Summit convened by:

Center for Biosecurity of UPMC

Canadian Policy Research Network

Center for Science Technology and Security Policy at AAAS

National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responsed to Terror

Panel I: What Government Gains by Engaging the Public
What Does "Public Involvement" Mean?

Mary Pat MacKinnon

Speaker biography  |  Panel agenda

Summary
Ms. MacKinnon, Director of Public Involvement for the Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN), opened the morning panel by defining citizen engagement, describing why it is an essential feature of democratic governance, and identifying hurdles to its implementation.

MacKinnon introduced three fundamental assumptions for her talk: 1) democracy requires citizen participation; 2) active citizenship requires a certain level of knowledge and skill; and 3) there must be normative and procedural processes at play.

Citizen engagement (CE) is a form of deliberative democracy intended to improve representative democracy, not overthrow or replace it. MacKinnon described CE in the following terms:

• Capacity of citizens to discuss and generate policy options independently and the government to share in agenda setting (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development)
• Iterative and interactive process among and between citizens and government, with the purpose of contributing meaningfully to policy decisions (CPRN)
• Power sharing, mutual respect and exchange, accountability, reciprocity, and relationship building between the governors and the governed.

Advocates of citizen engagement recognize the current disconnect between citizens and government as evidenced by a decline in voting and a generalized distrust of government. The American Political Science Association argues that CE is essential to democratic society because: 1) it provides evidence of citizen preferences to decision makers, 2) it creates legitimacy for public policies, 3) citizens' skills and knowledge are developed through direct participation, and 4) civically engaged citizens can provide services that neither the state nor the market can.

Resistance to change and skepticism on both the part of citizens and government, however, can impede the adoption of CE, as can low civic literacy and limited resources. MacKinnon described the prerequisites for successful community engagement as clarity of purpose, opportunities for learning, inclusive participatory processes, adequate resources, realistic timeframes, and lastly, feedback and evaluation built in at the onset.

Summary by Christiana Usenza