What we can learn from citizen participation

What triggers people to enter into a dialogue? How do they achieve results together? What is the added value of collaboration? The imminent social elections – the height of democracy in the corporate world – present us with an excellent opportunity to explore the topic of participation in great depth. With the assistance of Professor Tine De Moor of the Utrecht University, we are looking for a broader perspective.

The rise of citizen collectives

One specific form of cooperation has been gaining traction quite rapidly: citizen collectives. These collectives enable citizens to join forces, take initiative and look for solutions to societal challenges which cannot be addressed by the government or the market. These challenges deal with a variety of areas, including food (e.g. pick-your-own farms and orchards), accommodation (e.g. co-housing projects), energy (e.g. renewable energy cooperatives), infrastructure (e.g. glass fibre cooperatives) and parks and public spaces management (e.g. neighbourhood parks).

Professor Tine De Moor and Oikos think tank investigated this phenomenon with the support of the King Baudouin Foundation. Their report “When citizens join forces and take matters into their own hands” not only makes mention of a renewal of local communities and civil society but also highlights an actual innovation. The researchers focused a lot of their attention on involvement and solidarity. “Collectives are a direct form of solidarity,” De Moor says. “They are called Schools for Democracy, but in fact they are Schools for Solidarity. The members simply have to listen to each other if they want to find a solution.”

Citizen collectives enable citizens to join forces so as to tackle societal challenges which cannot be addressed by the government or the market.

Critical notes …

In the Netherlands, citizen collectives have been around for quite some time. “The privatisation of healthcare has been going on for many years,” De Moor explains. “If the market does not see any opportunities in certain sparsely populated areas, the local population will take action, for example by organising childcare.” In Flanders, some families with disabled children work together to provide sheltered housing units. These efforts are laudable but not necessarily good news. After all, these facilities are only available to the wealthy and furthermore reduce demand, so that the government and the market are even less inclined to roll up their sleeves.

… but also opportunities.

In other words, a collective is not always a perfectly positive story, and social solidarity is not always evident either. De Moor refers to the trade unions, which came into existence as a result of solidarity, and points out that we sometimes fail to “see the solidarity mechanism when thinking about taxes, an indirect form of solidarity”. She nevertheless identifies economic opportunities – such as the pay-out of dividends within an energy cooperative – as well as ecological benefits. As a matter of fact, numerous cooperatives strive for a more sustainable way of life.