Public Value and Participation: A Literature Review for the Scottish Government

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

1.1 This paper is aimed at public sector managers, policymakers and other stakeholders interested in increasing the democratic legitimacy of government and bringing public services closer to the citizens they serve. It provides a brief account of the theory of public value and outlines how public participation can contribute to the process of authorising and legitimising what public managers do, establishing priorities and decision making, and measuring the performance of public organisations.

Why should public managers be interested in what the public value?

1.2 Why should public managers be interested in what the public value? What practical help can this theory offer? First, elected officials and administrators are now faced with the challenge of static and declining levels of satisfaction with public services following years of investment and target-setting that has purportedly led to objective improvements in these same services. At the same time, rising incomes and changing consumer habits have been accompanied by high, and rising, expectations of what public services can provide. According to Ipsos-MORI, the number of people who felt that public services fell short of their expectations grew from 40 to 50 per cent between 1998 and 2004. ¹ The UK government has responded by pursuing numerous policies aimed at tailoring services to the needs and demands of citizens (Cabinet Office, 2007a). This sits within wider concerns that in spite of growing prosperity British people are not more satisfied with their lives, and that the policy goals of successive governments - economic stability and employment, amongst others - are not necessarily making people 'happier' (Cabinet Office, 2007c).

1.3 Second, a significant decline in voter turnout over the past three decades has meant that questions are now routinely being asked about the traditional role of government and public services, and about public trust in politicians, public institutions and expert opinion (Mahendran and Cook, 2007) ². In 2004, for instance, only 52 per cent of people surveyed in Scotland trusted the Scottish Executive to work in Scotland's best long-term interests, although this was greater than recorded levels of trust in the UK government to meet the same objective (Mahendran and Cook, 2007). Alternative ways of engaging citizens in the democratic process and involving citizens in the design and delivery of public services are now seen as an important component in meeting rising expectations and re-establishing trust between the public and public managers.

A brief introduction to public value theory

1.4 An essential element of the public value approach is its emphasis on the important role public managers can play in maintaining an organisation's legitimacy in the eyes of the public. What makes public value distinctive as a theory of public management is that it presents a way of addressing the gap between 'objective' (or at least measured) improvement in services and static or rising levels of dissatisfaction with public services captured in customer satisfaction data. It is rooted in a model of deliberative governance, which uses public participation to refine public preferences³ and identify objectives that the public genuinely value. The key aim is to achieve a higher level of responsiveness, derived from direct engagement with the public and a new approach to the fixing of targets. In this sense, public value is both a management theory and a practical toolkit to restore trust in public managers, politicians and the public realm. Public value is therefore rooted in democratic theory and revolves around processes of deliberation and ongoing dialogue between institutions and the public they serve.

1.5 This is not merely a question of marketing or communications, or an exercise in 'giving the public what they want', but a process for involving the public in decision making on the basis that citizens have the capacity to engage and understand the dilemmas faced by both politicians and public managers. Ultimately it is politicians (and increasingly public managers) who are responsible for decision making and accountable for allocating public funds, yet public value is rooted in the belief that if the rationale for decisions is explained after a process of public deliberation then those decisions will themselves be better and lead to better outcomes ⁴. Public value conceives of what public managers do as part of an ongoing deliberative process, but it is not prescriptive about how public managers engage with the public or what methods they use. Whilst public participation is a vital tool in enabling managers to establish what the public value, the crucial point is to ensure that the public is at the heart of what all public organisations do. Engaging staff and creating an organisational culture conducive to generating public value, strong leadership and appropriate methods of performance measurement are equally important.

The development of public value in Scotland and the UK

1.6 The practical application of public value remains work in progress. Public value theory has emerged in a context where consulting, engaging, involving or giving 'voice' to the public and to users of public services has become a near-ubiquitous term in policymaking over recent years. The influence of these ideas is visible in the processes that have been used to inform the development of legislation. For instance, the Department of Health in England consulted 42,000 people for its White Paper Your Healthcare, Your Say. The launch of the 'National Conversation' on devolution by the Scottish Government in August 2007 is another example of a deliberative process being used to engage the public in debating a highly political issue.

1.7 Statutory responsibilities for engagement, such as the Local Government in Scotland Act (2003), have also extended a duty to engage with citizens to improve service delivery. Local authorities, chief constables and police boards, NHS boards, enterprise agencies, the fire service and transport agencies are all now under an explicit obligation to take public participation more seriously. At local level there are numerous informal or ad hoc processes ranging from open meetings to citizens' juries, panels and workshops that either inform a specific initiative or project that an organisation is running, or respond to grassroots demand for citizens' voice on a particular issue.

