Those public servants working to implement government policy embrace community participation subject to carefully prescribed premises. Firstly, community organisations are instruments of policy implementation legitimately subject to state manipulation and secondly, community members should make rational decisions in pursuit of fulfilling duties owed to the state. In this paradigm, using education and persuasion, communities can proselytise to their dissenting members through processes of group involvement that promote the recognised virtues that contribute to the maintenance of the existing social order. However, the increasing ineffectiveness of command-type policy instruments has resulted in the creation of a new style of public management. This scenario requires policy makers to perceive the egalitarian and pro-active involvement of community members in the implementation and evaluation of public services as critical to dealing with issues of fairness, distributional justice, equity, social stability and inclusiveness.
The conundrum facing public servants is the likelihood that some community members, when implementing a new style of management, would prefer the following alternative conceptualisations of community:
· A hierarchical model of community, under which societal common good has priority over local community interests;
· A network model of community, under which the categorical good of community organisations constitutes what is in the community’s best interests;
· A market model of community, under which the revealed market preferences of individual community members have priority over local community interests;
· An anarchical model of community, under which the community interest is taken to be unknowable.
Therefore, in seeking to resolve the increasingly constrained role of the state in direct public service provision, strategies have been employed that require a wide range of service delivery arrangements (Dixon, Davis and Kouzmin, 2004). Thus, there has been a movement from centralised to devolved (local and regional) mechanisms with an increasing emphasis on managerialised (corporatised and commercialised quasi-public), communal (private non-profit), and market (private-for-profit) provision. This latter form of delivery assumes particular importance due to the continuing dominance of contemporary neo-liberal economic policy agendas and encompasses the desire of policy makers to impose managerialist values and practices throughout the public sector. However, by introducing the disciplines of economy, efficiency and effectiveness into the public policy arena uncertainties have arisen over the articulation and measurement of objectives which are often difficult to quantify (Dixon and Hyde, 2003; Dixon et al., 2004). Furthermore, the policy objectives envisaged by government and those outcomes expected by community members may be incompatible with the interests and motivations of the reformed public services.
In this management environment policy makers perceive that it is essential that community members are involved in the implementation and evaluation of the provision of public services. However, before public servants promote a new agenda of community empowerment, they could prudently consider the possibility that alternative and contending conceptualisations of community exist amongst its members (Dixon, Sanderson and Dogan, 2005).
The Hierarchical Model of Community
Community members who believe that the common good of society has priority over local community interests presume an objective social world. This world is knowable by the application of the scientific method in which social structures exercise powers over agency, which makes human behaviour predictable. Moreover, their utopia is a vision reminiscent of Plato’s Republic, featuring a social order where everyone has, and is aware of, their pre-ordained position. In such a society, an elite would exercise knowledge-based power through a sophisticated legal system that has benefited from a tradition of tried and tested remedies. Thus, Socrates asserts that (Plato, 2000: 155-6):
if our rulers are to be worthy of the name, and their auxiliaries likewise, then I think the auxiliaries would be prepared to carry out orders, and the rulers would issue those orders either in obedience to the letter of the law, or, in places where we have left the interpretation of the law to them, in obedience to its spirit.
Therefore, those community members who advocate the benefits of the hierarchical model of community take actions that can be posited as predictable as their rational decisions are taken based on prescribed rules, procedures and what strategy is best able to produce justice. These presupposed precepts lead to the development of a code that defines what actions are right and permissible, and thus what actions are wrong (Sanderson, 2006: 3). As Blackburn observes “they take us beyond what we admire, or regret, or prefer, or even what we want other people to prefer. They take us to thoughts about what is due. They take us to demands” (2001: 60). As Kant concludes, these demands are derived a priori or from pure reason instead of individual experience. He insisted that for people to accept moral laws their construction must be “freed from everything which may be only empirical” (Kant, [1785a] 1998: 289). Thus, individuals do not construct their morality by considering the consequences of their actions, but, instead, discover their inherent capacity to act morally or dutifully. This process of enlightenment lies at a deeper level than that of affectation, as individual behaviour should fully comply with the intent of a duty, rather than just observe its tenets, if a person is to achieve the postulates of Kantian “good will.” From this process of subjective awareness there arises a code of objective ethics, which accords with the thinking of the elitist in that impartial standards of behaviour are created, which can be subject to dispassionate judgement. As Kant maintains, judgement must be passed on what is right and what is wrong using pure practical reason thus making morality absolute.
