Lost illusions - how to support and change the process of the participatory budget

Stop for a moment: think about the lost illusions, what exactly are the illusions we have in mind? What was our aim, which disappointed us in the next version of the PB? We expect some results when implement PB. We think that we will change the world ... otherwise: PB will change things for the better if we participate. It does not. Budget is just a tool of change. The tool itself will not change the world and social reality - just as the distribution of all baseball bits will not give residents and residents victory in a large, professional baseball league. So, is our disappointment right? Have we really lived in illusions, now we are disappointed?

PB really disappoints. The number of people involved in the process is not what we would like, the projects do not reflect the real, actual needs of the community, we lose enthusiasm and social interest through the participation of schools and other, well-organized communities. Does it mean defeat? In my opinion - no. In any part of the world, when we introduce new tools, we do not evaluate the functioning of the tools. We evaluate their effectiveness in the context of our goal. What was our goal? What an aim PB should serve?

Let's go back to the basics, to the original idea of PB. The easiest example of participation is our own homes and families. Every day we decide what we do with our budgets - whether we buy a TV or leave it on vacation. We go to the cinema, or maybe we have a child who needs school textbooks. It works the same way. As an apartment, our city is our home - we must remember this, learn from it. City - our family - let's get acquainted with each other, consider it in terms of different needs and requirements. City, commune, union of municipalities - this is our space. We must remember it; we must learn responsibility for it. It will take a while.

PB, both in Poland and in Ukraine, is introduced in order to learn. And as a learning tool, the budget works - it can be seen in every place where it is. Regardless of what participation in the budget is - how many people will not participate in it, they are always more interested in their space than before its introduction. It does not matter whether the residents are satisfied with the projects or not - at this stage, people no longer shrug their shoulders, they start to be interested in criticizing what they do not like, praise and support what is good for them! Even if budgets disappear in school projects, it does not matter! It contributes to the discussion, the change in budgets, the idea of how many schools previously underfunded! We have to be patient. Our work of participatory practitioners is needed. And its consequences can be seen at every turn, in each city, municipality, at each subsequent general forum. We need to be consistent. Answering a question on how to change PB, answer boldly - change! Adapting to each individual's social reality, in response to further identified problems, subsequent emerging needs, voices of constructive critique or praise. How to support the implementation of PB? Just look at them through the prism of participation, the number of residents. Let's focus on them - they represent our success.

One more thing at the end: I have been coming to Ukraine for four years. More and more I have the feeling, when I come here, I look in the mirror - a mirror from the clothing store, where it always looks good. When I come back, it's not so good in my own mirror. It really works - social participation, further discussions, panels, open spaces - in Ukraine I study every day. In Poland, it's getting harder to learn - we are focused on solving the immediate problems, we're dying in procedures, complicate them, and this idea is quite simple. I do not believe in lost illusions. Only in inappropriate, poorly set expectations. I have no doubt that these four years are years of good work.

Handout: Quality criteria for good public participation in Berlin-Mitte

Early information
The public will be informed as early as possible about planned projects and related decision-making processes within the district.

Open-ended Processes
The participation procedures are open-ended processes. Participation starts at a time when there is still significant leeway for decision-making over the subject. Participation takes time.

Clear communication
The objectives, the leeway for decision-making and the time frame are clearly shown at the beginning of the
participation process. Also, the legal and content-wise limits of the participation process are clearly stated. The process is communicated comprehensibly and transparently to the public.

Target group-oriented approach
All groups of population should have the opportunity to actively participate in participatory processes. Obstacles for the participation are reduced by target-group oriented approaches and suitable participation formats.

Recognition of the diversity of interests
Good citizen participation recognizes the diversity of interests of different groups within the district. The diverse experiences, the knowledge and the perspectives of the citizenship, administration and politics are
collected and appreciated within the participation process. Controversial topics are discussed in a solution-oriented manner.

Dialogue
Good citizen participation requires a willingness to engage from all sides. Rules established at the beginning of the process are respected by all involved. Fairness and respect are important values in all discussion processes. All participants contribute constructively to the process. Citizen participation makes sense only if all parties agree that they want to contribute to the improvement of the respective project. If consensus cannot be reached in controversial discussions, the goal is to find a compromise. It requires a structured
process to come to a common conclusion.

Liability
Good public participation relies on liability. The results obtained are implemented in a binding and reliable manner. If not obstacles against implementation will be explained.

Documentation
The results of the process will be promptly documented and made available to the public. At the same time, it will be transparently explained how decisions have been made and what further steps are planned. Shared achievements are particularly communicated to strengthen the culture of participation in the district.

Sufficient resources
Good public participation requires human, financial and temporal resources - these have to be taken into account in the budget. The participants in a procedure bear the responsibility for dealing carefully with the resources in the procedure and in the proposed solutions.

It is a huge pleasure to be in Kiev again. I want to thank you for the opportunity to come here to meet with you all, and for inviting an Englishman to speak in this most crucial part of Europe.

In many parts of the world they say, "You can tell and Englishman anywhere, but you cannot tell him much". In other words, he thinks he knows best. I will try to avoid that trap this morning.

