Civic initiatives as democratic innovations….

Posted on September 22nd, 2016 by Ingmar van Meerkerk

…and their interplay with traditional institutions of policy and politics.

Dr Ingmar van Meerkerk, a Visiting Fellow at the Crick Centre, discusses the impact new civic initiatives, such as social enterprises, might have on democracy and political institutions.

Civic initiatives, as a new form of civic engagement, are on the rise in most liberal democracies. They are emerging in different domains, for example in the realm of urban and community development, health care and the energy sector. In these new forms of civic engagement citizens organise themselves in civic enterprises or foundations which tend to be community-based, issue-oriented and pragmatic. Community self-organization emerges in arenas of policy and public administration that governments withdraw from due to budget cuts and in domains that have “slipped” from governmental attention, but they also arise to address market deficits in meeting citizens’ needs or concerns. Although civic initiatives are viewed as potentially interesting forms of democratic innovation, as they can shape new political identities of citizens, they also challenge existing institutions of representative democracy and service delivery. For instance, they can lead to role dilemmas and role conflicts for politicians, civil servants and local authority officers. Moreover, little is known about the durability of civic initiatives: can citizens continue to self-organise and produce high-quality services for the local community on a long-term basis?

Michael_Gove Big Society

The Big Society – a Conservative Party policy to boost civic initiatives. Image: Michael Gove MP at the Conservative Party “Big Society” policy launch, March 2010. Image courtesy of Paul Clarke via Wikimedia Commons

Therefore my research focuses on the interplay between these civic initiatives and traditional institutions of policy and politics, particularly using boundary spanning theories. Boundary spanning theories can help us to understand both the difficulties, but also some of the opportunities in making community self-organisation work. In this respect I concentrate on the management of interfaces across different organisational and institutional boundaries (community, political and administrative boundaries) and its effect on legitimacy and durability of civic initiatives.

Together with colleagues from the Repolis research team at the Erasmus University we are looking for the factors which make civic initiatives durable, how they perform, but also which challenges they face and whether they also lead to innovation in traditional institutions of policy and politics. The international comparative component of our research program focuses on the impact of different institutional contexts (different administrative traditions) on the nature of the relationship between civic enterprises and governmental actors across countries with different polity models. In this respect we are currently conducting a comparative survey in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the USA in which we examine the nature of the relationship with governmental institutions (e.g. responsiveness, level and nature of support, level of red tape), the performance and legitimacy of civic initiatives, their network and boundary-spanning strategies. Furthermore, the Repolis program explicitly aims to come to proven interventions that contribute to the effective interplay between civic initiatives and institutions.

repolis

Community self-organisation can both be a valuable source of giving shape to new political identities of citizens in current times of decreasing trust in political institutions and government officials, as well as contributing to the governance capacity of society. This seems to be the case especially when viable connections arise between more government-induced forms of problem-solving and service delivery and civic initiatives. However, this is a difficult journey and much is unknown about how civic initiatives effectively and legitimately develop alongside and with existing political and governmental institutions. It is therefore important to improve our understanding on how the interplay between civic initiatives and governmental institutions evolves, and how and when they lead to durable and legitimate forms of interactive governance.

Biography

Ingmar van Meerkerk

Dr. Ingmar van Meerkerk (1986) is visiting fellow at the Sir Bernard Crick Centre and is post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Public Administration and Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He received his PhD degree in 2014 with his research on the role and effects of boundary spanners on the democratic legitimacy and performance of governance networks. His (current) research activities are focused on the interplay between community self-organization (civic initiatives) and governmental institutions, specifically in the field of urban regeneration. He has published in several journals, including Policy Sciences, Public Management Review, European Planning Studies and The American Review of Public Administration on this topic and is co-editor of the book Critical Reflections on Interactive Governance: Self-organization and Participation in Public Governance, recently published by Edward Elgar.

 

Note: this article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Crick Centre, or the Understanding Politics blog series. To write for the Understanding Politics blog series please contact [email protected]

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