Can low expectations be mobilised?

The last three posts have been a preface to the second look I wanted to take at a detailed case-study I had written some 25 years ago about the most important programme I have ever been involved with – Strathclyde Region’s “Social Strategy for the Eighties”. The full story of the strategy is here – and a short version here. Strathclyde Region controlled key public services for half of Scotland’s population and had 100,000 professional staff. The strategy -

·         took some 18 months to prepare,

·         went through a continuous learning process eg “SS for the 80s”, “SS for the 90s”

·         lasted the 22 years’ life of the Region and

·         was continued by the new system of Scottish government which assumed power in 1999 

M involvement lasted 16 years – from 1974 when I became one of what was jokingly called “the gang of four” which led the Region in its first spell in office until I left the country to pursue a new career as an international consultant. 

The shocking 1973 “Born to Fail?” report  identified the West of Scotland as a UK leader in “multiple deprivation” and a few of us – instead of acting defensively - saw this as an opportunity to ensure that the new Region acted innovatively. An initial deprivation strategy was further developed over the winter of 1981 at a series of community conferences attended by 1000 activists which reviewed the actions taken to date by the Region and just before the May 1982 elections gave the subsequent report a fresh legitimacy

It was printed as an attractive (little red) booklet (complete with poems!) and widely distributed, as was a shorter version in the internal staff Bulletin. The Region's free Newspaper distributed to every household - and more selective monthly "Digest" sent to all Community groups - were both intensively used in the years to come to explain the details of the work. Workshops were held in a variety of public and professional settings over the following years to get the key messages across.  And these were simple - if challenging - 

            "The existing inequalities in service allocation did not happen by accident: they are mediated through the administrative machine by generally well-intentioned professionals and administrators practising apparently fair and neutral principles. To tackle these inequalities therefore requires more than a general expression of content handed over, in traditional style, for implementation. It demands the alteration of structures and the working assumptions".

 

            "What we were asking our staff to do in 1976 was to accept that fairly simple things were needed from them in the first instance; not massive spending but just a commitment, firstly to those who lived in the APTs; secondly to attempting new relationships both with their colleagues in other Departments and with residents. We were also asking for imagination and courage in encouraging staff to bring forward proposals for better practice despite the discouragement we knew they would encounter from the rules, traditions and prejudices which seem deeply engrained in certain departments"

 

            "The majority of staff are discouraged from joint work with councillors, other professionals and residents in APTs by the way the traditional departmental system of local government works. Career advance depends on one's work as a professional or manager in a particular department - and not on the collaborative ventures emphasised in this and the 1976 document. That is the crucial issue which must now be faced and resolved. Exhortations and good intentions are no longer enough" 

I was pretty happy with the detailed analysis of the experience I had prepared in the mid 1990s with the benefit not only of the distance brought by my having left the country but of a short sabbatical I had been given then by the Urban Studies group of Glasgow University. But the model of change used was perhaps not as clear as it might be - with a brief references to Kurt Lewin's freezing/refreezing approach and only the briefest of references to a piece I’d written in a major article in 1977 entitled Community Development – its administrative and political challenge. This actually gave a sense of the thinking which drove us - arguing that 

Our society is hardly what one would call a participatory democracy. The term that is used - "representative" democracy - is official recognition of the fact that "the people" do not take political decisions but have rather surrendered that power to one tor several) small elites - subject to  infrequent checks. Such checks are, of course, a rather weak base on which to rest claims for democracy⁴ and more emphasis is therefore given to the freedom of expression and organisation whereby pressure groups articulate a variety of interests. Those who defend the consequent operation of the political process argue that we have, in effect a political market place in which valid or strongly supported ideas survive and are absorbed into new policies. They further argue that every viewpoint or interest has a more or less equal chance of finding expression and recognition. This is the political theory of pluralism.⁵

 

Community development is an expression of unhappiness with this view of the operation of the policy process. At its most extreme - in some theories of com­munity action - it argues that the whole process is a gigantic confidence trick. In its more liberal version it merely wants to strengthen the voice of certain inarticulate members of society.

There is, I would suggest, a relatively simple way to test the claims of those who argue that there is little scope for improve­ment in the operation of our democratic process and that any deficiencies are attributable to the faults of individuals rather than to the system. It involves looking at how new policies emerge.

The policy process

A key question is: How does government hear and act upon the signals from below? How do "problems" get on the political "agenda"? Does the political and administrative process influence the type of problem picked up by government or the form in which it is presented?' The assumption of our society, good "liberals" that most of us essentially are, is that

·    the channels relating governors to governed are neutral and

·         the opportunity to articulate grievances and have these defined (if they are significant enough) as "problems" requiring action from authority is evenly distributed throughout society.

 

This is what needs to be examined critically - the concept of grievance and the process by which government responds to grievances.

"Problems" emerge because individuals or groups feel dissatisfied and articulate and organise that dissatisfaction in an influential way which makes it difficult for government to resist.

"Grievance" or "dissatisfaction" is not. however, a simple concept - it arises when a judgement is made that events fall short of what one has reason to expect. Grievance is a function of expectations and performance - both of which are relative and vary from individual to individual - or. more significantly, from group to group

Problems hadn't until then been defined by local people - professionally-dominated agendas were rather imposed on them in a variety of more or less subtle ways. The Region's community development staff were, in a sense, the shock-troops to help make the pluralist system work again (that was also evident in the "enterprise" rhetoric of community business).