Encouraging civic action: Localism and Building the Big Society Gerry Stoker

A moment of opportunity? Localism has come of age- an active commitment in new government policy A practice on the ground The emergence of the Big Society: “the re-imagined state should not stop at creating opportunities for people to take control of their lives. It must actively help people take advantage of this new freedom. This means a new role for the state: actively helping to create the big society; directly agitating for, catalysing and galvanising social renewal”. PM

A moment of threat Economic down turn, job cuts and large-scale public spending cuts Ambiguity over localism and Big Society Does it mean you?

A moment for reflection and action Where does your council and its community stand? The legitimacy of election and the option of raising funds You will need: Engagement, smart thinking and not “rose tinted” glasses

Key questions Are citizens willing to change their behaviour and do more to help themselves and others? How do you promote civic behaviour? What kind of interventions might work if the big society is to be encouraged? Can we robustly test whether interventions work or not?

We framed our research around two ideas Nudge is about giving information cues so as to help people do positive things for themselves and society Think argues it is possible to get citizens to think through controversial issues in innovative ways that allows for evidence and the opinions of all to count. These ideas draw on different traditions of research and theory

Our experimental method A randomised controlled trial (RCT) randomly allocates a population into treated and “control” groups Thus it is possible – other things being equal – to make an unbiased estimate of the impact of a treatment or intervention Field experiments happen in the ‘real world’, not in laboratories or other artificial situations The focus for us is measuring shifts in behaviour as much as attitude To develop some interventions we used a procedure called a design experiment

How our experiments stack up TopicInterventionNudge or think Result RecyclingCanvassingNudgeRecycling up Call centreAskingNudgeCitizen action E-petitionInformationNudgeE-petitions up Food wasteFeedbackNudgeFood recycling up Charitable givingPledgingNudgePublic pledge works Letter writingLobbyingNudgeLow impact Council forumCollaborationThinkStronger involvement Online forumDebateThinkSome opinion shifts DonationsChoiceNudge+thinkNudge works better

The impact of nudges Door-to-door canvassing leads to a 10% increase in kerbside recycling. Book donations went up by 22% as a result of people pledging to donate, and donators' names being publicly displayed. Citizens calling a call centre were asked if they were interested in civic activity and in a pilot over a short period from two neighbourhoods, 63 people said yes. Provision of tailored information about organ donation resulted in a 17% increase in registered donors. E-petitioners who know that over a million other people already signed are 6% more likely to sign

The impact of Think New voices can be introduced into public debate if we work in innovative ways Large-scale on-line deliberations can be engaging for significant numbers of citizens- and controversial topics discussed- but those that do participate tend to be already politically-interested. On sensitive personal issues ( organ donation) Think+ Nudge fares less well then Nudge

On building the big society: The positives Intervention tools that allow for the complex cognitive, social and moral dimensions to citizen behaviour In local and decentralised settings you can get innovation and value for money in public services and programmes. If approached in the right way citizens are willing to change their behaviour and do more to help themselves and others It indicates though that government will have to learn to operate differently if the big society is to be encouraged: innovative, open but also challenging towards citizens

Constraint 1: lack of trust, responsiveness and capacity in governance Framing only works if source is trusted Engagement depends on response Fundamental problems with the quality of our politics Politics of fantasy, myth and focused messages Civic action requires capacity for co- production or co-creation: sharing power Cuts and the politics of withdrawal

Constraint 2: limits to civil society Numbers and levels of volunteering have remained relatively stable in last two decades according to various surveys New analysis in the Third Sector Research Centre shows that: two-thirds of unpaid help is given by around 7% of the populationThird Sector Research Centre The core groups are largely composed of well educated, middle-aged professionals; 57% have higher education qualifications; 33% have degrees and are aged over 40% of females with degrees are in these "core" groups….approaching saturation? As a rule, the core groups are overrepresented in wealthier areas: 42% of those in the most prosperous tenth of residential neighbourhoods are in the "core", whereas only 25% of those in the least prosperous areas are.