Introduction

This contribution is based on my work in radioactive waste management (RWM) in Europe, which extended for a decade until 2007 and included projects sponsored by the Swedish Nuclear Inspectorate and the European Union (Wene and Espejo 1999, Espejo et al, 2005, Espejo 2007). The key problem that underpinned all these projects was the need to understand and clarify the participation of local stakeholders in a national policy process, namely, the management of nuclear waste, in order to have truly democratic decisions. Stakeholders often feel that inclusion is not practiced. Achieving it requires good practices to increase local influence on what is essentially a national policy process. This paper offers an introductory discussion of systemic principles and recommended practices for local stakeholders to influence national policy-making. A driving concern in this discussion is the balance of power between local and national concerns (Espejo 2006).

Overall we need systems to engage and involve local stakeholders in fair and ethical national decisions processes. Beyond dialogues and consultations there are a variety of possible communication channels linking national actors and local stakeholders. Recommended practices emerge from the need and desire to make these channels effective. In this context, anything that improves their performance and quality for the purpose of an inclusive and ethical policy process is considered a recommended practice.

Inclusive policy-making processes require relevant institutions that provide stakeholders and actors with leverage mechanisms to exercise influence on the policy outcomes. Thus from the perspective of local stakeholders key issues are creating organisations for participation, strengthening their participation in local policy processes, articulating local-national communications and balancing influences and guardianship of policy processes. These themes are used to structure the discussions below.

Balance of Power between Local and National Levels

What are the communication requirements to have an inclusive and coherent formulation, regulation and implementation of national policies at the local level? The RISCOM Model gives an answer to this question (Wene and Espejo 1999 and Espejo 2007), which is assumed in this paper. What is important to consider is that national policies may take place over long periods of time, encompass many activities and their consequences can impact future generations. The challenge is setting up processes for long-term governance.  Local influence in these processes needs to consider criteria for balanced local and national powers. What are the sources of national and local power and what can be considered a proper balance of power between them? Simplifying, and accepting that power in this context is the capacity to influence the outcomes of policy processes, it can be argued that in democratic societies sources of national power are the multiple institutions and resources supporting national decision processes and of stakeholders local power are knowledge of the local context and their capacity to enable or obstruct programme implementation at the local level.

For any particular policy issue there is the risk of a significant imbalance of power between the national and local levels, that is, there is the risk of an excessive influence of national politicians at the expense of local views. The national level may have the power to make functional decisions in policy areas of their responsibility without considering their consequences at the local level. An institutionally legitimate, but fragmented national system, supported by resources and the media, may take, and enforce, unchecked decisions, which can have far reaching consequences. This point suggests that decisions cannot be grounded on representative legitimacy alone. The risk is precisely a national over influence on the decision processes. Decisions have to emerge from the operational inclusion of all stakeholders. This is a legitimacy grounded on effective organisation and accountability. In this context effective organisation implies structures make use of organisational resources to the best of their abilities and reduce the chances of unilateral, exclusive, decisions over time. An effective organisation is necessary to have balance of power. It suggests legitimacy grounded on the operational respect of stakeholders. In practical terms this implies that inclusion of local stakeholders is more than consulting them; it also implies including them through the effective structuring of the institutional resources focused on the policy issue. This condition of effective organisation is necessary since it is apparent that an increased local influence on weak policy processes may reinforce attention on poorly structured options.

But, how can local stakeholders influence existing decision processes? Which are the points of leverage for this influence? Within the framework of national interest, how can a local community counteract national power in the benefit of its sustainable development? Even if there is no intention of exclusion, national politicians and experts can use inadvertently their power at the cost of local inclusion. How can local stakeholders counteract this exclusion? What is the nature of local-national relationships that local people need to consider to leverage their influence? As implied above, consultations are desirable but not enough for local involvement in decision processes; local-national relationships emerge from the on-going communications between local stakeholders and national actors. This suggests that beyond occasional consultations it is necessary to consider their moment-to-moment communications with politicians throughout the organisational system.

Two key points for local communities to leverage their power are their routine communications with the local representatives of the national industry and ad hoc communications with national policy-makers. The first point can be structured through local committees and other forms of local participation, which are mechanisms for stakeholders to transmit their views and concerns to the industry, as well as to learn about their programmes. The influence that this ‘local communications’ have on national decision-making processes depends on both the quality of communications within the industry and of the industry with the government. If local information does not find its way to national policy-makers through the structure of the national industry, these communications will be wasted. The other point of leverage is at the level of the long-term aspects of the policy issue. All communities, and not only those directly affected by the policy, can exercise this influence on national actors. Indeed people of local communities can influence directly politicians who will be responsible for policy decisions. 