When a person acknowledges their moral obligations, they accept “the categorical imperative,” or that moral rule that recognises that human characteristics — such as loyalty and duty — possess a discrete inherent value. This distinction is clarified by Kant in his statement that if an “action is good only as a means to something else, then the imperative is hypothetical; if it is conceived as good in itself and consequently as being necessarily the principle of a will which of itself conforms to reason, then it is categorical “ ([1785b] 2003: 2). Following this assertion he proceeds to confirm the existence of “but one categorical imperative, namely this: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (Kant, [1785b] 2003: 6). This fundamental principle is often cast into the popular saying “do unto others as you expect them to do to you” although this cliché does not fully accommodate the extent of Kant’s insight.
The Community Management Agenda
Communities are envisaged as contributing towards the preservation of established hierarchical institutions by being diligent in combating the infiltration of community organisations by radicals attempting to cause social unrest to further their aim of liberating the oppressed. Thus, a system of duties and obligations create interdependency amongst societal members that supersedes any notions of individual liberty as state and society combine to form a nation. The moral imperatives that underpin this synergism transcend manipulation as they set forth beliefs, not attitudes or opinions, interpreted as the truth. Secondary associations, such as the family, the institution of marriage, the church, and neighbourhoods then reflect these values. In this scenario, society develops organically in a complex and subtle evolutionary pattern that is devoid of the uncertainties inherent within the dynamics of radical change.
Using Goodin’s (2002: 583-9) alternative models, for organising mutuality and reciprocity, the hierarchical model of community management prefers the prevalence of “mutually conditional obligations” that arises from an ethereal bond between the elite and their subservient fellow citizens. Within this uniting force, subjects are required to discharge their duties to the state only if the state discharges its duties to its own subjects, with this principle applying vice-versa. Therefore, transferring welfare programmes to local democratic forums, which may be parsimonious or discriminatory, is unwise.
The Community Engagement Agenda
Community members who prefer the hierarchical model of community management would accept the following propositions about community engagement.
Desire to Engage in Community: People conduct their affairs by assuming their pre-ordained position in a social order where everyone has, and is aware of, their place. Thus, an individual would desire community involvement if their pre-ordained position and/or their special skills make the hierarchical social order expect that they would so participate.
Capacity to Engage in Community: The position an individual occupies in the community would be contingent on their place in the social order, which would determine acceptable community roles. Those who express apathy towards any community involvement would be tolerated as they are deemed as implying their consent to community decisions made by those who are more capable and competent than them.
Processes of Community Engagement: It would be expected that community members would be willing to make voluntary sacrifices for their community, as this social construct forms part of the hierarchical social order, which must be preserved by all citizens. Within community forums decision-making would reflect the will of the elite with others prepared to accept the decisions made by their superiors in the social order.
The Network Model of Community
Community members who believe in maximising the concentration of power in community institutions and voluntary regulatory frameworks to empower community members, presume a subjective social world under which the categorical good of community organisations constitutes what is in the community’s best interests. This world is knowable through its social construction, with people’s actions being determined, and made predictable by their collective interpretation of this reality. Thus, the network model of community is founded on the social nature of human beings with its inclusive communities being (Tam, 1998: 31–2):
built upon the structures involving human interactions — not just in families and neighbourhood areas, but also in schools, business organisations, state institutions, professional and community groups, voluntary associations, and international networks. In all cases, necessary reforms need to facilitate the development of citizens’ attitudes and abilities as effective participants of inclusive communities, with the help of education, work opportunities, and collective protection.
All these participant groups are expected to aspire to achieve “new communities in which people have choices and readily accommodate divergent subcommunities” (Etzioni, 1995a: 122), whilst still maintaining common values and belief systems. In this process, the unfulfilled “unencumbered self” finds that their fundamental desire to create a purposeful self-identity is only possible through relationships with other community members. Arising from this understanding, it is expected that greater social cohesion would result from unrestricted human autonomy in a process where, as McIntyre notes, citizens “would grow to understand themselves…only in the context of the community” (cited in Arthur, 1998: 357). In this paradigm, Sandel (1992: 19) has recognised that a citizen cannot choose their purpose in life without recourse to their cultural inheritance. This rich history of attachments and commitments is an essential part of an individual’s social reality but is only accessible through the medium of group discourse. Therefore, if the individual becomes deprived of community interaction, they would be unable to reach their true potential, as they are forced into a meaningless conundrum, rootless and unclear about their true vocation.
