My lesson (teachers sheets) about citizens participation for a group of Turkish civil servants (one of many lessons)

1. Collective decisionmaking
Nog te sorteren!!

2. Collective decisionmaking
(groups deciding together)
Recap last lesson
Collective decisionmaking in groups (Negotiating,
Consent method, Thinking heads)
Decisionmaking in a network

3. Recap last lesson

4. Collective decisionmaking
The same as with participation
First stage: people with power
Second: people with power with special interests
Third: experts that are needed
Fourth: representatives of important people
needed for cooperation
Fifth: all people
You see that all people had to learn to cooperate

5. New focus on collective
decisionmaking: Why? (1)
Representation under pressure
A political class and a “non participating class” a
significant divide in many countries
Clientalism make people believe politicians do not
represent them
Trust issues (I trust someone like me) as we saw
in the checking lesson
Coalitions: every party wants something, not easy
to show success.
We become consumers of politics: we do not

6. New focus on collective
decisionmaking (2)
Government in The Netherlands is not almighty,
but depends on cooperation of (international)
enterprises, other countries, ngo’s, citizens
We together know more than the politicians alone
Cooperation brings more success

7. Representation under pressure
We vote for a person, but what do we like?
Changing in preferences within 4 years
David Van Reybrouck calls it Democratic Fatigue
Video democratic fatigue: to slow, we are not
allowed to give our opinion, no loyality to parties
(5 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5hdt1xTc_Y

8. Your thoughts about lotted citizens
Good alternative or good extra?
First round: the advantages and possibilities
Second round: what are the negative sides and
impossibilities
Third round: what could a CA do?

9. Citizens deciding:
-Summits, Referendum,
Participative budgetting
Interested parties
deciding
-Building consensus,
negotiating, an example
Deciding in networks
It is necessary to
improve creativity and
openness

10. Citizens Summits
Amsterdam, Amersfoort, Uden, Groningen,
Utrecht …
A citizens' summit is a meeting on a specific theme or with an open
agenda where a group of residents is brought together with the
aim of starting a discussion in order to arrive at a joint position
or to take action themselves. The most common example of a
citizens' summit in the Netherlands is the G1000, where the
original idea is to involve 1000 residents. But most summits had
fewer citizens. At some citizens' summits, citizens themselves
determine the agenda.
Not easy to get real representative, Not very creative, Much
appreciated by participants, Good deliberation, More
understanding politics, Not much influence of practice in city
council

11. Citizen summit Steps
Selection: take a random selection from 6000 people. From the
people that wanted to register, take a selection in age, gender
and education that is representative. (But not much young and
too much higher educated)
No agenda, citizens choose themes for the future (but very vague),
difficulty is the citizens do not know the city policies
Deliberation discuss and listen to others to find the themes
Results participants were very positive about atmosphere, being
heard, possibility to speak and to be listened to. But Not much
visible power, not very diverse
Costs 30.000 (much by volunteers, and municipality hours, can be
60 - 120.000)

12. Referendum and preferendum
Several forms
1.Against a law approved by the House of
Representatives (forces politicians to win
support from the public) (EU treaty) (Amsterdam
City Expansion). Very clear
2.A choice before the representatives have
chosen (like Brexit) (closing times cafes)
3. A choice between alternatives (more money
tosocial security or to police) (preferendum)
Danger: no integrated decisions (do not raise taxes but also spend
more money) no compromises, polarisation

13. How to organize a referendum
Threshold of signatures: how much? (In the
Netherlands this was 300.000) First: 10.000
then it starts and you need 300.000 in 3 months
Clear question that everybody can understand (no
double negation like “do you support the
politicians when they say no to ….”)
Clear when the outcome is binding (when more
than 30% (or 50%) of the people that can vote
did vote. Feed the debate to make informed
decisions!
Preferendum makes clear what the people want

14. Referendum insights
Support varies in groups and time
Very popular with people that feel ignored
Good to challenge the politicians to explain
Good to feel part of the democracy
No deliberation? No awareness
Losers feel less support for democracy when
there was no good deliberation
A need to build a tradition as in Switzerland

