Since the turn of the century, the disillusionment with conventional politics has intensified, leaving many people to either give up on democratic processes as irrelevant, or put their faith in irresponsible leaders and policies that turn out to be highly damaging for their country.
Yet as political strategists and commentators ponder what can be done differently, they continue to overlook one of the most important trends unfolding before them. From 2000s on, a growing number of practitioners, theorists, and organisations have been demonstrating how improvements to people’s quality of life can be achieved through the development of cooperative relations in and across social, economic, and political institutions.
These civic cooperators draw from the insights and practices of community development, community learning, cooperative enterprise, time banking, deliberative engagement, participatory budgeting, co-production, restorative justice, community empowerment, etc to advance a holistic approach that enables people to work effectively together to solve the problems they face. The impact – at different levels (local, national, global) and in different sectors (private, public, voluntary) – has been substantial, both in terms of improved quality of life and a greater sense of efficacy as citizens who matter.
Too often politicians have neglected the vast potential of communities (based in a neighbourhood, a workplace, or a shared network) to drive positive change. Some overload them with top-down targets and controls, others leave them to flounder with neither support nor guidance. By contrast, civic cooperators recognise that substantial evidence has shown that in order to engender the cooperative working to formulate and attain shared objectives, we need to facilitate three kinds of inter-related development. These are:
[1] The Nurturing of Mutual Responsibility
Civic cooperators are keenly aware that leaving people to do whatever they want could end up with some being free to hurt others. But merely invoking a list of rights and wrongs is not an adequate solution either. Instead, through community learning, outreach, familiarisation, perspectives-sharing, the importance of mutual responsibility is to be inculcated. Those involved may then come to see that the respect and concern they can expect from others are inextricably linked to the respect and concern they show others. The unacceptability of discrimination and abusiveness is reinforced through relationship-building, while a sense of togetherness is built by the identification of shared interests and common objectives.
[2] The Support for Cooperative Enquiry
In parallel with coming to acquire shared concerns, any group of people seeking to address those concerns will also need to be able to reach agreement as to what are credible facts and ideas to rely on. Civic cooperators acknowledge that neither imposing some unquestionable authority nor leaving everyone to arbitrarily accept/reject any view they please can provide a way forward. Their answer is to give sustained support to cooperative enquiry – a much tried and tested mode of objective exploration of claims, evidence, theories, etc through transparent processes of collaborative exchange and learning, structured adjudication with built-in capacity for re-examination, and protection from manipulative distortion and groundless claims.
[3] The Promotion of Citizen Participation
The third development is to help people participate in shaping the decisions that will affect them. The mechanisms can vary from direct voting, through engaging in deliberations in formulating policy options, to entrusting someone who will make and account for the decision taken. What civic cooperators focus on is to ensure that the most effective means for obtaining a meaningful input are adopted in different circumstances, and that the conditions necessary for those means to be utilised fully are as well met as possible. This can involve devising participatory arrangements, organising feedback, pressing for accountability, exposing corrupt influence, instigating regulatory safeguards, and curtailing unequal power distribution.
Civic cooperators have in many parts of the world taken forward the development outlined above through the provision of advice, organisational support, and collaboration with private and public sector backers. Political leaders should view them not as disruptive usurpers or passive agents, but as vital partners who can energise democratic working in society and enable citizens to have a positive role in improving their lives.
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You can find out more about the ideas and practices of civic cooperators in the book, Tomorrow’s Communities: lessons for community-based transformation in the age of global crises: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/tomorrows-communities
You may also want to explore the work of Citizen Network: https://citizen-network.org
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