Community members who advocate network governance embrace an ethical code that can facilitate the creation by a community of a continuum of significance in matters of conformity, progressiveness and prescriptiveness (Driver and Martell, 1997: 29–32). This is not a proclamation that moral relativism between communities should go unchecked in an atmosphere of unwavering neutrality as there is a role for the supra-community, or the nation state. In this political framework the supra-community “readily accommodates subgroup differences — as long as these do not threaten a limited set of core values and shared bonds” (Etzioni, 1995a: 160). These common commitments would include the preservation of social and religious tolerance and the protection of fundamental human rights (Etzioni, 1995: 160).
The promotion of recognised virtues throughout communities is fundamental to the network model, as these principles are expected to “significantly enhance social order whilst reducing the need for state intervention in social behaviour” (Etzioni, 2000: 26). Thus, by using education and persuasion as inculcators of reasoned and virtuous action, high moral standards can be achieved in all types of communities (Etzioni, 1998: xxxvi). Coercion is excluded from this paradigm although a role is envisaged for “permissible paternalism” (Goodin, 1998: 122–3).
The Community Management Agenda
Mutuality, in that it embraces both reciprocity and self-interest, is an important element in the network model of community management but, whilst individual interests can be pursued, any potential excesses should be tempered by strategies of protection and mutual obligation (Selznick, 1996: 4-5). So, arising from this principle of mutualism, it becomes necessary for each community member to understand that they have “both a right and a duty” to participate in the affairs of their community (Bellah, 1995/6: 4).
In promoting the necessity for community members to participate in their communities, Etzioni argues that there is a need to confront “inauthentic democratic politics” (1968: 637). This type of government restricts societal power for the majority to a periodic vote at an election that probably offers a restrictive choice. However, the network model seeks to stimulate the active society where there would be an emphasis on “the egalitarian distribution of power” (Etzioni, 1968: 517). In seeking to achieve this aim, the principle of subsidiarity is invoked. This asserts that a group, or groups, that are in the closest proximity to a problem should attend to its resolution, with intervention by other groups restricted to the time when support is required. So only when the family unit cannot achieve its aims should the local school, health centre, or other larger organisation take responsibility (Etzioni, 1995a: 44). Thus, state dependence becomes downgraded to the choice of last resort as active communities take control of their own destiny.
Voluntary participation by individuals in community initiatives is regarded as a praiseworthy activity. Such altruism facilitates community members to use their time and effort to help other community members without personal gain thereby fostering improved social relations. Inherent to such a strategy is an emphasis on individuals recognising their responsibilities to others through their personal faith in the beneficial effect achieved by a supportive moral and social order.
The ontological assumptions that underpin the network model is founded on “the non-reducibility and the significance of collectives, institutions, relations, meanings and so on” (Fraser, 1999: 21). Individuals do not enter a direct relationship with the state, but instead local social institutions mediate in any contact with positional authority. Moreover, individual interdependence is strengthened through co-operative enquiry, or the interpretation of fundamental collective principles, that makes the values and attitudes of community members “a product of a complex interplay of people and organisations” rather than the result of directives from a governing elite (Parsons, 1995: 185).
When making network policy, a premium is placed on the understanding of emotional considerations through the conceptualisation of equity, or the treatment of people in a fair but different manner that might achieve equality in their opportunities (Blakemore, 1998: 24). Through this process community members would expect an increase in the level of participation in community governance and the incidental attribute of improved social cohesiveness.
The Community Engagement Agenda
Community members who prefer the network model of community would accept the following propositions about community engagement.
Desire to Engage in Community: It is only through engagement by the individual in their community of locality or communities of interest that they can realise they’re fundamental identity and thus their purpose in life. Therefore, the individual’s desire, although it may need stimulation, is inherently pre-eminent in their personal aims and objectives.
Capacity to Engage in Community: Every individual, as soon as they can effectively communicate with other community members, can engage fully in reaching community decisions that reflect a consensus amongst the group.