15. Deliberation is crucial
The more deliberation, the more chance of historic
insight and taking different aspects into account
The more deliberation, the more people feel
engaged
Public deliberation reconnects citizens with
political adversaries and with public officials,
educates about public goods and choices and
brings legitimacy
Deliberation helps to create a more public spirit
with thoughts about public needs
You thoughts komt hierna

16. Dangers and advantages of direct
democracy and referenda
No historic sight, no integral thinking
No explaining why this decision is made this way,
no accountability
The more theoretical education (university,
college) the more you take part in deliberation,
the less theaoretical: the more you want others
to speakup for you
But :
More trust in decisions, people learning to decide together
More power to the people themselves
More legitimacy

17. Participatory budgetting
started in Brazil
Video Participative budgetting (meerkat 4 min)
https://www.meerkatmedia.org/portfolio/real-
money-real-power/
18000 people involved in Porto Alegre (1,5 mln)
Possible online
Tried out all over the western world
More participation of citizens organized in NGO’s,
trade unions, political parties, local associations

18. Participatory budgetting (1)
The municipality is divided geographically into
multiple districts.
Representatives of the divided districts are either
elected or volunteered to work with government
officials in a PB committee.
Proposals, initiated by the citizens, are dealt
under different branches of public budget such
as recreation, infrastructure, transportation, etc.
Participants publicly deliberate with the committee
to finalize the projects to be voted on.

19. Participatory budgetting (2)
The drafted budget is shared to the public and put
for a vote.
The municipal government implements the top
proposals.
The cycle is repeated on an annual basis.

20. We saw
Budget cuts with citizens
Neighbourhood budgets
Video Joop Hofman about neighbourhoodbudgets
A start possible with neighbourhoods? People
learn to know the municipality, learn to make
difficult decisions

21. Would a pilot be possible?
Start
- With a small budget with specific goals (green,
places to recreate and meet)
- City council promisses to approve the proposals
of residents
- In 2 or 3 neighbourhoods with strong local
associations
- Evaluate together with the local associations

22. Collective decisions with groups that
have an interest
City works with neighbourhood representatives,
entrepeneurs, interest groups
Only open to representative parties that have an
interest and experts
First necessity: building trust

23. Building consensus starts with trust
Trust the other
Accept the difference in views
Accept the possibility of seeing both the same but
interpreting it differently
Separate the views from the persons
Focus on interests not on opinions or methods

24. How to gain trust from opponents
See the person, not the opinion
Communicate and be true to your word
Listen befor expecting to be listened to
Take small steps
Be honest and ask to be honest
Understand before being understood
Be serious in admitting mistakes

25. Building consensus
Include the right people and set expectations.
Leaving out will create opposition
Let people know each other and see each other
as a person, not only a stakeholder.
 Assign roles and responsibilities. A city council has a different
role than a entrepeneur
 Manage expectations (the step on the ladder) If you think you
can decide alone, you will be disappointed
Engage in group problem solving. Chose a
method to let people listen to each other
Reach agreements and see where you can not
Hold people to their commitments

26. Recap negotiating
Mutual gains approach
Clarify: what is the focus and objective
Prepare: know your interests and think about their
interests,
Create value/ Invent options that work for all:
imagine the future, suspend critism, bundle
options
Use joint fact finding
Analyze alternatives: look for blind spots,
maximize value, keep at least two packages
Decide

27. The attitude to reach compromises
Know what's worth compromising on
See compromise as a strength, not a weakness
Be transparent about your intentions
Discover your “opponent's” true needs. A
compromise is about trying to help the other
Make multiple suggestions
Know that not all compromise attempts will work.

28. The dangers of making compromise
or negotiating
Breaking trust leads to long-term loss of trust
- Promises that are not kept
- Loss is transparant, wins are inconclusive
Newcomers forget the gain and remember the
loss
- Compromises need to be explained, also to
newcomers

29. Workbench to prevent negotiating
Video: maakbank (we saw earlier)
Get all the key parties that have a stake.
Everybody gives their solutions to a problem
with different angles, world views, contradictory
formulations of the problem, no single good
solution
Everybody is equal
Asks growing trust between participants and
eagerness to learn
Good in deliberation and quality of solutions
https://youtu.be/lc-9WGxKU8s

