DELIBERATIVE AND INCLUSIONARY PROCESSES A Report from Two Seminars

Three University research centres, CSERGE in East Anglia, ESRC in London, and the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC) in Lancaster have combined to convene a series of seminars over three years on the issues and practices underlying deliberative and inclusionary processes in environmental decision making. This working paper contains a summary of presentations given at the first seminar, held in London in December 1998. It primarily covers the papers and the commentaries presented in the second seminar, held in Norwich in July 1999. Deliberative and inclusionary processes (DIPs) cover a wide range of procedures and practices. These are all designed to widen the basis of direct participation in environmental decision making, and to deepen the level of discussion so that underlying meanings and values are more fully explored. The purpose of DIPs is, in essence, profoundly democratic. DIPs are aimed not just at creating more richly informed decisions that are owned by and have the broad consent of those participating. DIPs also seek to build and to engender a creative sense of citizenship in participants. This is why the objective “inclusionary” is incorporated: it applies to a process of defining and redefining interests that stakeholders introduce as the collective experience of participation evolves. As participants become more empowered, i.e. more respected and more self-confident, so it is assumed they may become more ready to adjust, to listen, to learn, and to accommodate to a greater consensus. For this outcome to happen it depends on a co-operative formal governance that is willing to incorporate and to respond to such procedures, as well as a citizenry with the capacity to carry through the arduous processes of co-governing for a better society and environment. These are difficult propositions to meet, so DIPs remain at a pilot phase in their introduction and evaluation. Nevertheless, the mood of the times is to be more participatory and inclusionary. It is therefore appropriate to assess critically the circumstances in which DIPs can succeed, or fail, or to evolve to be more creatively influential. This is the broad ideological setting for the three year seminar as a whole. The London seminar examined the widening political and societal accommodating factors of DIPs, and began to assess a typology and a characterisation of different approaches. This seminar heard from those responsible for commissioning DIPs as to just how far and fast this innovation has come and may go. There is the issue of the degree to which informal procedures of civic democracy can get into the much longer established formal procedures for governance. Many of these are broadly defined in constitutional and statutory remits, so this evolving relationship has become an important theme of debate and analysis. The London seminar concluded that DIPs should be analysed more carefully for their contribution, purpose and processes, and that the methods through which values were elicited and accommodated needed more attention. These attributes of DIPs are clearly drawn by the context of the policy-making, power-broking and decision-taking settings and methods. They will also be affected by the reasons for introducing DIP and by the political framing of any results emanating from the DIP in question. Furthermore, the seminar concluded that the evaluation of the success, appropriateness, learning capacity, and other characteristics of DIPs, according to a robust typology of purpose and function, needed much more attention. This was the setting for the Norwich seminar where it was discovered that there is no clear and articulated methodology for ensuring either deliberation or inclusiveness. As noted above, so much depends on the purpose of the DIPs; the democratic setting, the expectations and relationships between stakeholders, the willingness to train and empower stakeholders, and the preparation of all those concerned for what procedures are to be followed, or designed with their assistance. So the matter of methodology requires further investigation and some sort of guidebook. As for evaluation, there is even greater variability about the role, the timing, the method and the processes for this exercise. Again the institutional context of any DIP will be one critical issue, as will be the nature of the issue under consideration (short term and specific or long term and evolving). The willingness of the clients and the participants to be evaluated is also a matter of considerable importance; and, there is nearly always ambiguity as to the criteria against which to evaluate a DIP. Some suggestions on approaches to evaluation are offered in the introductory essay. The seminar also heard how a DIP can be very dispiriting for its promoters if it is not set in a culture of trust, or support, or where there is a history of local scepticism over the previous handling of public views by the sponsoring body. Furthermore, DIPs have a habit of taking over the decision processes, of stirring up opposition and dissatisfaction, and of absorbing huge amounts of time from key players. Much depends on preparation and on the assessment of trust amongst the social networks involved. DIPs may well prove to be a way forward towards better environmental decision making, so the seminars are timely in that the procedures are still evolving. Moreover, the institutional settings that promote, guide and respond to DIPs are still accommodating to this new and lively puppy in their midst. It is appropriate to take stock, but the assessment that follows in this working paper will surely change as the DIPs whelp becomes a mature mastiff.