Living Democracy - political party support for quality of life

Citizen Engagement – a project to Achieve Constituency Association Effectiveness

This is a proposal to build constituency association capacity as a political organization by serving your Alberta provincial constituency as an effective advocate for its citizens.

The following structure parallels a successful initiative of a notable Alberta health charity.

1. Background
1.1. Philosophical Premise
What is your association trying to do?  You are trying to improve your capacity to govern in our democracy.  You wish to achieve a democracy where:
all persons are peers and everyone’s personal interest is as important as everyone else’s;
the art of governance is one of collaboration in which each person’s interest is realized without compromising the interest of another;
we improve the quality of life of society by improving the quality of life for each citizen.

1.2. Practical Philosophy
Researchers have evidence to show that this is achievable but only where each person is empowered to achieve the quality of life he or she expects.  Governance then means using the collective power of citizens to their respective and mutual self-advantage.

1.3. Appropriate to Political Parties in a Democracy
If you agree that these are noble goals then they should be achieved through the actions of your democratic party.  Your party is all about citizens working together to achieve noble goals for each citizen and for society as a whole.

1.4. How to Increase Capacity
You achieve this by ensuring your association is relevant to the citizens of the constituency by effectively enabling the citizens to advocate their own interests and causes and by making the association a vehicle for citizen self-empowerment.

2. Strategy
2.1. Basis of Relevance
Party campaign colleges taught you to build credibility among the electorate to be elected.  You can achieve credibility by being an effective advocate for citizens.

2.1.1. Credibility Component One - Candidate 
You have nominated a credible candidate.  Your candidate is well received and respected among constituents and beyond.  That candidate’s credibility is a promising start.

2.1.2. Credibility Component Two – Association
It seems it is difficult for a constituency association to be seen as a credible part of the lives of citizens, whether in government or in opposition; with or without an elected member. Part of the problem is that constituency associations have little to do with people’s lives between elections.  Citizens see their access to power to be their incumbent member as distinguished from the constituency association, even though that association may have delivered that member to the legislature.

This perception of constituency incapacity might even carry through election day, thereby allowing your candidate to not be elected. 

The key to electoral success seems to be your ability to convince the citizens of your constituency that your association including its candidate is a viable advocate for their interests.

2.2. Situation
Your association has members with great interest, knowledge, insight and judgement in certain issues.  You have people with great passion and commitment to certain issues.  You have people with organizational ability and drive to effectively campaign for issues. 

Unfortunately associations often lack capacity to make their respective members activist leaders.  Yet we know leadership is required to successfully champion issues over time, thus the initiative fizzles out from inaction.  The association must then build a collaborative leadership.

2.2.1. Input Gems
All constituency associations have examples of Input Gems.  We have the following examples:

At a nomination meeting, a long serving petroleum engineer made a passionate statement about Alberta’s (former) royalty policy and the negative environmental impact of EUB, energy and environment policies. 

At a constituency association’s AGM discussion arose about Alberta’s democratic deficit of the day.  At another constituency association AGM, discussion arose about the shortcomings in Alberta’s governance of energy royalties and the taxes and wealth these revenues create especially when compared to Norway. 

Probably the most relevant observation of all is that of participation at various political meetings.  Someone will almost always speak up about an issue that person is fired up and knowledgeable about.  Often the reaction among other members is, “Oh No.  There he goes again.  This meeting is going to go on forever.”  The concept of following up, turning this passion into activism is the last thing on people’s minds, when it should be seen as a golden opportunity.

Constituency association board members often have serious discussions about all sorts of issues, especially the big ones like education, seniors, health, energy and the environment.  Any provincial or federal campaign team knows there could be endless discussions about all sorts of significant issues.  Maybe that’s why campaign teams seem to find easy success recruiting people to their policy committees.  Even non-political settings like the local coffee shop or pub are often hotbeds of heartfelt policy discussion about all sorts of issues.

The point is that people become excited by these discussions and seem to be ready to engage in action to address them.  These fired up and passionate people must be engaged as campaign Input Gems rather than single issue bores. 

2.3. Importance of Issues
Issues are important to people.  That means that policies to address issues are important to people. 

