DD Papers
The Civic Forum and Negotiated Governance

This paper is based on a New Agenda seminar held in Belfast in February 1999 and on a year's involvement by New Agenda and Democratic Dialogue in facilitating, contributing to and monitoring developments on the civic forum as proposed in the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998. The purpose of the seminar was to explore the civic forum's potential contribution to the culture and practice of politics in Northern Ireland and it was attended by a range of participants from both political and civil society backgrounds. The seminar was held under the Chatham House rule although it was agreed that a paper based on the proceedings could be produced. Professor Paul Hirst of Birkbeck College, University of London and Professor Rory O'Donnell of University College Dublin made short presentations to the seminar and both have given permission for their attributed contributions to be used in this paper. It is not intended as an account of the seminar but rather as a distillation of the views of participants combined with information and views garnered through ongoing dialogue on the issue.

This paper has been compiled by John Woods and is one of a series of working papers from Democratic Dialogue which seek to stimulate constructive discussion and debate on Northern Ireland's political future.

Further copies are available from Democratic Dialogue, 53 University Street, Belfast BT7 1FY (tel: 028 9022 0050; fax: 028 9022 0051; e-mail: dd@dem-dial.demon.co.uk). More information about DD is available on our web site at www.democraticdialogue.org

© Democratic Dialogue 1999

Negotiated governance - theory and practice

It is generally recognised that government at the end of the 20th century is no longer a matter of collecting taxes, delivering a programme of public expenditure, doing things to the economy and doing things to people. In the post-Thatcher era the new consensus is one of keeping tight control on public expenditure partly to combat inflation but also to ensure re-election by tax cuts. Governments in Europe (whether in or out of the Euro) no longer have control over interest rates so they can no longer meet public expectations by stimulating the economy or affecting exchange rates. Add to this a rejection of the kind of paternalistic government which characterised most of this century, burgeoning globalisation and deregulation of so many aspects of the economy and it is plain that government just isn't what it was.

Another set of challenges which governments now have to face is the increased complexity of the social, economic and environmental problems which their electorates require them to tackle. The implications of New Labour's "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" go well beyond what we might expect from such a soundbite. If crime is to be tackled by addressing the causes then measures by the criminal justice system must be complemented by measures in education, employment, housing and social security policy. Other cross cutting issues such as long-term unemployment or sustainable development require equally integrated approaches. Thus governments not only have fewer resources and less powerful policy instruments but if they are to make any difference they must break free from the traditional, purely departmental, way of governing and achieve an integrated means of facing complex issues.

Paul Hirst has described how the traditional hierarchies of government and society are adequate for tackling only simple problems. He charts the emergence of governance through social actors and the replacement of hierarchies with networks. The process involves the sharing of information and fostering of commitment from participants or partners. It is the role of government to coordinate the different actors and to achieve results through cooperation and negotiation. This phenomenon of negotiated governance compensates for the shortcomings in the traditional institutions of government and supplements them with other ways of doing things. Negotiated governance also compensates for undesirable outcomes from purely market led approaches, such as the creation of cartels. And finally it short-circuits the hierarchies to bring people face-to-face, formalising networks and bringing in those who have been traditionally excluded.

To some, but for this last point, this sounds like a form of cosy corporatism. All too easily, some argue, the worthy goal of including the excluded could be forgotten and the traditional power bases in society (politicians, business and unions) would simply sort things out together over Chablis and canapés at No 10. Hirst argues that corporatism exists all over Europe in creative ways which have little in common with British flirtations with the genre. The excluded must be at the table because they are crucial to achieving results from whatever governance measures are being negotiated. To leave them out would be not only unjust but plain stupid.

Much of what Hirst describes from observations throughout Europe is born out by the practical experience of the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) and the National Economic and Social Forum (NESF) in the Republic of Ireland. The former was established in 1973 to deliberate and provide advice on the development of the economy and achieving social justice. Its major achievements were a series of responses to the severe economic and social crisis of the mid 1980s. The NESC comprised the social partners (trades unions, farmers and business organisations) together with government and was tasked with seeking consensus on a plan to turn the economy around. This resulted in the negotiation of a national programme which involved a good deal of hard bargaining in smoke-filled rooms. The outcome was more than a successful economic policy, however, in that the process produced a shared understanding and some agreed principles. Social partnership, it seemed, was here to stay.

