Changing state-citizen relationships in a time of austerity

1. Changing state-citizen relationships in a time of austerity A presentation at the AHRC Connected Communities workshop, ‘Softening Austerity? Community empowerment in Scotland and England’ Catherine Durose Senior Research Fellow, Department of Politics and Public Policy, De Montfort University cdurose@dmu.ac.uk

2. Civic capacity • Governments across developed democracies have been making increasing demands on citizens: seeking to empower, activate and induce them to take more responsibility for decision making. • Fiscal and state retrenchment in the wake of the international debt crisis has led to citizens and communities being encouraged to not only engage in shaping the public services which affect their everyday lives, but to deliver these services themselves (Bang and Sorensen 1999, Alcock 2010). • The ability to respond to this policy challenge relies upon the ‘civic capacity’ within a community: a collective approach to, and resource for, solving problems and achieving common goals within a community (Stone 2001).

3. Which citizens, which communities? • Emphasis on a particular kind of citizen and particular kind of community • Citizen needs and priorities are often mis-understood (Durose, Greasley and Richardson 2009), is there an appetite for this? • Citizen control is not without its difficulties (Durose and Richardson 2009): in disadvantaged areas being more difficult to catalyse and sustain without state intervention (NSNR evidence); need for an honest broker, capacity etc. (Durose et al 2012) • Equity: concern for which communities and which citizens will be able to participate

4. Institutional framework • Under New Labour, ‘neighbourhood’ emerged prominently as a site for policy interventions and as a space for civic activity, especially in the poorest areas (Lowndes and Sullivan 2008) • The Coalition’s flagship agendas of the ‘Big Society’ and localism continue to see the neighbourhood has to play as a spatial anchor for community action • Policy shift from ‘invited’ to ‘popular’ neighbourhood spaces but can existing state-sponsored ‘invited’ neighbourhood arrangements deliver on these ‘popular’ objectives? (Durose et al 2012) • In practice the ‘civic’ is neglected in neighbourhood working, overwhelmed by other demands (Durose and Richardson 2009)

5. Brokered by who? • Taylor suggests that ‘those within the public sector who have the experience and understanding to support voluntary and community groups may be particularly vulnerable’ to cuts in public spending (2011, 258) • Not clear that those at the front-line can meet the challenge as set out by NEF of ‘learn[ing] to facilitate action by other people and to broker relationships between them – working with people, rather than doing things to or for them’ (NEF 2010, 7)? • Are they the best placed people to do this? • Policy pronouncements – for example, the UK’s ‘Big Society’ agenda - suggest a key group of active citizens, community organisers, have a significant role to play in generating civic capacity and catalysing community action (Taylor 2011).