Processes of Community Engagement: Every individual would voluntarily engage with other community members (possibly aided by gentle persuasion) in an egalitarian and respectful way to develop a close and purposeful social bond. It would be expected that this bond would be underpinned by a code of values that emphasises the maintenance of social inclusion and the responsibilities held by every citizen to other community members. Thus, language would be laden with value judgements that reflect community members’ mutually agreed norms of behaviour.
The Market Model of Community
Community members who believe in the preservation of the competitive free market unfettered by unnecessary collective interference presume an objective social world. This world is knowable by the application of the scientific method, in which people are agents of their actions, with their behaviour made predictable by their unconstrained self-interest. Thus, the notion of the autonomous individual exercising rational freedom of choice resides at the core of their perception of social reality. Therefore, there is a general acceptance that all human beings are predatory and capable of making decisions based on objective knowledge that informs purposeful risk taking. In this scenario the revealed market preferences of individual community members have priority over local community interests.
Advocates of the market model can accept that individuals may visualise a good society as one in which such values as truth, honesty and justice are predominant. However, whilst these individual expectations can, when aggregated, reflect the qualities of certain abstract principles, they cannot be extended to a collective agreement about specific outcomes in particular situations. For instance, as everyone continually experiences new circumstances that provide previously undiscovered facts about social reality it is impossible for a collective to compose a set of precise opinions that exemplifies the shared moral code of the group. Thus, defining issues of criminality through “a shared understanding of what we must guard against” (Tam, 1998: 120–1) is an unrealistic objective. Instead, individuals should choose and then implement their own consequentialist moral principles guided by the notion of undertaking good actions that would benefit the majority. These objectively knowable moral principles make extensive collective discourses about values redundant.
The market model of community accommodates active citizenship, however this is based on “the view that if citizens of a democratic society are to preserve their basic rights and liberties…they must also have to a sufficient degree the political virtues…and be willing to take part in public life” (Rawls, 1988: 272). Thus, the priority for community engagement would be to ensure that the relationships of spontaneous exchange, created by self-interested networks of individuals, is not hindered or obstructed by local sanctions or boycotts instituted by other overly zealous community members who are ideologically opposed to market mechanisms.
The Community Management Agenda
Community members who prefer the market model are not opposed to mutuality. However, in maximising the efficiency of actions in pursuit of self-interest, they would individually find themselves asking the question — what would I gain from this action that would benefit others? Therefore, they would feel some comfort with the ethos of Local Exchange and Trading Schemes, whereby individuals help each other based on reciprocal exchange. This type of structured reciprocity is also replicated in the notion of time banks, which “record, store and reward transactions where neighbours help neighbours” (Williams, 2003: 291) making any involvement in volunteering beneficial to the participant. This informal one-to-one community involvement may incorporate self-help schemes that directly increase an individual’s material well-being. Alternatively, they may accommodate a community member’s altruistic motivations, which are interpreted as belonging in the private sphere, that stimulate benevolent activities such as shopping for an elderly neighbour or child minding for a single parent (Williams, 2003: 285–94).
The market model clearly distinguishes between the public and the private spheres, with family life belonging in the private sphere. This belief has been intensified by the emergence of the contemporary autonomous nuclear family where, freed from traditional cultural restraints, family life can result in both men and women developing their careers whilst sharing the obligation of parenting. Such a situation has become possible by the establishment of individual rights, particularly those concerning equality of opportunity, which have changed the, often oppressive, nature of the traditional family unit. So, any erosion of personal liberty, both through constraints placed on adults and the community’s interference in the evolution of a child’s personality, should be opposed.
The Community Engagement Agenda
Community members who prefer the market model of community management would accept the following propositions about community engagement.
Desire to Engage in Community: This notion is pleasant but irrelevant to the fundamental purpose in life — the making, and the preservation of, the material wealth that can offer security, peace of mind and ultimately freedom for the individual.
Capacity to Engage in Community: The notion of community is explained as a fictitious concept that is composed of individuals who can choose to engage in contractual relationships where they would exercise their economic power in a self-interested and self-seeking manner. Therefore, the capacity for community engagement would usually follow a material cost-benefit analysis, although community members may also choose to enter unsolicited altruistic transactions because of the benefits that might be reaped for the psyche.
Processes of Community Engagement: They would presume that people are unwilling to make voluntary sacrifices for a community, so the processes of engagement are contingent upon the benefits from participation exceeding the costs of involvement. In this scenario, no community member has a pre-ordained position, and their only loyalty is to the furtherance of their own well being.
