I am a student of public policy studying the policy cycle. I am curious about the potential role of citizens within this cycle as well as critique about the current situation I am writing from New Zealand, interested in health policy and also issues regarding the Treaty of Waitangi
Hello Fiona, wrt role of citizens in general and or (specifically) health policy development, you might have a look back (if not already done) at the attempts in this area in NZ during the decade from late 1980's. At that time, the NZ government/ Minister for Health become very interested in a team (that I was part of) in Devon, UK working to bring service-users and community folk into the planning, execution and assessment of (mostly) community health and social services, eventually also including housing and transport. This kind of endeavour is now tagged community engagement/ participatory governance. The key issues that crop up repeatedly are a) recruiting citizens to participate; b) keeping them on board; and c) avoiding cynicism and disengagement developing over the long term, especially post-execution. If you can access the policy papers and eval reports on what happened in NZ you may pick up some useful info specific to local culture/politics etc. Here in Aus, we went through a big 'community engagement' binge 2004-2010, mostly in the housing and economic development fields but the state pollies of the day were all mouth and no ears (federal performance was better but fell over in the execution), so those folk who weren't just out for their own benefit gave up in disgust. The comments in the papers and various blogs during that process provided good eval data. In particular, perceived trustworthiness (on all sides) is a useful concept when considering citizen engagement (or not) in the policy cycle. cheers, L
Thank you so much Lorinne! I will follow up on the reading and would also like to know more about your experience. Maybe we could talk some time?
Hello Fiona MacLean
I know that a lot of those groups have a "consumer representative" - not from the profession to give a different perspective, to represent community needs. Do you have that as well in NZ?
Thank you Joseph for your response and question about representatives of community needs.
We have an Ombudsman who represents needs or responds to concerns on the part of vulnerable groups such as:
People with disabilities, according to the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities
people who are incarcerated including in prisons, mental hospitals or aged care high security facilities
People who have dealings with Te Oranga Tamarike which is an institution concerned with child welfare and care of children, following up on complaints about places of care
Following up on requests for Official Information
Providing a space for complaiints about wrong behaviour in organisations, with non disclosure of the source of information
Following up on any injustices in the treatment of people by Government Departments.
I am also interested in forums which facilitate the direct involvement of citizens in policy making.
Hi Fiona,
sure, I'm happy to chat. I still have an archive of the projects I've been involved with, which is half paper but mostly indexed;-? If you have any specific questions - there is a message facility somewhere in RG that you can use to contact me directly. cheers, L
I thought I'd talk about citizen participation in budgeting. I read an interesting article about how this helped reduce poverty in Brazil:
Avritzer L. Living under a democracy: participation and its impact on the living conditions of the poor.
Lat Am Res Rev. 2010;45(Spec):166-85. doi: 10.1353/lar.2010.0044. PMID: 21744544.
Hi Fiona,
Yes, the Brazilian experience is interesting and quite well cited. I also found a reference that has become a classic source (and is now open access), which you might find useful. If you don't have it, look here:
Ebdon, C. and Franklin, A.L. (2006), Citizen Participation in Budgeting Theory. Public Administration Review, 66: 437-447. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2006.00600.x
https://www.ca-ilg.org/sites/main/files/file-attachments/budget_linked_resource_1.pdf
There are 2 or 3 others (open access) I can pass on as well if you'd like.
However, I found the OECD had just recently done some work reviewing this topic. It includes quite a few examples of country experiences:
OECD, 2022, Summary Note: Dispelling Myths about Participatory Budgeting across Levels of Government
https://www.oecd.org/tax/federalism/participatory-budgeting-note.pdf
That doc has quite a few potentially useful references. In any case, I recommend trawling through the OECD library. I found it a useful source of discussion papers, reports, etc. in several areas to do with policy learning, transfer and methods (new and old). regards, L
Thank you so much Lorinne! I am finding so much stuff, including something interesting I just found -
Maria, J. (2017). Citizenship versus Collectivism: The Legislative Contribution to Gender Equality. Current and Future Developments in Law, 1, 117–146. https://doi.org/10.2174/9781681085760117010011.
-I also did see some stuff about the world bank that looks interesting!
Anwar (editor), S. (2007, January 1). Participatory budgeting. World Bank. https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/635011468330986995/Participatory-budgeting
Goldfrank, B. (2012). The World Bank and the Globalization of Participatory Budgeting. Journal of Deliberative Democracy, 8(2), 7. https://doi.org/10.16997/jdd.143
- Badges
- Science topic