With these considerations in mind I discuss basic systemic principles to balance the influence of local stakeholders and national actors upon a policy process. The platform for these principles is systemic thinking such as Ashby’s law of requisite variety (Ashby 1964), Beer’s Viable System Model (Beer, 1979, 1981, 1985), and Espejo and Wene’s RISCOM Model (Wene and Espejo 1999, Espejo 2006).  These principles are followed by recommended practices, which are grounded in the proposed principles. For nuclear waste management they were checked empirically by S. Baudé and G. Heriard Dubreuil (2006) and the conclusion was that recommended practices were not always the existing practices.

Principles

Proposed principles for inclusive decision-making in a national policy process are:

1. Principle of purposeful intervention
Policy makers frame and define policies. Clarification of the purposes of these policies is necessary to identify relevant stakeholders.
2. Principle of self-organisation and social design
Though mainly as a result of processes of self-organisation communications between relevant participants will evolve naturally towards an organisational system for a policy issue, it is necessary the purposeful design of this organisational system. This is necessary to speed up learning processes.
3. Principle of requisite complexity.
Communications between stakeholders and actors need requisite capacity to transmit and receive information. Only complexity absorbs complexity (Ashby, 1964). These communication needs will vary over time as the complexity of the policy issue varies.
4. Principle of direct influence
Dialogue with national actors enables the direct influence of local stakeholders on decision-making processes. Dialogue is necessary to learn about each other.
5. Principle of indirect influence
Local stakeholders and national policy-makers communicate with each other through a variety of local, regional and national actors, who are responsible for the implementation, regulation and dissemination of aspects related to the policy issue.
6. Principle of social cohesion
In order to have a cohesive society the national interest should have the possibility to override local interests. However, this is acceptable only if any declaration of national interest is grounded on inclusive policy processes. This implies an effective organisational system underpinning the policy issue.
7. Principle of social inclusion
Local communities should have the right to challenge the legitimacy of a decision if there is evidence that it was the result of a fragmented non-inclusive policy process.
8. Principle of balanced distribution of resources
Capacity building, distributed resources and fair institutions are necessary to enable local and national influence in a particular policy process. Society needs democratic processes supported by enabling structures to uphold fairness and deal with conflict.
9. Principle of guardianship
The participation of independent guardians of the decision processes (e.g. independent authorities and courts of justice) is necessary to uphold fairness and deal with conflicts.

Recommended Practices

Recommended practices follow from the principles; for the purpose of brevity here I only illustrate them. Several of the recommended practices are current practices, at least for the NWM policy issue, however there are others that are not. In this paper recommended practices are grounded in systemic thinking and therefore have a theoretical support.

Organisations for participation

  Stakeholder committees:
1) It is recommended practice to form local committees (LCs) in communities affected by the policy issue, to enable local participation. However, it is necessary to distinguish local committees focused on the wider impact of a policy in the long-term (Principle 4) from local committees focused on local issues today (Principle 5). Long-term national issues may become more significant for a local community as their members and representatives develop an appreciation of the implications of these issues for their long-term viability. In this latter case the committee is an instrument for participatory democracy through dialogues (Principle 4).  Therefore, the purposes of local committees should be clarified at the time of their constitution; LCs may be established to articulate and promote local interests about the development of a policy  (i.e. the purpose of these ‘development’ LCs is stretching related national bodies). Or, they may be established to articulate the local interests and concerns about the implementation of a national policy  (i.e. the purpose of these ‘implementation’ LCs would be solving local problems).

  Associations of local committees (LCs) and local authorities (LAs):
2) It is recommended practice to constitute national stakeholder committees with local representation to support communications between local stakeholders and national actors. (Principle 4)

   NGOs:
3) Active citizenship is enhanced by non-governmental organisations (NGOs). For a particular policy issue it is recommended practice for local and national authorities to enable the emergence of NGOs. Effective engagement of NGOs in policy processes requires not only that they are well informed about the policy but also that they develop the ability to challenge the industry and relevant government agencies. This is necessary for the transparency of the policy process. Effective NGOs is a means to stretch the industry. Thus, it is recommended practice to strengthen the independence of NGOs, thus avoiding bringing their representatives too close to national policy bodies. The closer they are to these bodies, the more detached from their own constituencies they are likely to be, thus reducing their legitimacy. Corollary: It is recommended practice to inform and support NGOs in ways that strengthen their autonomy (Principle 8).
 

Strengthening local participation in policy processes

  What is local at different stages of the policy process?:
4) For a national policy issues with local implications it is necessary to consult the affected local communities even if, in general, they will not be the decision makers (Principle 4). Indeed, policy decisions are the responsibility of national bodies, but these need to take into account the issues and concerns of local stakeholders. Local stakeholders may not have responsibility for decisions making, but they should be engaged in the process and challenge its outcomes over time. For this purpose communications should be developed with site operators, contractors and other national organisations involved in the policy process (Principle 5).

  Sustainability of local communities:
5) Decision-making processes of a local authority (LA) that affect the community’s future need to be the outcome of debates that balance the community’s current concerns about what is happening within it now with its long-term desires and concerns about external influences. This is particularly significant for communities with problems of a sustainable long-term development. Recommended practice requires avoiding fragmentation in policy deliberations e.g. unrelated deliberations about territorial planning and industrial issues. In these cases it is recommended practice to join up the particular policy with other sources of territorial concerns (Principles 2 and 6).

   Capacity building and resources:
6) It is necessary to empower local communities (e.g. through capacity building) to increase people’s opportunities for participation and to make more effective local dialogues and deliberations (Principle 8).

Articulation of local-national communications

  Dialogues:
7) Local-national dialogues need to take place in contexts where local stakeholders trust experts and politicians. If stakeholders experience opaque (rather than transparent) national operators in their locality, they may conclude that they are not trustworthy and this view may have a much stronger impact on their appreciations about the policy issue than well-designed occasional dialogues (Principles 4 and 5).

   Channels for local-national communications:
8) It is recommended practice to enable local organisations of civil society to develop communications with relevant national NGOs and vice versa; this channel may be a means to give voice to the silent majority.  The views of national and local NGOs may be different and therefore discussions between them should be beneficial to identify common ground (Principle 5).

Balancing Influences

9) Interactions between those deliberating about the ‘outside and then’ and those with knowledge about the ‘inside and now’ should take place to study and produce policy options before they are submitted for policy decisions. If the selection of policy options is mainly influenced by one or the other, policy-makers will make unchecked decisions. They will lack a check and balance mechanism to select options and take into account both views, in which case those managing the operations today or those controlling the long-term procedures will hold an unchecked power on the policy-process (Principles 2, 3 and 8).

Guardianship

10) It is recommended practice to have a body independent of the government and the industry to uphold the ethics, fairness, efficacy and effectiveness of the policy process. This is the ‘guardian’ of the policy process. In policy consultations, if national actors do not pay due regard to formally expressed local views, LAs and LCs should have the right and capacity to object to the guardian of the policy-process to ensure that their contributions are taken into account (Principle 9).

Conclusion

This sample of recommended practices emerges from principles to manage the complexity that is natural to policy issues in today’s societies. I have found that several of the recommended practices have been emerging in the management of the NWM issue in Europe, but also that several others are not current practices.

What is also apparent is that different countries have different democratic systems, some of them are relatively more centralised, relying on a prefectural system, others relatively more decentralised, relying to a larger degree on a representative local democracy. Participatory and deliberative communication mechanisms may compensate for the lack of representative democracy in centralised systems, thus suggesting that there are alternative forms to achieve inclusion and reduce the democratic deficit in different countries. Therefore, each country may require different influence mechanisms to increase the effectiveness of their unique balance of representative, participatory and deliberative democracies and therefore may need to recognise their own good practices in the light of the recommended practices. This contingent nature of practices anticipates that not all of them will be relevant to all countries at this point in time. Countries have different cultural, organisational and political traditions. Indeed, it will be necessary to take into account that the democratic deficit is different in each of them.

References

Ashby, W. R.(1964). An Introduction to Cybernetics. London: Methuen 

Stéphane Baudé and Gilles Heriard Dubreuil  (2006). Empirical review of the case studies and identification of key elements and practices for local influence on national and international decision-making processes in radioactive waste management, in www.cowam.com .

Beer, Stafford (1979) The Heart of Enterprise. John Wiley, Chichester and New York

Beer, Stafford (1981) Brain of the Firm, Second Edition. John Wiley, Chichester and New York

Beer, Stafford (1985) Diagnosing the System for Organizations. John Wiley, Chichester and New York

Espejo, R. (2006). Reflections on Power, Democracy and Communications. Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Vol 13, No 3-4, pp144-152

Espejo, R. (2007). The RISCOM Model: dialogues and requisite organization. Kybernetes, Vol 36 Number 3/4 pp 291-306

Espejo, R., M. Egan, G. Heriard-Dubreuil and M. Vila d’Abadal (2005) Radioactive Waste Management: A Participatory Approach to Increase the Influence of Local Actors on the National Decision-Making Process. Proceeding of the 10th International Conference on Environmental Remediation and Radioactive Waste Management. September 4-8, 2005, Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre, Glasgow, Scotland

Wene, C.O. and R. Espejo (1999). A Meaning for Transparency in Decision Processes. In Proceeding of Conference on Values in Decisions on Risk. First VALDOR Conference, Stockholm, June.