The major shortcoming of the NESC, however, was that it did not involve those groups whose unemployment, social exclusion and inequality were some of the very issues which the social partnership needed to address. Accordingly in 1993 the NESF was established. It comprised one third politicians, one third from the traditional social partners and one third "representing groups such as the unemployed, women, disadvantaged, youth, older people, people with a disability and environmental interests." The forum had a remit to focus on social exclusion and inequality.

Although a certain shared understanding had emerged between the traditional social partners through their deliberation in the NESC it did not necessarily follow that the modus operandi of tri-partite agreements, one of bargaining, would suit the forum. The forum's emphasis on including the excluded meant, almost by definition, that bargaining would be inappropriate as many of those present had little to bargain with. Rory O'Donnell (a former Director of the NESC) has described how the third strand in the NESF brought with it voluntary sector values of solidarity, inclusiveness and participation - elements which are not necessarily natural bedfellows of the bargaining and deal making habits of the traditional social partners. O'Donnell argues that both these 'dimensions of partnership' (the 'inclusive' and the 'bargaining') are limited and from the experience of the NESC and the NESF has emerged a process which can be described as 'dependent on a shared understanding and characterised by a problem-solving approach designed to produce consensus' . The 'problem solving' approach alluded to here appears to be the key to the successful functioning of a forum which comprises people with widely differing agendas. O'Donnell argues that problem solving allows people to leave their visions at the door (although that is not to say visions are abandoned) and to get down to tackling problems which all agree must be addressed. While it is still early days for the NESF in terms of producing measurable results, there is a consensus both within government and amongst the social partners that this form of governance is crucial to the economic and social well-being of the country.

In Northern Ireland too, forms of negotiated governance are being practised. The interactions between the Concordia group and Government are one example and the Northern Ireland Partnership Board and the 26 District Partnerships are another. The Governments 'New Deal' relies on business and the voluntary sector for its delivery and both have been involved in the development of the policy.

All this raises a number of questions to be addressed by this paper:

• is the civic forum the appropriate place for the assembly and its executive to engage with the traditional social partners, the voluntary sector and others in negotiating the governance of Northern Ireland?
• how can the forum be genuinely inclusive and what are the boundaries between representation and participation?
• how can a 'problem solving' approach be developed by the civic forum?
• what work areas could and should the forum focus on?
  and finally,
• is the civic forum as proposed by the First and Deputy First Minister up to the job envisioned by Hirst and others?

An arena for negotiating governance

Is the civic forum the appropriate place for the assembly and its executive to engage with the traditional social partners, the voluntary sector and others in negotiating the governance of Northern Ireland? It may not be safe to assume that the main parties in the assembly have bought in to the idea that the effective governance of Northern Ireland will depend on the development of partnerships and networks involving the different elements of civil society. It is clear, however, that the resources available to implement the programme of government developed by the executive will be highly constrained . These constraints may well lead ministers to conclude that the resources and influence of others will have to be harnessed in pursuit of policy goals. Added to this is a general expectation of a 'participative' element to government, an expectation raised by the inclusion of the civic forum in the Good Friday Agreement. If the forum is to be more than an elaborate consultation exercise (and surely it is fair to assume that no one wants to waste £400,000 a year and the time of sixty people on something which will not constitute a highly significant advance on current practice) then a serious examination of exactly what it is for and how it can contribute to the good governance of Northern Ireland is surely crucial.

The stipulation in the Agreement that the forum should comprise "representatives of the business, trade union and voluntary sectors, and such other sectors as agreed by the First Minister and Deputy First Minister" suggests that the forum has the potential to stimulate participation by the main social actors together with other elements of civil society. The composition, therefore, seems to lend itself to the three dimensions of partnership identified by O'Donnell. Bargaining and deal making can certainly be practised amongst the participants. There is no direct involvement by elected representatives in the forum but a close relationship with government would surely be a sine qua non of the forum's success whether it is seen to have a bargaining function or not. The second dimension of inclusivity and solidarity can also be happily accommodated in the forum as described in the Agreement. The central role envisaged for the voluntary sector (alongside business and trades unions) together with recognition that other sectors may be involved should allow participation by those traditionally marginalised and enable solidarity between such groups and with other sectors. Critically, this composition lends itself ideally to O'Donnell's over-riding dimension of partnership - the problem solving approach.