The Anarchical Model of Community
Community members who presume a subjective social world that is contestably knowable as what people believe it to be, must seek to understand their existence by means of their subjective perceptions. Thus, the acquisition of knowledge is only possible through personal experience reflecting the Sartrerian notion of existence proceeding essence. For instance, objects and animals possess universally recognisable characteristics that create an embedded network. But human subjects create their own essence, in a process where they are either subsumed by the compositional arrangements they encounter in their lives, or they understand and utilise the potentialities of their own agency. During this lifelong journey of choice between the affirmation of individual will or acquiescence to the false constraints of determinism each person will be alone, confined within their own reality and unable to share their observations and conclusions with anyone else.
Adherents to the anarchical model of community can display apathetic attitudes towards community initiatives as they experience alienation from their fellow citizens. Alternatively, they can be committed “outsiders” (Wilson, 1956) with highly sophisticated systems of philosophical, political and ethical beliefs. Therefore, it is important to emphasise the wide cultural diversity that manifests amongst these individuals, thus avoiding the error of labelling them as a social sub-stratum or residuum, characterised as the Marxist “lumpenproletariat” (Marx and Engels, [1848] 1967: 93) or as the “underclass” (Murray et al.,1996).
Anarchical community members accept the philosophical standpoint that denies the proposition that a social context can bring meaning to life. Therefore, they dispute essentialist arguments that maintain there are some fixed essential properties that determine peoples’ behaviour. Thus, they would oppose any attempt to exclude individuals from their communities after they had failed to comply with dominant values and attitudes, perceiving such action as the inevitable malevolent outcome of a collective informed by flawed philosophical preconceptions. Therefore, adherents to the anarchical model would be cautious about their involvement with community organisations. They would expect to receive benefits for any contribution made towards the work of the collective, whose actions would be considered unpredictable as community is just another instrument of potential or actual control engineered by individuals to render people as determined automata. Moreover, they reason that the reification of a social construct is implausible in “that there are no principles that govern the social realm as a whole” (Schatzki, 2002: 141) so any attempt to describe and analysis social reality is merely speculative ideation. Therefore, there is no acceptance of belonging to a community, making apathy an acceptable response to exhortations to “become an active citizen.”
The anarchical model requires its adherents to search for a moral code that entails a personal journey of discovery, leading the individual to choose how they would conduct their relationships with others, and the norms of behaviour that are contingent on these decisions. Thus, they reject the notion of a community consensus over what is right and what is wrong or what is good and what is bad. Instead, they maintain that people must individually confront or avoid their moral dilemmas by either making their own choices or denying their responsibilities.
The Community Management Agenda
Anarchists expect the state to exercise coercive power over them as they identify themselves as citizens who repudiate voluntary compliance. However, they consider that such action is in contravention of their rejection of obligations and duties, which leaves them free to choose who they are, and the manner that they should behave. Therefore, devolution of a part of the state’s decision-making apparatus to the community level would be welcomed as this shift of power would allow individuals to have more control over their lives. However, forward planning is pointless in a world of unpredictability, where the best decisions should be based on inspiration and the minimising of risks, with lengthy procrastination over available options being an acceptable strategy.
Joining a group is acceptable to anarchists on the basis that this action would not compromise their striving for authenticity. However, the group members would pledge themselves to the achievement of some common purpose, thus every individual would accept a reciprocity of enforcement which underpins each group member’s view of themselves. As the group becomes operational, the members would then develop reciprocity of dependency. “Thus, freedom, as common praxis, initially produced the bond of sociality in the form of the pledge; and now, it creates concrete forms of human relationship” (Sartre, [1960] 1976: 466). The pledged group, however, accepts that no experience can be fully shared by two people. Thus, the unpredictability of human behaviour can render mutuality gullible, as it fails to move beyond reciprocity of participation in community organisations, thus neglecting individual agency. Moreover, the doctrine of mutuality also maintains that, in working for the common good, community members would achieve, in an unprecedented meeting of minds, an agreed understanding of community values.
The proposition that no opinion is more probable or likely than another is embraced, so, sceptical ethical principles are employed as epistemic standards, when individuals are confronted with demands that community members should readily embrace all manner of community responsibilities while, in the medium term, a moratorium should be enforced against new rights (Etzioni, 1995a: 5).
