Public engagement

Public engagement is a term that has recently been used, particularly in the UK, to describe 'the involvement of specialists listening to, developing their understanding of, and interacting with, non-specialists' (as defined by England's university funding agency, HEFCE, in 2006). Public engagement is a term that has recently been used, particularly in the UK, to describe 'the involvement of specialists listening to, developing their understanding of, and interacting with, non-specialists' (as defined by England's university funding agency, HEFCE, in 2006). The tradition of a decision-making body getting inputs from those with less power is generally known as 'consultation'. This became popular with UK governments during the 1980s and 1990s. Even though most governments that carry out consultations are democratically elected, many people who became involved in these processes were surprised that conduct of such 'consultations' was unsatisfactory in at least three respects. As early as 1979, science analyst Dorothy Nelkin pointed out that much of what passed for participation in governance could best be understood as attempts by the powerful to co-opt the public. Public engagement is a relatively new term, hardly used before the late 1990s. The existing term it shares most in common with is participatory democracy, discussed by thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill and G D H Cole. Many see participatory democracy as complementing representative democratic systems, in that it puts decision-making powers more directly in the hands of ordinary people. Rousseau suggested that participatory approaches to democracy had the advantage of demonstrating that 'no citizen is a master of another' and that, in society, 'all of us are equally dependent on our fellow citizens'. Rousseau suggested that participation in decision – making increases feeling among individual citizens that they belong in their community. Perhaps the most long-standing institution of participatory democracy is the system of trial by jury. Whilst elected governments make the laws, it is therefore juries that are able to decide the innocence or guilt of anyone charged with breaking many of those laws, making it a key instrument of participatory democracy. Over the centuries they have achieved an importance to many democracies that have had to be fiercely defended. One senior judge surveying the limiting of a government's power provided by the jury over the centuries compared the jury to: 'a little parliament... No tyrant could afford to leave a subject's freedom in the hands of twelve of his countrymen.... Trial by jury is more than an instrument of justice and more than one wheel of the constitution: it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives'. (Patrick Devlin 1956). Today, jury trials are practised in the UK, US, and many other democracies around the world including Russia, Spain, Brazil and Australia. Perhaps no other institution of government rivals the jury in placing power so directly in the hands of citizens, or wagers more on the truth of democracy's core claim that the people make their own best governors. Juries are therefore argued to be the most widespread form of genuine consultation at work in society today. The tension between the state and civil society as underscored by Public Engagement within Newly Industrialized Economies (NIE) such as Singapore is illustrated by Kenneth Paul Tan of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy But speaking about public engagement is, of course, quite a different thing from carrying out public engagement. And this is where there seems to be a gap between rhetoric and practice in Singapore. For instance, government officials recently met selectively with concerned members of the public to discuss a controversial decision to build a road through a historically significant graveyard. When criticised for not taking the public's views seriously, the Government explained that the meeting was never meant to be a 'consultation'. So it is important to ask why such a gap exists and why it might be difficult to close it, assuming of course that closing it is what we want to do.' As a neo-liberal global city, Singapore has been witnessing rising popular pressure. Politics has come to the fore again, prompting the policy establishment to pay greater heed to the demands of a new and more variegated citizenry, with political leaders now more sensitive to the real prospect of losing elections. At the same time, the cultural, ideological, practical and institutional legacies of the earlier survivalist and development stages continue to be a source of tension in the evolution of Singapore's political culture. By no means has this been a simple and linear story of liberalisation.However, are these recent developments enough to shift the deeply entrenched public sector mindsets that have been formed out of historically shaped ways of thinking and reasoning? Will a new generation of leaders in the public sector, whose horizons of experience may differ from the survivalist and developmental preoccupations of a previous generation, lead to fresh opportunities for new terms of engagement?