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4. Citizens and Community <- Back to categories
Active Citizens, Strong Communities
Active Citizens, Strong Communities is based on the Home Secretary's Scarman Lecture delivered at The Scarman Trust's Citizens' Convention, 11th December 2003.From the conclusion: "Active citizens make strong communities. They do so because in addition to what they contribute themselves, they bring other people and resources into play to solve common problems. The state has a duty to support them, and to support communities undergoing civil renewal. To suggest, as some still do, that the state should jettison more and more of its public responsibilities to enhance individual freedom betrays both a cynical disregard for the consequences of dismantling entitlements to public support, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the value of freedom."
Active Citizenship and Public Service Reform
Active Citizenship and Public Service Reform is a 2002/3 report by Selina Chenand, published by the Social Market Foundation, which looks at the connection between improvements in public services and the restoration of confidence in government and the reversal in the decline in trust in politicians. In particular, the report focuses on the relationship that citizens have to their government and the implications this has both for the public perception of performance and for performance itself.
Active Communities - 2003 Home Office Survey Results (UK)
This short report uses initial findings from the 2003 Home Office Citizenship Survey to look at how patterns of active community participation in England have changed since 2001. Active citizenship is a key element of the Home Secretary’s civil renewal agenda set out in his 2003 Edith Kahn Memorial lecture, "Civil Renewal: A New Agenda".
Benefits of Community Engagement - Active Citizenship and Public Service Reform
The report: Benefits of Community Engagment - Active Citizenship and Public Service Reform, was commissioned by the Civil Renewal Unit in the Home Office in order to:
- explore and assess evidence for the positive results of community engagement and
- identify further work needed to increase and promote understanding of what works.
Citizen Engagement and Public Services: Why Neighbourhoods Matter
An ODPM publication (31 January 2005) - part of ODPM's 5 year strategy. Seeks to link the two themes of securing sustainable improvements in public services and re-engaging citizens with the institutions of government. Sets up a framework for councils to provide opportunities and support for neighbourhood activities approaopraite to the locality.
Civil Renewal and Active Citizenship: A Guide to the Debate
A report by NCVO (June 2005). This report offers an introduction to the active citizenship debate, and in doing so highlights the challenges, contradictions and tremendous opportunities for voluntary and community organisations in a reinvigorated civil society. However, it is a guide to the debate thus far. NCVO is currently considering its own direction for the next five years, and a deeper understanding of the links between active citizenship and the sector will surely underpin our future work. This will include the broadening of our work on the size and scope of the sector, our intention being to produce a UK Civil Society Almanac. We (NCVO) will also take forward our plans for a new programme to develop the sector’s capacity for effective advocacy and campaigning.
Community Capacity Building
The Community Capacity Building document comprises notes for a talk given to the MAV Conference, Lorne, 25-27 July 2003 by Gerry Stoker and Karin A. Bottom of the University of Manchester.
"This talk begins, like many do, with some grand claims about the significance of the topic. There follows some definition and clarification of the subject matter. We then consider some examples of people and places around the globe that appear to have made some progress in tackling the issues of building community capacity, encouraging community cohesion and stimulating active citizenship. As well as case studies of individual interventions, attention is paid to the development of strategies. Particular attention is paid to the newly launched schemes for community cohesion in the UK. More generally, the agenda laid out for social capitalists by Bob Putnam is critically explored. The final section of the paper turns to the issue of what is likely to increase the chances of success. What are the ingredients needed to maximise community capacity, and what are the obstacles that have to be over come?"
Community Participation: Neighbourhood Renewal
The Community Participation: Neighbourhood Renewal report summarises and considers the 109 responses received by the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (NRU) to a paper proposing changes to the funding arrangements for neighbourhood renewal community participation programmes published in May 2003.The report was published in September 2003 by Marilyn Taylor Associates. The document contains a section of Democratic Renewal.
Connecting with Users and Citizens
Connecting with Users and Citizens is an Audit Commission report that aims to inform and encourage public sector service providers to develop new and effective ways of involving local people in improving the services that they use.
Digital 4Sight Serving E-Citizens
Digital 4sight Serving E-Citizens outlines the emerging profile of Internet era citizen-customers, analyzing ways to anticipate customers’ changing expectations and to determine key questions for further research into citizen-customers. This is called the e-citizen effect.
Engaging the Community in e-Government
Engaging the Community in e-Government is an Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) paper exploring key questions related to the benefits of community engagement and its role in supporting the implementation of local e-government, and promoting
effective ways of:
communicating with citizens
improving the quality, relevance and delivery of services
involving local people in local government
using technology to expand and improve community consultation.
