Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): The media find constitutional reform dull, and local government even duller. Which means that they report Hazel Blears' perky pronouncements on citizens juries, participatory budgeting and the like at face value (Simon Jenkins apart, and, of course, OK where Tony Curzon Price responded immediately).
The trouble is that most opportunities for people to play a part in decisions that affect the quality of their lives occur at local level, and 'local governance', especially in England, are neither local nor directly democratic. Local authorities are too large to be close to their populations and suffer from too much central government control of their policies, finances and resources. In current governing structures, significant policy-making is mostly carried out at the level of the very largest local authorities (serving populations of up to 1.4 million people): these authorities make policy with other authorities, major quangos, other public bodies and regional government offices in remote, highly complex and fluid policy-making ‘partnerships' within which central government and its agencies effectively rule, the local authorities closest to people have negligible voice and accountability is confused.
The contrast between the position of Britain's weak and remote local authorities and Porto Alegre, the Brazilian city Blears has taken as a model for participatory budgeting is striking as Hilary Wainwright points out in today's Guardian . Municipalities in Brazil have considerable autonomy over their revenues (raised from local taxes, tariffs and federal transfers) and expenditures - and it is this autonomy that makes participatory budgeting there meaningful. The budgeting process in Porto Alegre takes major regional decisions on: transportation; education, leisure and culture; health and social welfare; economic development and taxation; and city organisation, as well as neighborhood decisions. Under Hazel Blears, only marginal ‘left over' funds will be made available for citizens' decisions on minor projects.
The commitment to ‘change' in Britain's constitutional arrangements must therefore be far more radical if it is to make a democratic reality of participatory democracy at the local level - and requires a fundamental reversal of existing policies towards local government to make our local authorities truly local (with an elected regional on top), considerably more autonomous in terms of their policies, revenues and expenditure - and protected by a constitution.
Moderator: Oli Henmann makes a similar argument over at makeitanissue