30. Delphi-method
(consensus about future)
A method to forecast results with several experts with different opinions and
when knowledge is incomplete or uncertain. When shared opinions of future
development count or there is uncertainty interventions will wordk
1.Define the problem, assemble experts
2.Facilitator sends open questions to experts
(government / non government)
3.Analyze the answers, summarize the results share with
the experts, aks why agree or not agree
4.Repeat: send questions based on the answers
5.Agreement on future or interventions
Video Delphi-technique:
https://youtu.be/4oYwefvXjbU

31. More creativity
Thinking heads
Walt Disney method
Queststorming
Reverse brainstorming

32. Queststorming
What, who, why, where, when, how, with whom
A way to find the most important questions to ask
To find the best formulation of the problem
Next session find answer for the 5 most important
questions
Easy to do, difficult online and in English

33. Reversed brainstorming
We have more focus on problems, use that
What could we do to prevent customers from
being glad with our product?
1.Clearly identify the problem
2.Reverse the problem or challenge
3.Brainstorm the reverse problem. Do not reject
anything at this stage.
4.Reverse these into solution ideas for the original
problem or challenge.
5.Evaluate these solution ideas

34. Practice Reverse brainstorming
There is a meeting about building houses around
a park, so a park would be smaller
Not brainstorming about the best way to let
people participate, but the reverse
What could we do to let people lose all trust in
participation?

35. Deciding in a network
negotiating becomes difficult
Sometimes participating, sometimes not
There are different networks:
Hierarchy (leaders decide and commit), coalition
(workers decide and feel responsible), chaotic
(people and organisation come in and go out as
they like)
In networks you are free to choose to cooperate
In The Netherlands the municipality is in many
decisions part of a network (regional of national
organisations, companies, resident
organisations)

36. Network activities
More or less the same collective goals, but also
individual goals or organizational goals
Example: people that have debts because of
unemployment, addictions or more.
Companies want to help, but also bills being paid.
Care institution wants to help but cure an
addiction
Be sure partners can see collective results and
partner-results, acknowledge each contribution
The one that pays more wants to see more
results, report together (find appropriate ways)

37. networkresult
municipality companies residents care
result
municipality
result
companies
result
residents
result care
institution
networkactivities
Reaching
goals
together

38. Problems of networkdecisions
Enthousiasm about collective goals hides the
disappointment of not reaching individual goals
Free riders: entrepeneurs that invest in safety and
other enterpreneurs profit as much
Evaluate all results! Show who invested,
Build trust and work transparant
But: possible! See Ruwaard

39. The experiment in Ruwaard
(municipality of Oss)
A neighbourhood with multiple problems
Active residents, municipality, housing corporations, care-
organisations, police, health insurance companies: together
define the goals and the problems
Action plans for families with multiple problems are central in the
method
-start with the people
-see the possible effects of interventions with costs and benefits
-the party that benefits most pays most
Every 6 weeks new evaluations and action plans
Example: a man with a very dirty house who stopped cleaning and
throwing waste away. The housing corporation and neighbours
sounded the alarm. The residents found out he could not cope
with the loss of his child: cleaning the house would not help

40. Friendly, low threshold, open to all
people
also in the community
centre: pooltable, coffee,
walking group,
repairshop, fitness, first
aid, cheap
meetingspace,
gardening together
Visible that the residents
are in charge

41. Your thoughts?
Do you see
networkproblems in
Turkey, do parties work
together?
In the Netherlands we
see it with problematic
debts, measures against
burglary and vandalism
(schools, police, shops),
unemployment

42. New forms
Recap The Wagenwerkplaats in Amersfoort
2000 Dutch railway company decided to close the
train repair workshop in Amersfoort

43. Wagenwerkplaats 2
The protestgroup against the demolition of the
porter's house went on to search for the history
of the Wagenwerkplaats. They discovered the
beauty and the historical connection with the
neigbourhood Soesterkwartier and decided to
start a citizens' initiative for conservation from
the Wagon Workshop. This citizens' initiative led to a
public-private-civil cooperation between the municipality, NS and
other owners and the citizens to give the “Wagenwerkplaats” a
new destination. This is laid down in the Master Plan Wagon
workshop 2016

