You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him consult

For the last several years I have written a lot of (st/g)uff about civil society and the public's role in the day-to-day, non-elections part of democracy. This has been part of a poor and deluded attempt to make security officials in post-Soviet regimes stop being so, um, Soviet. If I'd only stuck to the UK, I'd have been on much more fertile ground: unlike governments in Eastern Europe, the British Goverment is genuinely fond of consultation, announcing 'public debates', 'listening exercises', 'cross-cultural web-based dialogues' etc with fevered intensity.

Although it sounds good in theory, however, at least three problems arise.
a) On many issues affecting the governance of the country, most people do have opinions, but they are largely ill-informed and often narrow-minded; even when they are not, most people have not spent much time thinking about these things and have little grasp of the complexities of the question at hand. This is not to say that people's views and opinions shouldn't be taken into account, and the argument that something is too complex for the proles to understand is a common way for governments (or representatives thereof) to divert any kind of democratic procedure and bully through their own interests - which often have little in common with governing in the interests of the people. Nonetheless, you'd be a bit naive to allow all government policy to be guided by public opinion. If you need a demonstration of this, think of some major problem in your working life, go on radio and ask people to give you suggestions via phone or text message: they might well suggest some good ideas you hadn't thought of, but in the majority of cases I doubt you'd think that the majority opinion was at all wise...

b) Partly because of the difficulties outlined above, partly because of arrogance, partly because people are inherently lazy and partly because we often don't really know how to do it, in many cases decision-makers and opinion-formers don't actually consult very widely. Instead they make extremely dubious assertions that put attitudes in the (silent) mouths of people who have never been asked their opinion. Where I'm living now, a particularly good example was recently provided by the referendum on regional government. I've just been reading a book called Geordies, written in 1992. Some of it is interesting; a lot of it is somewhat tedious and not half as clever or academic as its various authors insist. However, what is enormously amusing with hindsight is their dogged belief that not only is the North East ruthlessly kept down by a cold, uncaring, stuck-up elite in far-off London (a view that is easy enough to understand, if overly emotive), but that the oppressed masses of Geordieland are chafing at the bit for greater autonomy over their own affairs so that they can correct these historic injustices. For different reasons, the same assumption was made by New Labour, who admirably enough have been trying in various ways to unwind the UK's appalingly over-centralised system of government. It turned out, however, that the Geordie masses didn't share this fervour for autonomy, and when they finally were consulted, they showed a combination of disinterest and distaste for the proposed regional assembly. This hasn't really disheartened the planners as much as it should, and the regionalists are largely pushing on regardless, trying to find other ways of boosting local autonomy...I don't dispute it's a worthy goal. I do however think that they need to start by asking some other questions. For example: why is it that much of the English public couldn't give a monkeys about regional and local government (more power in local hands - shouldn't they like that???)

c) Often the things that matter to governments are not the things that matter to the fabled man on the street. For example, plenty of people have got themselves worked up about whether the second albums by Maximo Park and Bloc Party are better than their predecessors (for what it's worth, my answers are no and yes respectively). Yet ask the masses what they think about the future of arts funding, however, and it seems they're not really so bothered. Lots of the local metro trains are currently carrying adverts encouraging us to join the national arts debate. Apparently, however, not many punters give a Tracey Emin about the arts. Unless I've missed a trick here, it appears that two months of consultation about five fundamental issues on the future of the arts have elicited an amazing...two comments.

None of which is to argue against consultation, of course. But if you ask me, consultation is important, but it's only one part of the jigsaw...(if you ask me...consultation...geddit?? Groan....)