All the social actors needed to investigate some of the most challenging problems facing our society are present in the forum. The assembly would know that proposals achieved by consensus within the forum would have been negotiated between the traditional interest groups and could count on the cooperation of the sectors represented in the forum in implementing them. Furthermore, given that the forum comprises people drawn from a cross-section of society which goes well beyond the traditional interests of capital and labour, government could also be reasonably confident that such proposals could be sold to the electorate. None of this is to usurp the role of the assembly, especially that of its committees. Any proposals from the forum should naturally be subject to the full democratic processes of the assembly, but it will be by carefully choosing what policy areas to concentrate on or by responding to a specific request from the assembly that the forum will be able to add genuine value to the work of the assembly. And finally, in the event that the forum makes proposals which may be electorally unpopular, the assembly can point to the added legitimacy lent to such proposals by virtue of the consensus achieved in the forum.

If it is correct that the forum does lend itself to the practice of negotiated governance, and if there is a recognised need for such governance then the forum seems to be the obvious, appropriate and legitimate (by virtue of its inclusion in the Agreement) place in which to locate such activity.

Inclusion, representation, participation

How can the forum be genuinely inclusive and what are the boundaries between representation and participation? Seamus Mallon, while Deputy First Minister, stated "the forum must be truly representative of all groups in society. And I am personally committed to ensure that nobody will be overlooked or excluded." This is a bold statement which deserves close examination. Leaving aside, for the moment, exactly what is meant by representation, the question arises how it is possible to ensure that the forum is truly representative of all groups in society with the exclusion of no-one. If the mechanism by which exclusion is to be avoided is to allocate a seat in the forum to the excluded interest, the sixty seats will be swiftly allocated and still leave many dissatisfied. Civil society is a complex web of interests, identities and relationships the value of which can only be diminished by allocating seats on such a basis. And there would be little room for recognising the significance of key social actors such as business and the trades unions in particular. If it is accepted that negotiating governance requires the commitment and full participation of the social partners, then the arena in which this activity takes place must enable this. A forum whose primary aim is to ensure that every interest in civil society enjoys actual representation amongst its membership will find it impossible to attract the full participation of those who have traditionally had direct access to government. Put simply, they will go elsewhere to do the real business.

If achieving inclusion through offering a forum seat to every societal group until the seats run out is unlikely to work, how might inclusion actually be achieved? A start could be made by implementing Seamus Mallon's commitment that nobody will be overlooked or excluded by incorporating just such a commitment into the modus operandi of the forum. Paradoxically, the interests of the most marginalised may be better served by the implementation of such a commitment than by knowing that one person is 'representing' their interests in the forum. The key point is to ensure the forum takes account of all views rather than containing all views within it. Indeed if the forum believes itself to be "representative of all groups in society", why should it bother to talk to anyone else?

Inclusion in the work of the forum can be maximised by ensuring that all views are actively sought and those particularly relevant to the piece of work in hand are given due weight. In practice the forum will conduct much of its business in working groups which lend themselves to the co-option of individuals as appropriate for the subject being tackled. Nor should the forum be expected to produce all the necessary expertise from within its membership as this can be brought into working groups when needed. Innovative methods of public involvement could also be used: citizens' juries; citizens' panels; deliberative opinion polls; consensus conferences; or forms of electronic democracy, for example.

It is crucial, however, not to confuse these methods of citizen participation with the forum itself. The temptation to achieve legitimacy by creating a forum whose membership is a microcosm of society should be resisted. From there it would be a short step to competing with the assembly as to which body is more representative. The forum does not derive its legitimacy from the fact that it is a representative sample of the citizenry, but because it provides a means of participation in governance for a wide spectrum of interests manifested in organised civil society. Individual citizens should continue to look to their elected representatives to represent their interests.

These considerations raise the issue of what is actually required of a forum member. Hirst argues that the concept of negotiated governance involves participation in the delivery of policy and it is therefore important that participants have a real claim to speak for their sector. This, says Hirst, can come in two forms. Either participants have 'power' in that they represent a large number of people on certain issues (trades unions immediately come to mind) or they have 'voice' in that they represent an interest which simply must be heard (the long-term unemployed, for example).