New Deal for Communitites:The National Evaluation - Annual Report 2002/3
The NDC Programme is one of the most important area based initiatives (ABIs) ever launched in England. It is designed to ‘reduce the gaps between some of the poorest neighbourhoods and the rest of the country’. The Programme has been taken forward in two waves: 17 Pathfinders, or Round 1 Partnerships, were announced in 1998 and a further 22 Round 2 schemes a year later. In these 39 areas, typically consisting of about 4000 dwellings, Partnerships are now implementing approved Delivery Plans, each attracting about £50m of NDC Programme investment. The total cost of the 10 year Programme is around £2 billion. This paper forms the Annual Report 2002/03.
Online Participation and Mobilisation in Britain: Hype, Hope and Reality
Online Participation and Mobilisation in Britain: Hype, Hope and Reality, by Stephen Ward, Rachel Gibson and Wainer Lusoli, was published in Parliamentary Affairs, the journal of the Hansard Society for parliamentary Government, in 2003. It examines the possibilities and pitfalls of online participation, and reaches an conclusion that the Internet will make a modest positive contribution to participation and mobilisation.
Parliamentary Affairs: Citizen Audit Report
The Citizen Audit was part of the ESRC's Democracy and Participation programme started in 1999. Its purpose was twofold: firstly, to provide comprehensive information on civic attitudes and behaviour and, secondly, to provide an information resource to other projects on the programme.
Parliamentary Affairs: Citizenship in the Age of Liberalism
Citizenship in The Age of Liberalism seeks to expand the scope of research on citizenship in political behaviour and political psychology, and to expand the range of methodologies that are used to study this subject.
Parliamentary Affairs: How Citizenship Got on the Parliamentary Agenda
Trevor Smith probes the question of how and in what ways citizenship has emerged from the obscurity of academic theorising to become an increasingly important feature of public policy.
Participation, Citizenship and Local Governance (Sussex University)
Participation, Citizenship and Local Governance explores literature related to the dynamics and methods of strengthening community-based participation in the context of programmes for democratic decentralisation.
In so doing, we will:
- discuss the differing concepts of participation, and their intersection
- examine the evidence related to the barriers to participation in local governance
- explore some new initiatives and strategies for overcoming those barriers
- suggest some research themes and questions for further consideration
Proxicommunication - ICT and the Local Public Realm
iSociety paper challenges the stereotypical depiction of the internet as being associated with globalisation, and seen to remove the constraints that geography places on social interaction. Instead it argues that the users of pervasiveness of ICT are less dispersed and develop more local uses for it; that policymakers seek new ways of supporting local community, and should consider the benefits of ICT such as by supporting weak local networks and Helping to link communication to location.
Serving E-Citizens - Understanding Government Customers in the Internet Age
Serving E-Citizens - Understanding Government Customers in the Internet Age is a report by a UK company, Digital 4sight, which discusses the nature and imperatives flowing from e-citizens.
Social Capital
Social Capital is a discussion paper from the performance and Innovation Unit, published in April 2002.
It discusses what is social capital and its importance; how it might be measured; facts, trends, possible downsides; determinants, future prospects and policy implications, including suggestions and potential new initiatives for positively stimulating the creation of social capital.
Supporting Communities of Practice - A Survey of Community-Oriented Technologies
Supporting Communities of Practice: A Survey of Community-Oriented Technologies, a 68 page paper by Etienne Wenger, examines how to make sense of the emerging market; understand the potential of technology, and set up a community platform. It was published in this draft in March 2001.
Towards Self Governing Communities
In this position paper, the LGA make the case for putting local government at the heart of civil renewal. It show what councils are doing both to build stronger communities, better able to look after themselves, and to strengthen their capacity to participate in local governance. It also identifies where councils can do more.
e-Democracy from the Ground Up
Bristol City Council is pleased to have commissioned this report in its role as evaluation lead for the Local e-Democracy National Project. Effective local leadership is at the heart of Government strategy. Leadership involves listening and responding to the views of communities; however, “democracy” is not simply a gift to be handed down from Government to authorities to citizens. This report concerns the role that authorities must also play in facilitating ground-up, community and citizen-led approaches to democracy, if they are to be truly effective leaders.
In facilitating ground-up e-democracy, the report considers how authorities have tried to harness the power offered by communication technologies to create and stimulate new forms of “civic-space”. In this space, communities recognise the value of bringing forward issues, ideas and solutions and local authorities see themselves as central, but not dominating, stakeholders in a public conversation.
As an evaluation, the report highlights some successes and some failures. However, an important overall conclusion is that if councils fail to grasp the opportunities offered by ground-up approaches to e-democracy, this will undoubtedly result in more subterranean conversations where authorities are increasingly “spoken about”, rather than “spoken to”.
The Differing Stories of Devolution in England, Scotland and Wales
The Differing Stories of Devolution in England, Scotland and Wales are speaker notes for a seminar given by Mike Emmerich, Director, IPEG, at LUISS (Libera Università degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli), Rome on 12 June 2003.
The paper's "first and main conclusion of this paper is that the British Government is at best deeply ambivalent regarding the role that devolved democratically elected government can play in the public service reform agenda".
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