Needed: Better ways of governmental listening

 

ChatGPT, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Why do local gov'ts appear to ignore citizen input and favor big, moneyed interests? Academics and community leaders explore, below.

The tyranny of credentialism

{Prof Alex Ingrams, Leiden University Institute of Public Administration:}

  • Policies can be a dry and technical matter for many individual citizens, while for organized interests that must maintain their market position, they can have more direct consequences.

  • Policymakers know this fact and may take comments from organized interests more seriously than comments from individual citizens.

  • Government policymakers often implement regulations with the collaboration of organizations. In contrast, the opinion of individual citizens may not be so important for the organizational interests of administrative agencies that know that, unlike their collaboration with organizations, interaction with particular citizens is unlikely to be consequential.

  • Policymakers may take decision-making shortcuts by relying more on the opinions of professional organized interests over individual citizens. The former is defined by their professional status and expertise. Individual citizens may also be knowledgeable and experienced, but that is more difficult for policymakers to ascertain especially when they are faced with thousands of public comments.
    --Prof Alex Ingrams 

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A new way of thinking about Public Listening for local government

{From Irene Smith, president United Housing Alliance:}

  1. Actively seek out all potential stakeholders and create an active list on a per project basis.

  2. Measure stakeholder responses and attendance to outreach meetings.

  3. Measure how much stakeholder input was utilized and implemented by the City, and provide feedback loop directly back to the stakeholders.
    --Irene Smith, President, United Housing Alliance

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christopher escher