But this is not to say that the pursuit of the interest which members represent should be their priority. Indeed, as alluded to above, given that all interests cannot possibly be accommodated within the membership, giving primacy to this representative role could serve to exclude others. Under the 'include all interests in the membership' model it would seem that the only requirement is that the individual be able to 'represent' their interest group. But if the purpose of the forum is to participate in governance then surely much more should be required of its members than merely to demonstrate that they represent a particular interest. This could be addressed by adopting an over-arching commitment to articulate, via a problem solving approach, the public interest.

In terms of the individual nominations to the forum, while the process should achieve a balance of gender, community background, geographic spread and age profile (as stipulated in the First and Deputy First Ministers' report ), and there must be no barriers to membership due to disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, marital status or dependants, the overall aim must be to nominate people with the right combination of experience, abilities and qualities.

Perhaps what is missing is a clear enunciation of the role of the forum. This has not been forthcoming from the First and Deputy First Ministers beyond Seamus Mallon's commitment to inclusion. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the forum has a key role to play in the negotiation of governance in Northern Ireland through bargaining and inclusion and critically "dependent on a shared understanding and characterised by a problem-solving approach designed to produce consensus". If this is the case, then two things follow. First, the forum must attract the fulsome participation of those social actors who possess the bargaining chips. Secondly, the membership must adopt an over-arching commitment to articulate, via a problem solving approach, the public interest . It is only through this latter commitment that members can be free to explore innovative options and even to 'think the unthinkable' while reassuring the society from which they come that it is the interests of that society which they are committed to serving without favour or prejudice.

The alternative is a forum which is worthily representative of a large, but not exhaustive, list of societal groups which talks to itself while the real work of exercising, brokering and negotiating power is done elsewhere.

Problem solving

If O'Donnell's analysis of Irish social partnership suggests that the most productive modus operandi for the civic forum is likely to be 'dependent on a shared understanding and characterised by a problem-solving approach designed to produce consensus', the question arises as to how such an approach can be developed. While the key determinant of whether such an approach will emerge will be contained in the day-to-day functioning and development of the forum, a number of pointers might usefully be considered as an aid to achieving a productive way of working.

O'Donnell speaks of 'a shared understanding' by the participants. This is not to say that participants share a vision of how society should be but that they at least have a common understanding of the problems faced by society. Implied here also is a willingness to understand each other's interests. In practice such understanding will take time to develop and is likely to be a product of collaborative working. Many of the sectors which will participate in the forum have, however, significant experience of working together so the forum is not starting from scratch in this respect. What may be absent at this stage is an understanding of the role of the forum. It does not bode well for achieving understanding that there has been very little discussion as to what the forum is actually for and there has been little indication of its role from the First and Deputy First Ministers. Much of the debate has centred around who is to be involved rather than why they are involved. The composition of the forum may itself help to determine its role. There is some evidence of an understandable lack of commitment to the forum from the business and trades unions sectors as a result of their much lower than expected representation. An early task for the forum might therefore be to reflect in some depth on achieving a shared understanding of its role.

Cross-sectoral cooperation and partnership between the public, private and voluntary sectors is now an established part of the public administrative landscape in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. Much has been written on what makes some partnerships successful and others not so. If partnership is a state of mind then the forum will inevitably take a little time to settle comfortably into such a mindset, but there is such wide experience of successful partnership immediately to hand that the forum could reasonably be expected to achieve a very steep learning curve in this regard.

In practical terms the identification of problems will obviously be a prerequisite of solving them. Paul Hirst has emphasised the importance of recognising that it is not necessary to have the same ultimate goals to achieve this. What is important is to identify the problem and work together to find ways of solving it. If this means being a little bit 'fuzzy' about ultimate social or economic goals then so be it. O'Donnell emphasises the importance of 'learning by doing' - it will be through the experience of working together that effective ways of producing worthwhile proposals will be learnt.

Of course problems cannot be solved unless those involved have the capacity to deliver their part of the solution. The forum must surely be more than a 'think tank' offering up ideas to government. Members must possess the 'power' or 'voice' described above and underpinning this must be a range of skills and experience present in the forum which can be brought to bear in its work.