Whilst anarchists would presume that there are no certainties in their mode of reasoning, they would nevertheless strive to make sense of their reality. Therefore, in this search for plausibility, if they accept some community responsibility as it appears to be the right thing to do, that decision would be the product of their own perceptions. Moreover, these responsibilities would only be accepted if they had been identified because of individual subjective reasoning.
The Community Engagement Agenda
The existential outsider would accept the following propositions about community engagement.
Desire to Engage in Community: The anarchist presumes that all human actors behave in ways that are ultimately unpredictable. Thus, there cannot be any credibility in the notion of structural causation. Therefore, why engage in a collective that is incapable of understanding the causes and probable consequences of social action?
Capacity to Engage in Community: As the concept of community is perceived as a pointless attempt by community members to take control over a setting that is unknowable with virtually no capacity for personal transactions, then the statement “capacity to engage in community” is a contradiction in terms.
Processes of Community Engagement: The anarchist demands an inauthentic approach to joining a collective through a process of developing reciprocity of enforcement, that underpins everyone’s pledge to a group. Thus, community groups might be coercive and manipulative as they presume that there are certainties that can inform their decision-making.
Empowering Community: Planting the Gene of Inclusiveness
Public servants who aspire to empower communities so that they can make meaningful contributions to the implementation of social policy must aim to achieve inclusive engagement. Thus, they are inspired by the need to unify attitudes and beliefs towards new initiatives so that they can be dealt with positively rather than becoming the focus of disagreements, gossip and negativity. However, with the growth of individual autonomy public servants encounter a frustrating conundrum — different conceptualisations of community may exist amongst community members that demand the management skills of a pragmatic enabler rather than the reactive qualities of a facilitator.
In seeking to develop holistic community management, the public servant could profitably begin by considering the network model of community. This model is unique in its assertion that the categorical good of community organisations constitute what is in the community’s best interests. Thus, it underpins the preferred principles of the committed community activist — the individual community member most likely to participate in community initiatives.
The public servant would recognise the following notions as being fundamental to the community activist’s doctrine:
· Individuals have a fundamental need to socialise with other human beings and can only achieve their full potential by working within collaborative groups that concur with a set of common aspirations.
· Community members must discover their shared values, attitudes, and beliefs, thereby enabling the development of a strong moral code that is necessary to redress contemporary social deficits (such as increasing criminality and inadequate parenting).
· Communities should mediate between the individual and the state to facilitate local co-operative enquiries into the evaluation of policies and to ensure neighbourhood influence over community-based service delivery.
· Communities should extol the virtue of mutuality, thereby promoting the need for high levels of meaningful participation in community decision-making processes by community members.
· It is imperative for citizens to recognise the weaknesses inherent in individualism and authoritarianism that have undermined social progress towards an egalitarian society. Thus, the preponderance of individual rights must be redressed in favour of the duties and responsibilities owed by individual citizens to their community or communities.
These propositions clearly define the fundamental elements of strategy and objectives that should lie behind any community project but adherents to the hierarchical, market and anarchical models of community would find collaboration challenging. These challenges encapsulate the following barriers to consensus:
The Hierarchical Model of Community
· Community members would have to recognise community as a dynamic social mechanism capable, rather than as an instrument of the state, of bringing measurable improvements to the lives of its members.
· Community members would have to accept that the concept of community-based moral relativism would take precedence over the moral imperatives inculcated by the state.
· Community members would have to accept the notion that community has a critical role in mediating between the needs of community members and available resources of the state.
· Community members would have to accept that they have mutually dependent, but unconditional, obligations to all the other members of their community or communities.
· Community members would have to accept that the human trait of altruism could be an efficient and effective inspiration for community members to participate in the formulation and implementation of social policies that would benefit their needy neighbours.
The Market Model of Community
· Community members would have to accept that the social construct of community has a causal capacity, which can protect the free market for goods and services from interference by the state.
· Community members would have to accept the agreed moral code of their community despite restrictions this may impose on their individual search for objective moral truths.
· Community members would have to accept that volunteering for community work by joining an organised group is more praiseworthy than undertaking individual action.
· Community members would have to be willing to undertake work in their communities that does not offer them the chance of material gain.
· Community members would have to agree that community values are relevant to both the public and private spheres.
