Originally published 20 December 2004. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation (and its variants) is well known to many people who work in the field of public or stakeholder consultation. It starts with information giving at the bottom, moves up to consultation then ascends still further through involvement to acting together and finally to supporting community organisations who effectively run things themselves.
The trouble is that people have many different - and self-serving - views of what consultation is, or should be, on this ladder of community engagement. Stakeholders with a cause to promote frequently find consultation a frustrating experience. Ideally they would like to operate higher up the ladder, and assume even greater influence on the decisions taken or the programmes implemented.
But equally, there are consultors whose view of consultation is somewhat restrictive. These are the organisations whose minds are largely made up already, and who see consultation as a way to promote their policies, and to bring everybody else on board. For these, there is the danger that consultation becomes a PR exercise, and that attempts to elicit public or stakeholder responses are done for effect rather than as a genuine attempt to listen.
For consultation to succeed it is best for everyone to share a common view of what the second rung of the ladder is all about. Consultation is a process of exchanging views; it is a dialogue. That is why the Institute refers to the techniques of gathering stakeholder opinions as dialogue management. And although some of the 30-odd methods currently used stray upwards towards more participative decision-making, the salient characteristic of the most important of these is that they enable decision-makers to take account of views and insights of people who are going to be affected by what happens.
But when decisions are taken, other factors have to be taken into account. Managers having to make hard choices have to balance the input from consultation alongside other policy considerations. Frequently they receive conflicting advice, and must choose between upsetting one group of stakeholders or another. No wonder a prevailing prejudice among some community groups is that when they do respond to a consultation, it is a waste of time because their views are ignored and the decision goes against them.
Setting more realistic expectations is one way to tackle this problem. Let’s all agree precisely which rung of the ladder we’re standing on!
Trigger points
- Publish a clear definition of consultation, and ensure everyone understands it
- Include a statement in all consultation documents that it is just one of the inputs into the decision - and that there are others
- Help less experienced consultee organisations learn how best to respond by developing or delivering capacity-building training (e.g. The Institute’s Responding to Consultations seminar). Use this to set their expectations.
This is the 9th Tuesday Topic; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement