Valuing People

Citizens in both developed and developing countries have grown dissatisfied over past decades with traditional political participation and the functioning of democracies. ‘In northern democracies’, as argued by Zipfel and Gaventa, ‘political participation has been declining steadily. Most people…are disillusioned with the political system and feel they have little or no influence…In parts of the global south…confidence in local government is undermined by political corruption, the gulf between those in power and the lives of ordinary people and the failure to tackle widespread poverty.’ As a result ‘around the world, there has been an explosion of interest in more participatory forms of governance…[This is primarily due to] ‘demands from citizens to have more say in decisions that matter to them [as well as]…the recognition by those in power that community involvement is central to the major challenges of revitalising democracy’. In an effort towards narrowing the gap between values and principles of democracy and realities on the ground, new channels of citizen engagement have emerged in various countries giving rise to new promises for participatory governance. Public governance has made initial steps in response to these demands by moving from public sector reforms that have tendentially focused on performance, efficiency, and productivity, towards recent developments that recognize the value of citizen engagement and the central role of individuals as ‘citizens’ rather than ‘customers’ in both the development and implementation of public policies. People should not be seen ‘only as users or choosers, but as active participants who engage in making and shaping social policy and social provisioning’.

By ‘citizen engagement’ it is meant ‘[a]ll measures and/or institutional arrangements that link citizens more directly into the decision-making process of the State as to enable them to influence the public policies and programmes in a manner that impact positively on their economic and social lives’.

While societies and political dynamics have changed over time both in size and scope when viewed against the classical democracy of ancient Greece, modern democracy has not yet developed into a fully responsive mechanism to its citizens. Society has, indeed, outgrown what Plato regarded as ‘the ideal size of the polis as being 5,040 households’ for it being ‘divisible by all the numbers between 1 and 10, [thus making] citizens obligations and municipal functions [assignable] to groups of the appropriate scale in…what we would today call governance’. Our understanding of what constitutes ‘citizenship’ today has also diverged, to some extent, from Athenian selective and exclusionary model where ‘only a small proportion of adult males were citizens, [while] a large segment of adult population (women, foreigners and slaves) did not have political rights’.

In more recent times, ordinary citizens’ normative right to participate in government affairs stems from Article 1 of the Declaration of the Rights to Development and Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The former states that ‘[t]he right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized’. Article 25 more specifically affirms that ‘[e]very citizen shall have the right and the opportunity…[t]o take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives’.

The apparent weakness in current representative democracies is that they are not driven by principles that support a government ‘of the people’ and ‘by the people’. As argued by Bourgon (2007), ‘having a vote is different from having a say’ simply because the ‘right to vote’, inherent with representative-style of government, ‘does not imply that people are given a voice on matters that interest them most or that they have a role in the decisions that affect them most directly’. What recourse, then, do citizens have in between elections? As it is perceived today, participation is an ongoing and involving process that will not stand for the passivity dictated by intermediary periods from one election to another.

First termed by Hirschman in 1970, ‘‘voice’…refer[s] to the range of measures – such as complaint, organized protest, lobbying, and participation in decision-making and product delivery – used by civil society actors to put pressure on service providers to demand better service outcomes’. Giving ‘voice’ to citizens, particularly to the weaker and marginalized groups, means setting a stage whereby ‘the engagement with the State moves beyond consultative process to more direct forms of influence over policy and spending decisions, service delivery, the monitoring of programme impacts, and accounting for public expenditures’.

Citizen engagement in public governance promises an ‘enrich[ment of] the practice of representative democracy…[as] it broadens the base of support and reduces the political risks associated to ambitious new initiatives’. While government remains central to society, citizens no longer perceive themselves as passive clients or consumers of government services but rather as an active force towards solutions to handle emerging issues more effectively. Recognizing that ‘[n]o government can claim to have all the tools, nor all the powers necessary to affect complex and effective policy outcomes’, especially in a modern global society, Bourgon (2008) perceives citizens as ‘agents of change’ necessary to tackle issues that ‘require a change of societal behavior…[or] when the nature and scale of issues exceeds the legislative authority of the state and the government’s ability to act…[e.g.] global warming and poverty alleviation,...prevention of obesity, wellness and labour productivity,…‘safe streets’, civic participation and community development’. To this end, greater and meaningful engagement by citizens in public governance requires innovative institutional mechanisms, processes and policies.

The book aims to address the following questions – (i) What major factors account for greater citizen engagement in policy making and public service delivery? (ii) In what ways does citizen engagement in public governance matter?

Principles and strategies of citizen engagement in public governance will be addressed in this research by analyzing not only challenges of governance and public administration systems in general, but also by examining a number of innovative practices in rural Asia, with a particular focus on citizen participation in policy development and implementation in the water sector.

The largest and the most populous continent in the world, Asia comprises culturally and religiously diverse countries that range economically from great wealth to extreme poverty, and politically from the oldest non-Western democracies to oppressive regimes. What is interesting about Asia in general is that ‘[e]conomically…a number of countries…achieved unprecedented growth and social modernization under authoritarian rule’ as compared to ‘their peers in other regions’. Culturally, the ‘Asian values’ of ‘family and community over individuals, discipline and hierarchy over freedom and equality, and consensus and harmony over diversity and conflict’ ‘have historically played a significant role in prioritizing and justifying the rights and duties of individual citizens and the power and authority of their political leaders’. Against this backdrop, citizen participation and democratization assumes a different connotation in Asia, where democracy is ‘equated…with benevolent or soft authoritarian rule’.