It is not really my role to talk about the detail of Participatory Budgeting. There are people in Britain who promote it, and they have some success. I wish they had more. But whoever controls the budget controls the organisation, and not many people like to lose control, even if the results they could achieve are really impressive.

I am a farmer by profession, and I take a farmer's approach. If I want the seeds that I plant to grow well, I have to prepare the soil to receive them. When it comes to Participatory Budgeting, if we want people to be willing to share control we have to prepare the ground by building trust. Nobody will share control with someone they do not trust.

I come from a country with many divisions. Believe it or not, the referendum in 2016 about whether we should leave the European Union was itself supposed to resolve a very divisive question and to build trust. In fact it divided us more radically than ever, as I have seen when I have been involved in some very modest efforts to start to rebuild that trust.

So it is quite possible that ideas that are supposed to bring us together can end up driving us even further apart, unless someone prepares the ground well. And when they do, the results can be spectacular.

To give an example, in South Wales, not far from where I live is a big steelworks known as the Llanwern steelworks. When Margaret Thatcher became our Prime Minister, the steel industry had been nationalised, and it was losing huge amounts of money. She decided to force it to become efficient by closing all loss-making plants. One by one she closed big steelworks all over the country, throwing thousands of people out of work. These were big, well-known factories. She closed twelve, and the next on the list was the Llanwern Steelworks.

There are many people who have still not forgiven her for these actions. For them she was confirming in the most painful way their view that people like her were not interested in working people, but only in making money for themselves. They opposed her by every possible means.

The trade union leaders at Llanwern, while they could never agree politically with Mrs Thatcher, made a different choice – faced with the loss of their livelihoods, they would focus on trying to keep their steelworks open, and they would do it by building trust. They held meetings with some of their customers to find out why they were no longer buying steel from Llanwern. They agreed radical plans with their own management to restructure how the steelworks worked, and they took these plans to the Minister for Industry of a Conservative government. "Will you keep our steelworks open if we work with our management to implement these plans?" they asked him.

This was like negotiating with your enemy. So deep were the social divisions in that region that one of them told me, "Normally, we would not go into the same room as someone from the Conservative Party, let alone talk to them". Many did not understand what they were doing. But when you are trying to build trust you talk to unexpected people.

The Minister was surprised and impressed enough to agree to what was called a 'stay of execution' for the Llanwern Steelworks. The restructuring plan was carried out, and for a while Llanwern unexpectedly became the most efficient steelworks in Europe. It is still working today, and the town that depends on it is still prospering. In fact after this no more steelworks were closed by that government. Starting at Llanwern, they had found a different solution – unlike the coal mining industry which chose the road of confrontation and now hardly exists in Britain.

Building trust really does make a difference.

In 1950, the year I was born, all of Europe was trying to recover from WWII. France and Germany had fought each other three times in one lifetime. Their history and their relations were defined by hatred and mistrust.

Against this background, Robert Schuman, Foreign Minister of France sent Konrad Adenauer, the Chancellor of Germany, the draft of a secret plan to merge the heavy industries of both countries and make them mutually dependent so that they could never go to war again. Adenauer agreed to it in about two hours and suggested no changes. It was of course the first big step towards what we now call the European Union. There must have been an extraordinary level of trust between those two men.

Another example comes to mind. At a place called Caux in Switzerland there is an amazing conference centre. If you ever get the chance, do go there. I was privileged to work there with one of the most trusted and successful leaders of the construction industry in Switzerland. Why was he trusted? It was not because of anything he said. It was something he did. He went to the tax authorities and paid them a very large sum of money in taxes that he owed but had successfully hidden from them. After that, why would they not trust him? And he used to say it saved him a fortune in accountant's fees, because he only needed one set of accounts for his business.

But how do we build trust, at whatever level we are working?

Simply trusting people who are not trustworthy is no solution.

I want to suggest three requirements for building it. There may well be others, and we might want to discuss them during these days:-

1. Be consistent. When I was managing people working on the farm at home, I discovered I could not expect them to trust me if I made demands on them that I ignored myself. For example, if I did not communicate to them about the decisions I was making which affected them, I could not expect them to pass on to me important information about their work. If I was unpredictable, our cooperation suffered. They couldn't trust me.

2. Be transparent. An honest conflict of interest can usually be resolved by compromise, but a hidden agenda always creates mistrust. This even works in family life! My relationship with my father was transformed after I told him about the double life I was starting to lead – one kind of person in public, and a different person when no-one was looking. It was a horribly difficult thing to talk about, but it was worth it.

3. Address our own faults first. There is a song which says, "When I point my finger at my neighbour, there are three more pointing back at me". (Don't worry, I won't try to sing it here.) What it means is that every time I try to point to the faults and failures of someone else, what everyone else sees are my own faults. If I want to start a process of change or of trust-building, the best place to start is with change in myself.

So, be consistent, be transparent, address our own faults first. These are the ideas that I wanted to put before you, for thought, for discussion, and in the hope that they make a real contribution to the cause of participatory budgeting.

I look forward to meeting many of you in the hours ahead.