody to use their judgment
5. Create feedback loops that expose people to the consequences of their actions
6. Increase reciprocity, by removing the buffers that make [people] self-sufficient

In other words: make people meaningfully responsible for the outcomes of their work, make people responsible for collaboration, and make sure they can see and understand the ecosystem.

No amount of communication or planning can solve this issue entirely - the change has to come in how power is distributed and used.

What We Lost in the Fire, We Gain in the Flood

by Kent Aitken

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Several observers of Canadian civil society have painted a portrait of increasing centralization of power, over at least the last half-century. And perhaps it is a failure of imagination or thoroughness on my part, but I haven't found anyone aiming to dispel that notion. I'm writing on the premise that it is true, and from the point of view of the bureaucracy, which I believe has lost influence at the national table of leaders.

The rationale for increased centralization tends to be increased efficiency. With information and decision-making power held in one place, it's easier to launch bold initiatives and move an agenda forward. Consultation and consensus is tricky and time-consuming.

Yet there are trends in decentralization. There is increasing recognition that policy expertise exists in a distributed network of networks in NGOs, think tanks, citizen groups, and individuals. This was a major theme at the 2012 IPAC conference, and you see it in open policy initiatives such as the Open Data Policy in the U.S. that anyone can edit on Github. Like, right now.

But this seems like adding insult to injury for the bureaucracy: losing voice at the top, and losing the de facto monopoly on policy advice (see: The Bazaar World of Fearless Advice 2.0). But distributed policy actually represents the best opportunity for reclaiming some of the influence lost at the national table: the key distinction is "at the national table of leaders" and "at the national table. Period." That is, though the bureaucracy will remain a small player at big tables, it'll become the core of a distributed ecosystem of influence in Canada that will only grow in importance.

This is a good thing.

What we lost in the fire, we gain in the flood

What's going to drive this? Complexity and legitimacy leading to increasing public engagement, and technology as a thread running throughout.

We live in a time when we can no longer pretend that issues aren't complex, and decisions predicated on an oversimplified world get called out. When Radio-Canada announced a name change to ICI in June, they suddenly found that they hadn't considered all of the consequences. They walked it back after listeners and journalists expressed incredibly strong feelings about the name, based on complex feelings about identity, tradition, and politics. Broad consultation is a very effective way to figure out how complex an issue really is.

Partially for this reason, and partially because it builds legitimacy for decisions when people feel included, public engagement in policymaking is gaining traction in Canada and around the world. Well, digitally-enabled engagement. Lifelong public servants and politicians that held townhalls, knocked on doors, and wrote letters would probably take issue with the idea of complete novelty, here.

And I actually think that the increased transaction speed technology affords in soliciting opinions will be partially offset by the wrenches that having more voices will throw into an issue. And the fact that some of these voices have bullhorns to turn to, if their ideas aren't respected. Regardless, policy wonks will have a well-networked civil society on their side when synthesizing and submitting policy advice.

There are both dark clouds and silver linings for public participation in democracy, but I don't think there is a countervailing force that can prevent the rise of public engagement in policymaking. As the public's uptake and demand for involvement increases, the bureaucracy will get better at including the public in the policy process, which will increase demand, and voilà: virtuous cycle.


The Ecosystem of Influence

Michael Lipsky argues that "frontline public servants, such as police officers and social workers" are policymakers, as a result of the discretion and autonomy they have in carrying our their jobs. Here's an example: when I was sixteen I got pulled over for speeding, in the gray area between the speed limit and mandatory ticketing. So the options were a warning, or a ticket.

However, the officer ran the license plate and invented a third option: he called his friend about it, instead. My dad. 

With direct interaction with the public, there's a level of influence, and accordingly responsibility, within the leeway available in achieving results. What's going to happen is that far more bureaucrats are going to find themselves in that position, as policy analysts become the face of public engagement in policymaking. Policy is increasingly going to become a frontline activity, and bureaucrats will be able to put their mark, embrace a greater responsibility, and add value. On the ground, in the weeds, with Canadians.

As I said, this is a good thing. But it won't be an easy thing.