As part of the Transforming neighbourhoods project, Paul Hilder has produced an excellent detailed think-piece on neighbourhood governance, Seeing the wood for the trees.
On one level it just comes across as a combination of assertions, accumulated ideas, and unreferenced experience. But it's carefully framed and it takes us quite a bit closer to being able to build something functional, in terms of democratic structures, out of all the conceptual bayko that's lying around. I draw your attention to the hugely helpful matrix on page 9, a representation of the structures of neighbourhood governance on which it is well worth spending some time. It's a tribute to those involved in the project at the Young Foundation that a great deal of complexity is presented in such a digestible way.
One of several key passages is the section on the role of councillors, a role that is desperately in need of re-invention. It makes me think that what I'd like to see, in addition to the representative function, is a role that enables local people to get to grips themselves with democratic processes - a kind of governance facilitator, perhaps a blend of community development worker and traditional councillor.
And one of the key phrases comes right at the end of the paper: Paul asks, 'how can this non-partisan social movement best gather pace?' One way is to make sure that we balance all the attention to top-down structural tweaking with an attention to the ways in which people experience democracy in their everyday lives - an approach grotesquely absent from most of what has been written around the agenda thus far.
Thanks for the kind words about our first public document, Kevin! I agree with everything else you say. "An attention to the ways in which people experience democracy in their everyday lives" is precisely what we need now. Ideally a bottom-up dynamic could help to shape the way the architecture of power gets hacked - and while getting involved in such a process might not be easy, given the number of disappointments in the past, I do think it's all to play for this time... Our doors are definitely open on this one.
Posted by: Paul Hilder | Friday, 11 November 2005 at 10:45