STEPS Centre research: our approach to impact

The ‘impact’ of research has seen a dramatic rise up the UK’s policy agenda in recent years. But what does ‘impact’ really mean? How do researchers and others respond to the new ‘impact agenda’ and how might we best plan, monitor and report on impact? This working paper attempts to provide answers to some of these questions by reviewing various understandings of ‘impact’ and describing the approach used by the ESRC STEPS Centre in its second five-year phase of funding. In particular, we draw on our experience of adapting and employing a down-scaled version of ‘participatory impact pathways analysis’ (PIPA) and reflect on its utility and potential as a tool for planning relatively small-scale social science/ interdisciplinary research projects conducted with partners in developing countries. In using PIPA, the STEPS Centre has adapted the idea of ‘impact pathways’ in line with its broader ‘pathways approach’, which focusses on complex and dynamic interactions between knowledge, politics and ‘social, technological and environmental pathways to sustainability’. In this way, PIPA has been useful in articulating and exploring the potential impact of STEPS Centre projects: it has helped to map out the networks known to the researchers, appreciate different perspectives held by the team members and generate an understanding of the narratives, networks and policy processes under study. Although the possibility for detailed ex ante prediction of impact pathways is limited, using PIPA has helped teams to be ready to maximise communication and engagement opportunities, and to link research across different STEPS Centre projects and beyond. The working paper also describes how PIPA may be used iteratively in a way that enables reflexive learning amongst research teams. Lastly, we speculate on the ways in which PIPA may be further developed and used in ex post impact monitoring and evaluation into the future

The limits of a diliberative cosmopolitanism : the case of 'new governance' in the EU

This paper illuminates the limits of a cosmopolitan deliberative governance via an analysis of EU practices and theories of ‘governance’. Analysing the point at which the term ‘governance’ became prominent in the institutions, via a consideration of the European Commission’s 2001 White Paper and the various proposals for ‘new governance’ produced by its in-house think-tank, the Forward Studies Unit (FSU), in the late 1990s, it detects in this turn a Habermasian discourse ethic, which has informed much contemporary social, legal and political theorising on governance and deliberative democracy. In these reports an open, pluralist and procedural rationality and practice of governance is advocated as thirdway between state and market. However, the implicit conditions required for consensus or learning are constitutive of important closures. Turning to recent practice, the EU’s ‘Open Method of Co-ordination’ (OMC) – much vaunted by certain deliberative scholars - while ostensibly embodying an inclusive procedural rationality, is significantly circumscribed by an extant market constitution which excludes certain forms of welfare or social policy. More generally, it is suggested that advocates of a deliberative post-national governance fail to scrutinise the ways in which their key agent, civil society, has been intimately connected with dominant governing rationalities such as those which privilege the market, both historically and contemporaneously

Annotated bibliography of community music research review, AHRC connected communities programme

This research review, consisting of a 90-entry annotated bibliography, was produced as part of an AHRC Connected Communities programme project entitled Community Music, its History and Current Practice, its Constructions of ‘Community’, Digital Turns and Future Soundings. It supports a 2,500 word report written with this same title for the AHRC

Marginalised or enabled voices? 'User participation' in policy and practice

The idea of participation has been central to many policy developments in recent years. Both Conservative and Labour governments have used notions of participation and involvement in attempts to justify and implement their social policies. Yet, despite a plethora of initiatives and guidance around ‘participation’ emerging from all levels of government, and a substantial academic literature, there remains a major, and potentially damaging, lack of clarity over many aspects of participation, while the secret of achieving ‘real’ participation appears to continue to remain elusive

Seen But Seldom Heard: Creative Participatory Methods in a Study of Youth and Risk

This paper presents a discussion of the methodologies used in a small scale ‘popular education’ project involving young people in creative activities. The goal of the project is to explore their experiences and feelings about risk and safety and their ‘connectedness’ to their local community. A number of different methods are discussed as ways of empowering marginalised young people, including the use of visual methods, and new media in the form of blogs and Twitter Scripts, within an overarching participatory methodology. Arts-based and multimedia activities are powerful tools to enable young people to collectively question the nature of their historical and social situation and have the potential to raise sensitive issues, therefore, encouraging wider debate, producing new understandings, and facilitating social change. Building on insights gained in earlier research, which suggested that young people felt that they were not listened to or had enough influence in their neighbourhoods, this paper discusses the use of multimedia and creative means to develop a more accessible and effective arena in which young people can learn new skills to enable them to tell their story. In keeping with Bourdieu’s General Theoretical Framework, consideration is given to the ways in which such participatory and arts-based approaches can demonstrate value for the social and cultural capital of young people. Keywords: youth, risk, empowerment, co-production, creative media, Bourdie