O'Donnell argues for basing forum work on aiming to achieve consensus. While there are important arguments against the pursuit of consensus above all other considerations, it is clear that the forum will be unable to present any convincing solutions to the problems it addresses unless it is on the basis of consensus. Negotiating governance suggests that agreement must be reached if proposals are to be successfully implemented. Thus minority reports are unlikely to be a constructive contribution to the process. Nor is a system of voting likely to play a dominant role in the forum's deliberations. Having said that, voting can be used in the pursuit of consensus and the forum could experiment with some innovative methods.

The ultimate goal of adopting a consensus-based problem-solving approach must be to utilise the forum's power of persuasion to achieve feasible, practical and workable solutions.
Work priorities

There has been relatively little debate on the substance of the forum's work. It has been suggested that the forum should comment on all or selected assembly legislation, a task which would certainly keep it extremely busy. It is also likely to be of limited value given that the forum would lack any powers of amendment and would be entering the process of the development of a particular policy at a very late stage. For the forum to become a pale imitation of the assembly would offer very limited 'added value' and it could also find itself in conflict with assembly committees which is unlikely to be productive. The premise of this paper is that the forum has the capacity to act as an arena for negotiated governance and the scrutiny of the final stages of legislation could not be described in that way.

It has been suggested elsewhere that the forum should respond to specific requests from the assembly to work on particular issues and that it should be able to initiate work of its own. The particular strengths of the forum should be utilised in this regard, drawing on its capacity to take a holistic perspective and to produce a seamless narrative on multi-faceted problems. It should use its capacity to be innovative and creative to best effect and should carefully consider its role in tackling division in our society. One view of this role is that the forum is nothing if it has not the courage to confront issues such as punishment beatings, decommissioning and parading even if these areas do not fall within the remit of the assembly. It can be argued that the forum would find it easier than the assembly to deal with such issues. Another view is that such problematic areas should be addressed more indirectly via the forum's work on social, economic and cultural issues.

In the social, economic and cultural policy fields it is likely that the forum can best draw upon its strengths by working in areas which cut across the traditional departments of government - the so-called 'wicked' issues. Examples could include addressing long-term unemployment, sustainable development, crime or applying a broader focus to the delivery and monitoring of economic strategy. It would be important to avoid insoluble issues giving rise to worthy but dull reports. Perhaps a discrete number of addressable issues could be agreed upon at the outset. Suggestions include: in economic policy, how to build human capital and enhance the skills base of the population; in social policy, how to tackle the shortage of child-care which prevents the full participation of women in the work force; and in cultural policy, how to resolve the issues raised by kerb painting and murals.

Another area of activity in which the forum could make a vital contribution is in the formulation of the programme for government. If the programme is going to depend on the cooperation of the social partners and a range of social actors for its delivery, the involvement of the forum at an early stage is likely to enhance the government's ability to deliver on public expectations. Similarly the participation of the forum in the budgeting process would strengthen the outcome of that process.

Whatever the forum decides or is decided for it, its value and success will depend on setting the agenda in challenging policy areas - taking a long term view and presenting a different kind of discourse. One senior politician has expressed the hope that the civic forum will challenge the assembly. The nature of four-party coalition government may, he fears, take consensus too far and there may be a danger of reducing policy to a lowest common denominator - the civic forum could be an important foil to such a tendency. The value and success of the forum will also depend on rising to the challenge of doing something different and going well beyond commenting on proposals drawn up by others. Offering opinions is not negotiated governance. Rather, offering solutions to problems together with a commitment to help deliver those solutions is what ministers should reasonably expect in return for putting their faith in a civic forum.

Conclusion

In February 1999 the First and Deputy First Ministers presented their proposals for the civic forum in a report to the assembly . Will these proposals produce a civic forum up to the job envisioned by Hirst and others? Can it be an effective arena for social partnership and negotiated governance; will it achieve a workable synthesis of inclusion, representation and participation; and will it be able to address effectively some key problems faced by our society?

There is no elaboration in the report on the forum's role. It limits itself to restating the Agreement's description as 'a consultative mechanism on social, economic and cultural issues' and states: 'We will make arrangements for obtaining from the Civic Forum its views on such matters.' Those arrangements, when they are announced, may provide pointers as to the forum's role and there may be some scope for the forum to develop its own role, if only through a generous interpretation of the paragraph which requires the forum to draw up its own 'procedural guidance...for approval by the Assembly' .

