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Opt-in or Opt-out? – Is this the end for the presumption of total participation?

There have always been debates about opting in or out of things. Forty years ago, it was about trades union membership; two decades later it was about stakeholder pensions; nowadays it is about organ donation. In all cases, it is an argument about whether society presumes a certain course of action, whilst letting individuals do something different. Or whether we let people do what they want – if they want to?

Apply this to public engagement. For years, what we had, in effect, was opt-in consultation. If you were sufficiently interested in a subject, chances were you would find out what was in the offing, and position yourself so as to exert whatever influence you could. If enough people shared a common interest or a specific viewpoint, they would come together either through existing representative groups, or create a special one for the purpose and argue their corner.

This is relatively cheap. Stakeholders self-select. We do not have to spend heavily finding them; in practice they find you. The drawback is, of course, that such a system is biased heavily towards the “usual suspects” and there is, at least in theory, the likelihood that particular viewpoints go unheard. Digging deeper, we discover that these “seldom heard” voices are often those whose interests may be most affected – and we worry that decisions may well be over-influenced by the rich and powerful …or at least by the well-organised.

 

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