[Campaignforrealdemocracy] RSA Localism

[Mark Barrett]

*Localism is more than a set of principles*
Sam McLean

In the last couple of years all the major political parties in the UK have
been falling over themselves to talk up their radical credentials. Much of
this is filtered through the ‘localism debate’ and ideas surrounding the
decentralisation of power and influence away from Whitehall into the hands
of frontline staff and local people. As my old boss, Ben Page, said at a
recent local government event I attended, “we are all localists now”.

Research being undertaken by the Citizen Power team at the RSA on ‘civic
behaviour’ shows this to be a good thing if by localism we mean something
like a strategy that aims to radically devolve power and resources away from
central control. It is a commitment to what the great American philosopher
Stanley Cavell has described as the ‘creative propensity of people to shape
the substance and form of their lives’.

But localism is only radical if it becomes more than a set of principles. It
needs to be an ethics of civic action. In this sense, localism embodies a
radical democratic ethos that assumes significant conditional rights and
responsibilities on the part of people to actively shape their lived
environment. The idea of people being rewarded for community acts through a
‘community credit scheme’ or reductions to council tax are things we should
actively explore as a mechanism for opening up civic action.

Localism seems to me a pragmatic problem-solving approach to some of the
most acute public policy problems we are dealing with today. Generating
civic behaviour in areas of low social capital, tackling entrenched
anti-social behaviour in areas of multiple social deprivations and helping
long-term drug addicts to overcome their dependency on Class A drugs are
good examples of problems that resist simple rule-driven solutions and which
require citizens to be actively engaged if interventions are to work. They
need a localised approach to capacity building, citizen-led participation
and long-term strategic thinking that cannot be resolved through traditional
forms of behaviour change and short-termist thinking.

Our research at the RSA also shows that decision-making aimed at the local,
neighbourhood level is the most effective way of building trust between
citizens and citizens and public services, and strengthening social capital
and civic commitment. It is the level at which place and identity are most
likely to be forged. We did not need the MP expenses scandal to recognise
the importance of rebuilding trust and legitimacy. General Election turn out
has declined by roughly a quarter since 1950 and political party membership
has been in sharp decline for the past four decades. According to a recent
Ipsos MORI poll, politicians have now replaced journalists as the profession
least-trusted by the British public. In fact, 82% do not trust them to tell
the truth – the highest negative proportion seen for politicians in the
26-year history of that particular survey.

Both are symptoms of a decline in political legitimacy. It is not, however,
a symptom of apathy. Political and civic apathy is a powerful myth that
serves to legitimate the rotting infrastructure of representative democracy
in the UK. Indeed, the numbers of people – particularly the young –
involving themselves in pressure groups and non party political campaigns is
rapidly increasing. And interestingly, new research from the US shows that
levels of volunteering are thriving despite rising unemployment and economic
instability.

We do not need to have read Foucault or Nietzsche or have run deliberative
forums to know that consensus so often contains the perverse logic of
preventing precisely what it is generated to achieve. My concern is that the
political consensus regarding localism is fragile and ephemeral. The extent
to which the parties are prepared to redistribute power is a test of their
political strength (it is in fact weaker to hoard power). It is also a real
dividing line on which to assess the commitment of the political parties and
the political establishment more broadly to the virtues of localism and the
ideal of citizen power it assumes. To my knowledge, none of the political
parties are seriously entertaining the concept of local public services
generating and determining their own revenue even within a broad framework
of minimum national standards. Without this all talk of localism is
superficial and deeply questionable.

Neither is localism necessarily an argument for a minimal or small state as
we always hear. It is not an argument for more or less government. Small
government did not create Sure Start or introduce the National Minimum Wage.
It is an argument for more effective government, which means two things.
First, re-thinking the very structure of the state and the relationship
between central and local government in which the state acts as a support
mechanism for municipalities not their overlord. Second, that public policy
problems are addressed in their specificity and complexity at the level at
which problem-solving is most likely to work.
 http://citizenpower.rsablogs.org.uk/
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