The vast majority of the First and Deputy First Ministers' report is devoted to the 'nominations' process for the forum's 60 members, a process which, as described, has huge implications for its ability to perform the role suggested in this paper.

A major feature of the proposals is the relative strengths of the different sectors. The traditional social partners (business, farmers, trades unions) will comprise a little over a quarter of the total membership. These three sectors combined have one fewer place than the voluntary/community sector block which has 18 places. Other sectors which are, in practice, largely located within the voluntary sector (culture, victims and community relations) account for a further eight places. The remainder go to churches, arts and sport, education and six nominees of the First and Deputy First Ministers.

With just seven places each in a forum of this size it is unlikely that either business or the trades unions will treat the forum as their primary means of engagement with each other, with other sectors or with government. They will be small groups in a sea of voluntary and public sector voices. On a purely practical level, if the forum is to operate in working groups, participation by the most powerful social partners will be spread pretty thin. In Hirst's terms, the forum lacks those with 'power' and 'voice' in favour of attempting to include as many interests as possible, all of whose voices will not be critical all of the time. Like it or not, power-blocks such as business and the trades unions have a role to play in most policy areas. This is simply not true of the arts, sport or victims, for example. The voluntary sector is clearly a diverse constituency harbouring a wide range of interests but that sector can only have an impact on governance if it can engage the other social partners on more or less equal terms. The voluntary sector's problem in the civic forum is that having been a 'poor relation' in terms of traditional social partnership, it now appears to be something of an, albeit unwilling, cuckoo in the forum nest. The smart birds are unlikely to hang around knowing that they can build a better nest elsewhere.

And that is exactly what appears to be happening. The Department of Economic Development's Strategy 2010 document was drawn up by a steering group which comprised a public sector, business and trades union membership. Proposed in that document is an economic development forum which will be tasked to monitor and adjust the strategy. In the absence of political progress it is likely that this forum will be established with public, private and trade union membership. One can hardly blame business and unions for displaying rather more enthusiasm for a forum in which they are key players than for the civic forum in which their role, as indicated by the places allocated, is substantially curtailed. Thus the economic development forum could well become an arena for negotiated governance, or at least for bargaining and deal making. But the price to pay will be the exclusion from economic policy making of all whom it was felt important to represent in the civic forum, most notably the voluntary sector. It will also be a missed opportunity to develop a process "dependent on a shared understanding and characterised by a problem-solving approach designed to produce consensus".

Thus, although this paper is optimistic that the forum as described in the Good Friday Agreement could provide a workable arena for negotiated governance, the membership composition as stipulated by the First and Deputy First Ministers seems likely to reduce the forum to a much more modest, if not marginal, role.

For this to be the case would be a tragic loss of a tremendous opportunity for democratic innovation, an opportunity which does not currently exist elsewhere in the United Kingdom (although 'bottom-up' civic forums are developing in London and Scotland, and in the case of the latter, receiving formal recognition from Parliament).
The civic forum offers an opportunity to add the benefits of broad social partnership, participation, networks and inclusivity to the institutions of representative democracy in a wholly benign project. If we are to avoid missing this opportunity, a number of steps need to be taken in moving the debate on from who is in the forum to what its role is to be and how it can be made to work.

Recommendations

1. The First and Deputy First Ministers stated in their report of 15 February 1999: "We will make arrangements for obtaining from the Civic Forum its views on..." social, economic and cultural issues. The nature of these arrangements could have an enormous bearing on the effectiveness of the forum and could be an excellent opportunity to define its role. The First and Deputy First Ministers could consider hosting a round-table discussion comprising leaders in the sectors to be represented in the forum to decide on what the forum's role should be.

2. Although the scale of business and trades union representation in the civic forum may well hamper the development of negotiated governance, the system is not unworkable. Both these sectors could commit themselves to fielding strong teams who can speak for their sectors in the forum.

3. All those sectors involved in the proposed economic development forum could signal their commitment to the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement by indicating their willingness to see the functions of the economic development forum subsumed, as a working group, by the civic forum.

4. All sectors represented in the civic forum could signal their commitment to inclusion by ensuring that participation in forum business is extended to wider society through innovative forms of participation and public involvement.