‘Re:Imagining the Local State’ conference: democratising devolution
Researcher
Devolution has been billed as a key way of addressing the democratic deficit. Bringing politics closer to communities, so the argument goes, provides more opportunities for participation, deeper decision legitimacy and greater accountability.
Yet thus far this has largely not come to pass. Mayoral election turnout is stubbornly low. Devolution rhetoric typically emphasises the potential economic growth and service delivery benefits ahead of any democratic benefits. And when ‘empowering communities’ is invoked it is done so with significant ambiguity – communities are rarely defined or simply equated to empowering mayors – and minimal policy support.
In this context, we were delighted to convene a panel at our ‘Re:Imagining the Local State’ conference to explore whether devolution can bridge the democratic deficit – and whether devolution itself is a democratically legitimate exercise, or something that is playing out without the input of citizens.
Kindly sponsored by Carnegie UK, this panel included Cllr Matthew Brown, Leader of Preston City Council; Irenie Ekkeshis, Co-Founder and Director of The New Citizen Project; Heather Jameson, Editor of The Municipal Journal; and Adam Lang, Director of Policy, Insight and Advocacy at Carnegie UK.
For me, three key insights stood out.
Is there a democratic deficit?
An interesting challenge to the panel’s premise – that a democratic deficit exists – was the suggestion that the issue is not the lack of democracy, but the lack of structures to channel this democracy. Democratic engagement is visible through people voicing their opinions on social media and engaging in hyperlocal community groups. The problem is the current structure and nature of politics. Structures do not provide sufficient avenues through which these voices can be heard, and the adversarial nature of politics pushes people away. The result, as one panellist suggested, is “agency-declining politics”: people are incentivised towards cynical opposition and away from sincere attempts to grapple with trade-offs and difficult decisions.
Greater democracy can make trade-offs easier, not harder
Following on from this, one panellist proposed that democracy is a way of ‘derisking decisions’. Having more people involved brings in a greater array of perspectives and break supposed Gordian knots. In this theory, increasing democratic participation should be devolution’s primary objective since it makes all other decisions easier to navigate. This may involve citizens’ assemblies – such as the one in Ireland which succeeded in resolving their abortion question – or simply increasing local election turnout.
Economic growth and improved services are not enough
Greater Manchester achieving the fastest growth in the UK over the previous decade or Liverpool City Region’s public service innovation through OPSI are welcome results from, and strong justifications for more, devolution. But people will not automatically feel more engaged in their communities and democracy solely because they are richer and buses are faster. Furthermore, economic growth and improved public services will not continue indefinitely. Justifying devolution solely around these twin objectives means that it will be liable to reversal when economic downturns inevitably occur. Conscious policy initiatives are required to ‘bake in’ devolution and increase democratic participation.