The Anarchical Model of Community
· Community members would have to accept that community initiatives can be effectively formulated then efficiently executed, and that they will make a real difference to the well being of community members.
· Community members would have to agree that the accumulated experience and understanding possessed by community members can be communicated with a personal meaningfulness that leads to a consensus about a community’s essential values, attitudes and norms of behaviour.
· Community members would have to agree that community represents a means of liberation from the control of the state.
· Community members would have to agree that community members should make voluntary sacrifices to other community members on the understanding that this practice might not be reciprocated.
· Community members would have to agree that, in accepting community responsibilities, the needs of the individual would be accommodated by the community.
Therefore, a complex community paradigm confronts the public servant attempting to achieve some short-term recognition by displaying an ability to achieve community orientated public sector objectives and reassure her or his line manager of the long-term benefits of community engagement.
In this formidable and sometimes ambiguous environment, the public servant needs time and resources to research the contending, yet equally legitimate dispositions that exist amongst a specific community. Then, having established the existence of differing dispositions, the public servant needs to reflect on and contextualise these various perceptions. Through this process, a balanced view of the impacts and risks arising from any new initiative will become apparent together with the possibility of achieving some common ground between community members who hold contending dispositions. Thus, some consensus building can take place if a momentum exists that emphasises openness and honesty. In this mediation process, that aims to achieve a unity-in-diversity that leads the community to recognise “a notion of freedom as being realisable only through commitment, and not despite it.” (Ravn, 1991: 109), the last vestiges of bureaucratic control may have to be dis-empowered to demonstrate the real empowerment of community as a new associational form.
Conclusion
Public servants who are required to deliver effective community management find themselves in the role of a pro-active instigator of community policy rather than a reactive facilitator. Thus, using their research capabilities, they need to explore the contending conceptualisations of community that exist amongst community members so that they can devise a subtle and pre-planned strategy. This strategy must accommodate the imperatives of:
· Blending community members through an understanding of local cultures and conditions.
· Combating deliberately disruptive elements within the community by championing openness and honesty.
· Through mediation transferring management responsibilities for social policy initiatives to community members who can sustain the agreed collective principles that enable them to work together.
· Reporting on progress regularly to highlight any possible risks and issues.
· Keeping collaboration agreements between community members of contending dispositions flexible so that the scope for co-operation evolves with a changing agenda.
· Showing faith in the ability of the community to deliver by recognising incremental achievements.
· Always building on common ground, even when viewpoints seem intractable, by focussing on solutions within the community’s control.
Bibliography
Arthur, J. 1998. “Communitarianism: what are the implications for education”,
Educational Studies, 24 (3): 353–68.
Bellah, R.N. 1995/6. “Community Properly Understood: A Defence of
Democratic Communitarianism”, The Responsive Community, 6 (1): 1–5.
75–95.
Blackburn, S. 2001. Being Good, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Blakemore, K. 1998. Social Policy: an introduction, Buckingham: Open University
Press.
Bovens, M. and t’Hart, P. 1990. Policy Fiascos, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Books.
Bovens, M., t’Hart, P. and Peters, B.G. 2001. Success and Failure in Public
Governance, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Brooks, I. 1999. Individuals, Groups and the Organisation, London: Financial
Times Management.
Dixon, J., Davis, G. and Kouzmin, A. 2004. “Achieving Civil Service Reform: The Threats, Challenges and Opportunities”, in Koch, R. and Conrad, P. (eds.) Verändertes Denken—Bessere ÖffentlicheDienste!? [Alternative Thinking—Better Public Services?], Weisbaden, Germany: Gabler-Verlag.
Dixon, J. and Dogan, R. 2003. “A Philosophical Analysis of Management:
Improving Praxis”, Journal of Management Development, 22(6): 458–82.
Dixon, J. and Hyde, M. 2003. “Public Pension Privatisation, Neo-Classical
Economics, Decision Risks and Welfare Ideology”, International Journal of Social Economics, 30 (5): 633–50.
Dixon, J., Dogan, R. and Kouzmin, A. 2004. “The Dilemma of Privatised Public
Services: Philosophical Frames in Understanding Failure and Managing Partnership Terminations”, Public Organisation Review, 4 (1): 25–46.
Dixon, J., Sanderson, A. and Dogan, R. “The Communitarian Vision and Community Reality: A Philosophical Investigation”, Community Development Journal, 40 (1): 4–16.