2.4. Support Citizens
Constituency associations must lead citizen engagement in support of their passionately held interests and causes.

3. Steps to Engagement
There are two ways to engage citizens. 

The first has citizens bring outside issues for which there may already be organized advocacy.

The second has citizens bring issues they themselves have defined. 

Constituency associations build advocacy for both types of issues based on association principles and perspective.  Each of these ways includes Five Steps.

3.1.a. Step 1 – Outside Issues
Your association will encourage people who are already championing a cause to help prepare a discussion paper for their cause.  You can encourage them to catalogue and explain the facets of the cause as they see it. 

Note: This must be in their own words.

3.1.b. Step 1 – Constituency Issues 
You survey some or all of the constituency population to determine what issues are important in the lives of those citizens.  You might simply ask them to identify where their quality of life is or is not measuring up to their expectations. 

In Step 1 for both Outside and Constituency Issues you have identified what you need to advocate for.   You can use the next four steps to build advocacy for the identified Issues.

3.2. Step 2 – Outside and Constituency
You ask your members to participate in the creation of an explanatory white paper.  You then ask other constituency associations to recruit participants.

3.3. Step 3 – Outside and Constituency
You ask your members to encourage any person with interest or knowledge about the issue to engage in further exploration of the issue whether that person is from the constituency or not. 

3.4. Step – 4 Outside and Constituency
You then create an issue group that might meet face to face from time to time but would definitely meet via e-communications to develop understanding of and context for the issue.

3.5. Step – 5 Outside and Constituency
You use the issue to engage the general population in the constituency or constituencies.  You can then create a white paper that reflects the opinion of the general population in the constituency. 

3.6. Conclusion
Your association will have demonstrated willingness and ability to advocate for citizens.
The white paper that is produced through your association enabled citizen committee is clearly labelled as a creation of the citizens of your constituency (and other citizen groups that might be involved) and advocated by your and other constituency associations that might be involved.

The issues and needs for action are then defined by the people themselves and await a policy response from anyone.  You have the opportunity to address the issue with a policy that is true to your principles within the context of your other policies. 

The citizens can then experience first hand the fairness, adequacy and relevance of your party’s response.  The people then have the opportunity to take ownership of the new policy that arises by supporting the party who supported them.

4. Probable Outcomes
4.1. Credibility of the Association
Now your constituency association in government or opposition will have become credible as government or government in waiting.  Even if your party constituency association is not represented by an elected government member, your party is still the one who crafted the policy through citizen empowerment.

Your association’s political process is then all about the citizens and not about Party. 

That process builds the trust that is the basis of credibility.

4.2. Campaign Between Elections
Almost incidental to this process, your party has given those activists who love to campaign and are always eager to help at election time a meaningful ongoing activity.

Party volunteers and members will be able to keep their campaign skills sharp and their resources at the ready between elections.  Leaders will be identified who can help to run campaigns, operate party offices or even be nominated as party candidates in contested nominations. 

Each candidate or potential candidate will know the credibility of the your party constituency association is a solid foundation on which to build a campaign.

4.3. Attract People
You will attract new people to the party as they understand that the party is relevant to their lives and to their interests.  These new people will include youth and others who feel disenfranchised by enabling them to take ownership of political process.

5. Conclusions
5.1. Citizen Committees
Your party must provide leadership in the creation and operation of “Citizen Committees” to develop relevant, meaningful, appropriate and adequate policies.

5.2. Broad Participation
The membership of these “Citizen Committees” should be multi-constituency to ensure the broadest possible participation.  Multi-constituency participation can also serve to build capacity of party associations in other ridings.

5.3. Citizen Self-empowerment
Your party needs to enable citizens to take charge of their own lives by taking ownership of the policy development process.  Your party must demonstrate willing ability to enable that self-empowerment.

5.4. Candidate Credibility
Candidates for nomination can be expected to arise from activism in Citizen Committees.  These candidates will have clearly demonstrated their willingness and ability to serve the citizens.

6. Conclusion
This is, I believe, one way to create a living democracy as a positive force for every person.


Mike Klein