1.8 Fostering greater participation has also become a desirable public policy outcome in the push to overcome the 'democratic deficit' that has developed between public managers and the public they serve, as described in section 1.3. This argument has found expression in the debate about the future of local government in Scotland. Both the McIntosh (1999) and Kerley (2000) reviews of local councils called for greater engagement with those who are 'poorly organised and resourced as part of a sustained process of public debate, review, and questioning of the local authority and its policies'(McAteer and Orr, 2006).

1.9 The public service reform agenda has also pushed for public services to become more accountable to the citizen, 'user' or 'consumer' rather than the 'producer interests' of the professionals who run them with a view to stimulating improvements in those services, improving outcomes and re-establishing trust in public institutions. Cornwall and Gaventa suggest this drive to incorporate the opinions and experience of citizens indicates that government agencies are now involving the public in decisions that were once presented as technical, and which should be acknowledged as value-laden and political (Cornwall and Gaventa, 2001). The rhetoric behind many recent reforms has focused on improving the quality of services by empowering users and making them more accountable to the public, although there are undoubtedly other issues at stake; decreasing levels of public funding, the threat of external competition and an interest in countering the power of professionals principal among them.

1.10 Examples of enhanced voice for service users include community safety forums that work with under-represented groups, and workshops with local communities and user/interest group campaigns, such as the 'Putting Breast Cancer on the Map' campaign ⁵. This argument is built on evidence that, perhaps unsurprisingly, people value a service the more they have contact with it. For instance, the Audit Commission found that while 80 per cent of local secondary school users were very or fairly satisfied with their service, only 30 per cent of the general population shared this view. Recent research in the UK has also found that 'faith' in 'closer' relationships (family, friends, work colleagues), rose between 1996 and 2001, while 'faith' in larger institutions (government, media, businesses), has gone down (Horner and Lekhi, 2007). The 'new localism' movement calling for devolution of power from central to local government reinforces this trend (Gains and Stoker 2007).

1.11 Yet questions remain. What, precisely, do these new processes involve? How do they differ from the traditional processes of democratic governance and decision making? What impact do these processes really have? What effects do they have on those involved and on services? Is the sum of such approaches genuine democratic revival or simply a series of 'tick box' exercises for public managers?

Signposting resources for public participation

1.12 There is a vast literature defining this process of participation in various contexts, detailing the instruments available and the costs and benefits of carrying out wider citizen engagement. This report is based on an analysis of published articles and government reports identified using a list of key terms to search IDOX and other relevant databases, official websites and search engines. The methods or techniques for participation are now well established and much of the publicly available information covers similar territory. For those interested in engaging the public, there are now numerous 'how to' guides available, including a Participation Handbook (Scottish Parliament, 2004), Consultation Good Practice Guidance (Scottish Executive, 2004) and Good Practice Guidance: Consultation with Equalities Groups (Reid-Howie Associates, 2002), COSLA's Focusing on citizens: A guide to approaches and methods ( COSLA, 1998) , as well as guides by the Scottish Centre for Regeneration ⁶ (2003) and the Cabinet Office ⁷. An up to date list of the best-known and used guides can be found in appendix five of Making a Difference: A guide to evaluating public participation in central government (Warburton, 2007). Involve (an independent organisation which promotes public participation) has recently launched an interactive website providing practical information for those interested in involving members of the public, including details of methods and case studies: http://www.peopleandparticipation.net/display/Involve/Home Councils such as South Lanarkshire ⁸ and Aberdeenshire ⁹ have also produced their own publications based on their experience. Whilst we know a lot about how to 'do' participation, our understanding of how to address some of the challenges these processes can raise is less well developed (Involve, 2006).

1.13 The aim of this short report is to give an overview of public value theory and outline how public managers can apply this in practice by using participatory approaches. This paper does not attempt to give a comprehensive assessment of all of the ways in which citizens are engaging in politics and policymaking in Scotland nor does it re-examine the many different methods of public participation in depth. Recent work commissioned by the Scottish Government has amply covered this territory: see Nicholson (2005 a and b) and Mahendran and Cook (2007). Rather, the aim of this report is to generate ideas for the Scottish Government about the effectiveness of different forms of public participation and to act as a resource for those undertaking participatory activities by signposting them to further information. It will also offer some principles for public engagement and ideas for refining the possible tools and techniques available.

1.14 The following sections provide an overview of the key drivers and enablers of participation, before going on to examine the benefits of participation, both for the organisation involved, and for citizens. Moreover, we explore where some initiatives have fallen short and identify where participatory instruments require further development if more deliberative forms of democracy are to be made a reality. Practical examples are given throughout, demonstrating how public service organisations in Scotland have successfully engaged with the public.