44. We saw this structure to decide
together

45. municipality railways residents entrepreneurs
result
municipality
result
Dutch railways
result
residents
result
entrepeneurs
networkactivities
together
A lively neighbourhood with beautiful buildings
that make money

46. Wagenwerkplaats: not only
buildings
It has become a lively part of the town and brought more vitality to
the neigbourhood because of the collective decisionmaking
Each party can bring in their own expertise
- Better buildings
- Better connection with the surroundings
- New business starting
- Enough profits
- More Futureproof

47. Building consensus
Include the right people
Let people know each other as a person
Assign roles and responsibilities
Manage expectations
Engage in group problem solving
Reach agreements en see where you can not
Hold people to their commitments

48. Reasons for different views
Different interests, you notice different risks or
flaws
Different experiences, you might believe
something does not work
Different values, you might think something is not
in line with your values
Other interpretation of words, like solidarity
Miscommunication
Baises
Focus on interests, not on opinions

49. Mutual gains approach
principles for the process
• about people: separate the people from the
problem;
• about positions and opinions: focus on interests,
not positions;
• about choices: create all kinds of possibilities;
• about criteria: based on an objective standard.

50. Consensus building (1)
Convening: Getting every people to come with
shared expectations
Clarifying expectations: what to do, what roles
• summarize
• keep record of ideas that come up
• keep the group on track
Deliberation
Joint factfinding, careful listening, package
agreements that meet interests

51. Consensus building (2)
Find an emerging possible package, summarize
what we thought and what could work and what
could be a possible package, leave out your
thoughts. Neutral person can see that better.
Voting? No . Ask about a passage and show
which interests are met. Then Who can not live
with that.
Question: how can we revise the package to meet
every interest and concern. Often this works and
you do not need to vote.
Ask for commitment and who will do what

52. Participation in policy making
World Cafe
The World Cafe is an engagement process designed to take place
in a cafe setting (either in an actual cafe or else the room is set
up to resemble one as much as possible so that participants are
seated around small tables with tablecloths and tea, coffee and
other beverages). The idea behind this is to create a space that
supports 'good conversation', where anybody is able to talk
about things that matter to them.
Each round is initiated with a specific question related to the
overall purpose of the event. The same questions can be used
for more than one round or they can build upon one another.
The choice of question(s) is crucial to the success of the event.
In general it is useful to phrase the questions in a positive format
and open ended format to allow a constructive discussion.

53. Other ways
Use different ways to meet and consult each other
Let people know each other as a person
Learn to know key persons in the city
Build trust
Make key persons your ambassador

54. Different meetings
Municipal Ted Talks
Organizing an internal event can inject enthusiasm and innovation into your
culture. Johnson & Johnson has been organizing internal Ted Talks
worldwide since 2012, with the aim of creating an environment in which
employees feel free to share ideas,
Startup event.
Organize a pitch night or a growth hacking meeting somewhere in the
municipality, let the residents present their ideas
Notes Day
Pixar regularly holds a “Notes Day”, an internal reflection day where
employees meet in small groups. First they start within their own, trusted
teams, but then people from different departments are brought together in
workshops to think about the most important problems or challenges of the
company. Something to organize with CA?
City walks, walking while meeting and talking
Pressure cooker event: start with civil servants on problem like safety. Talk
together, invite victims, discuss, find solutions in 1 day

55. Homework
How can the CA promote collective
decisionmaking with residents?

56. A meeting with the political executive
how would you prepare your meeting
About an advice on regulating the situation on a
traffic circle you will give in a month. The
alderman wants to hear experts
The alderman wants you not to talk about victims
and deaths, that is too negative
There are people who have lost a child, they
started a group that wanted an initiative to
improve the situation. There are neighbours.
There is a entrepeneur who wants speedy
traffic. There are experts on traffic regulation
How do you prepare, who do you ask to preside, who is

57. collective conflicts
Recognise the conflict if it is invisible
Acknowledge the conflict.
Is it individual or collective?
Collective: use consensus building
Individual: Do not reject the anger, see it as a message, Work together, ask for
support, Distance yourself emotionally, reject actions not feelings
Discover the problem
Engage in conversation and communicate
assertively and constructively.
Provide a joint solution.