Driver, S. and Martell, L. 1997. “New Labour’s Communitarianisms”, Critical
Social Policy, 17 (52): 27–46.
Etzioni, A. 1968. The Active Society: A Theory of Societal and Political Processes,
New York: The Free Press.
Etzioni, A. 1993. “Normative-Affective Choices”, Human Relations, 46 (9):
1053–69.
Etzioni, A. 1995. The Spirit of Community: rights, responsibilities and the
communitarian agenda, London: Fontana Press.
Etzioni, A. 1998. “A Matter of Balance, Rights and Responsibilities”, in Etzioni, A.
(ed.), The Essential Communitarian Reader, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.
Etzioni, A. 2000. “Isolate them: Paedophiles should be confined together in
special towns,” Guardian Newspaper, 19th Sept.: 20.
Fraser, E. 1999. The Problems of Communitarian Politics: Unity and Conflict,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goodin, R.E. 1998. “Permissible Paternalism: In Defence of the Nanny State”, in
Etzioni, A. (ed.), The Essential Communitarian Reader, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.
Goodin, R.E. 2002 “Structures of Mutual Obligation”, in Journal of Social Policy, 31(4): 579–596.
Hoggett, P. and Miller, C. 2000. “Working with emotions in community
organisations”, Community Development Journal, 35 (4): 352–64.
Homans, G. 1951. The human group, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Kant, I. [1785a] 1998. “The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals”, in
Pojman, L.P. (ed.), Ethical Theory: Classical and Contemporary Readings,
Belmont: Wadsworth.
Kant, I. [1785b] 2003. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals:
Second Section, Transition from Popular Moral Philosophy to the Metaphysic of Morals, Abbott,T.K. (trs.), site — http://www.msu.org/ethics/content-eythics/texts/kant/kanttxt2.html accessed 26th June 2003.
Kooiman, J. (ed.), 1993. Modern Governance: New Government-Society
Interactions, Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Marx, K. and Engels, F. [1848] 1967. The Communist Manifesto, Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books.
Miller, D. 1999. “Communitarianism: Left, right and centre”, in Avnon, D. and
Avner de-Shalit (eds.), Liberalism and its Practice, London: Routledge.
Pareto, V. [1902] 1966. Sociological Writings, Finer, S.E. (ed.), Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
Parker, J. 2000. Structuration, Buckingham: Open University.
Parsons, W. 1995. Public Policy, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Plato [c410-347] 2000. The Republic, Ferrari, G.R.F. (ed.), Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Ravn, I. 1991. “What should Guide Reality Construction?” in Steier, F. (ed.),
Research and Reflexivity, London: Sage.
Rawls, J. 1988. “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good”, Philosophy and
Public Affairs, 17 (4): 251–76.
Sandel, M. 1992. “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self”, in
Avineri, S. and de-Shalit, A. (eds.), Communitarianism and Individualism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sanderson, A. 2006 “The Appropriate Role of the State within the Ethical Paradigm,” in
Proceedings of the 2006 Postgraduate Symposium, Plymouth: University of Plymouth.
Schatzki, T.R. 2002. The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the
Constitution of Social Life and Change, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University.
Schein, E.H. 1980. Organisational Psychology, (3rd ed.), Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice Hall.
Schumpter, J.A. 1987. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, (6th ed.), Hemel
Hempstead: Unwin.
Selznick, P. 1996. “Social Justice: A Communitarian Perspective”, The
Responsive Community, 6 (4): 1–10.
Sieber, S. 1981. Fatal Remedies, New York: Plenum.
Tam, H. 1998. Communitarianism: A New Agenda for Politics and Citizenship,
Basingstoke: Macmillan Press.
Thompson, J.B. 1990. Ideology and Modern Culture, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Weber, M. 1968. Economy and Society, Roth, G. and Wittich, C. (eds.), New
York: Bedminister Press.
Weimer, D.L. and Vining, A.R. 1997. Policy Analysis: Concepts and
Practice, (3rd ed.), Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Williams, C.W. 2003. “Developing Voluntary Activity: Some Policy Issues arising
from the 2001 Home Office Citizenship Survey”, Social Policy and Society, 2 (4): 285–94.
Wilson, C. 1957. The Outsider, (2nd ed.), London: Pheonix.
コメント