The Politics of Indigenous Participation Through “Free Prior Informed Consent”: Reflections from the Bolivian Case

This article explores the challenges of ethnic-based participation and its potential for creating inclusive and effective forms of decision-making for marginalized social groups. Empirically, it examines a recent attempt to establish more participative forms of resource and development governance for indigenous communities in Bolivia through Free Prior and Informed Consent/Consultation (FPIC). Rooted in international human rights law, FPIC aims at achieving more effective bottom-up participation by establishing an obligation to consult – or obtain the consent of – indigenous peoples before large development projects and legal reforms that would affect them can proceed. Interest in FPIC initiatives has been growing for reasons that range from efforts to build more equitable management of natural resources to attempts to introduce more effective local-scale practices of participation and active citizenship. We argue that the idea of prior consultation and FPIC itself are not neutral instruments; they will not automatically lead to better or more democratic governance and a more equal society. The way in which FPIC is currently being implemented and framed in Bolivia is in tension with broader ideas of representation and legitimacy, inclusiveness, and management of public and common goods because there is no real clarity as to who is entitled to participation, why they do, and whether they are doing so as a corrective to exclusion, a promotion of citizenship, or as a mechanism for redistribution. As we show here, FPIC implementation can have unintended consequences and consultation can sometimes embed existing social, cultural, and economic tensions. The paper offers some broader reflections on participatory governance and collective rights especially in relation to the tensions between inclusive participation and exclusive rights or – put differently – the challenges for building cultures of participation and inclusion in complex and ethnic diverse democracies

Sustainable Participation? Mapping out and reflecting on the field of public dialogue on science and technology

The field of public participation in issues relating to science, technology and the environment is booming. To date much effort has gone into developing new participatory approaches and their evaluation, while most of what we know comes from individual case studies of engagement. This report builds on one of the first ever studies of public participation experts, their networks, roles and relations, to present a broader analysis of the UK public dialogue field as a whole. It draws on a recent project that involved 21 of the UK’s leading thinkers, practitioners, and policy makers in this area reflecting on the following critical questions. • What is the nature of participatory governance networks and the roles and relations of different actors within them? • Who counts as an expert on public participation and how are these meanings changing over time? • What are the implications of increasing institutionalisation, commercialisation and professionalisation of public dialogue? • To what extent are UK science and policy institutions learning about and learning from public dialogue? Taken together, these insights indicate that the field of public dialogue on science and technology has reached a critical moment and highlight a series of challenges and recommendations for its future sustainability

Environmental governance: Participatory, multi-level - and effective?

Current international and European Union environmental policies increasingly promote collaborative and participatory decision-making on appropriate and multiple governance levels as a means to attain more sustainable policies and a more effective and lasting policy implementation. The entailed shifts of geographical scale of governance can be exemplified by the EU Water Framework Directive in that higher-level policies are devolved not only to the member states but to local collaborative decision-making bodies on natural as opposed to territorial scales. To date, empirical evidence and theoretical considerations have remained ambiguous about the environmental outcomes of such modes of governance. At the same time, the relationship between multi-level governance and non-state actor involvement remains a largely uncharted terrain. Accordingly, a twofold research agenda is mapped out: How does public participation work in different governance contexts? And what potential do multi-level governance environments have to foster the effectiveness of participatory governance? Drawing on scholarly literature on multi-level governance, policy implementation, public participation and complex systems, we develop five sets of hypotheses on how the number of policy levels and geographical rescaling affect citizen participation, actor interests and policy outcomes. We present empirical results based on a comparative meta-analysis of 47 case studies in environmental governance in North America and the EU, combining qualitative and quantitative methods. --Civic participation,multi-level governance,re-scaling,policy implementation,institutional fit,meta-analysis,case survey