EMPOWERMENT AND PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

Nola-Kate Seymoar, Ph.D.

Introduction
There is a tendency to confuse public participation with community empowerment. Partly this
confusion is caused by the continuum of activities included under the phrase “public
participation”, activities ranging from disseminating information, through consultations,
workshops and collaborative mechanisms, to empowerment – or the sharing of decision-
making. Public participation professionals are often involved in assisting groups in developing
countries to learn the skills and technologies of participatory processes as part of the capacity
building activities of various and projects. Parallel to these activities, there is a long tradition
within the community development field of empowerment activities based on the work of
community organizers such as Saul Alinsky and Paulo Friere. In the environmental, women’s,
and indigenous peoples movements, empowerment has a long history of association with
consciousness raising activities, assertiveness training, advocacy, affirmative action and
legal/human rights challenges. Yet another group of professionals involved in the
empowerment game are the mediators and conflict resolution professionals, who often come
into the middle of disputes between those with power and those without it.

This paper is an attempt to build a conceptual framework to clarify the activities or

interventions appropriate to empowerment and to distinguish them from those appropriate to
public participation.

Empowerment
Empowerment means sharing power as equals. One cannot empower someone else. Although
one may offer to share power or decision-making, the other party must stand as an equal and
have the desire, skills and legal mandate to share that power. Most situations of shared power
go unnoticed. They are situations where groups partner with one another for a common goal.
Some partnerships however, are particular notable because they go across sectors, borders,
disciplines or cultures. One outstanding example of shared power was the government and civil
sector coalition to ban anti-personnel landmines. The “Ottawa Process” as it became known,
was characterized by high levels of participation by thousands of non-government organizations
from around the world and demonstrated the impact of middle power countries who were
prepared to act together. It is a testament to the government leaders, the officials and the NGO
coalition that they were able to negotiate an international treaty in a shorter time than had ever
been done before. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Jody Powell and the Coalition
highlighted the success of the efforts. The lessons from that experience were reviewed by the
Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development. See reports on their “New Deplomacy” efforts
at www. Cpf-pec.gc.ca

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This example stands out because it involved governments in making a conscious choice to
share some of their power in decision making. There is no question that the ultimate decisions
rested with the governments – no one sign the international treaty except national
governments. But in these and other cases, governments realize that they require other
partners in order to able to implement certain kinds of decisions. NGOs who become involved
in such fora, often want to expand the scope of their influence to tackle other similar problems.
In the field of sustainable development, multi-sectoral Sustainable Development Councils and
Round Tables are part of the post-Rio legacy. Only a few involve shared power and decision-
making. Most are advisory in nature. There is another type of empowerment that goes on in the
field of international and community development. It is the self empowerment of groups, often
won through political and economic struggles. This process is very different than the “Ottawa
Process” or Round Table process. It is characterized by different activities and results at
different times.

In the 60s and early 70s, popular movements for the environment, women and indigenous
peoples developed in North America and Europe. The movements had much in common. They
all viewed power as characteristically held by those with access to capital (including land),
financial resources, governance institutions – including political and legal structures (and their
enforcement agencies – the military and police), educational structures, and the media.
Activists work with groups lacking in power to assist them in obtaining greater power. Although
frequently the activists were themselves from the educated, white, middle class, many were
able to effectively empathize and mobilize the poor or the disenfranchised. Local or indigenous
leaders emerged quickly in all of these movements.

The Self Empowerment Cycle

I have argued elsewhere that one can track the process of empowerment that these groups
went through as involving four phases of group development.1 Those phases can be labeled as
“powerlessness”, “protesting”, and “partnering”. Each phase is characterized by both objective
and psychological elements, and the movement of groups from one phase to the next can be
predicted and facilitated by conscious interventions on the part of leaders, members or outside
facilitators.

A brief summary of the cycle may assist those involved in public participation processes to
understand why their efforts to inform, consult or involve, may end in conflict or confrontation
rather than discussion or consensus.

Powerlessness
This phase of the cycle is characterized by a lack of access to financial, political, legal,
institutional or media resources. Psychologically it is characterized by low energy and feelings
of apathy, dependency, hopelessness or helplessness. Those in the dependent group often
empathize with or want to be like the power group. This difficulty was identified by writers such
as Andre Gunder Frank and the early feminists who saw the need to overcome this “encogido
syndrome” before groups could be mobilized to act on their own interests.

Interventions that move groups or individuals from this position include consciousness raising
techniques, educational interventions (literacy and legal information are particularly potent)
and experiential events such as peer exchanges. Saul Alinsky believed that one had to “rub the
sores raw” in order to motivate people to change. The common experience of the award
winning communities in the We the Peoples Awards Program for the 50th Anniversary of the

1
N.K. Seymoar, J.Ponce de Leon, Creating Common Unity: Models of Self Empowerment, 50 Award Winning
Communities, Weigl Educational Publishers 1997

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United Nations would also suggest that communities do not change unless and until they
experience or become aware of significant discomfort.2

Protesting
This phase of the empowerment cycle is characterized by active critiques and confrontation or
challenges of the status quo. Psychologically it involves high emotional energy, anger,
frustration and hostility. Shortages of power are typically blamed on the powerful group, and
there is a notable lack of empathy for those who are perceived as part of the established power
group.

Because polarization is common, appropriate facilitation during this phase involves use of
techniques to encourage dialogue and problem solving and discourage violence. Thus the
introduction of institutionalized structures to enable dialogue among key stakeholder group,
and there is appropriate. In the absence of such structures, protests escalate and may move
from local issues to mass demonstration or violent confrontations.

Just as groups and individuals may be stuck in dependency, so too they may get stuck in the
protesting phase. Interventions may be needed to facilitate the movement of groups from
protesting what they do not want to examining what they do want.

Proposing
It is a curious fact that after a degree of awareness and protest, groups want to withdraw and
look inward – rethinking their own values and establishing their identity as different from the
power group. Thus this phase is characterized by separation. At a psychological level it involves
introspection and assertion of the group’s independence. It often involves an attitude of
superiority of one’s own values or a (re)discovery and celebration of cultural or group identity.

Facilitating movement from protesting to proposing involves asking the group for its vision of
what it wants and for concrete proposals to solve problems or implement that vision. Thus
visioning, strategic planning, values clarification, cultural and identity related activities are most
effective at this stage. Structures that allow “separation” without requiring “divorce” are
needed.

Again, there is a possibility of individuals or groups remaining stuck in separation and being
unable or unwilling to have anything to do with the previous power group. Facilitating
movement towards renewed interaction and shared activities involves a process of
reconciliation or forgiveness. Where protesting has enabled the group or individual to gain
“freedom from”, reconciliation processes are often needed to move the groups to be “free to”
work together again.

When individuals and groups have a strong sense of their own identity, they are able to move to
more equal power relationships.

Partnering
This phase is characterized by shared decision-making and shared access to resources.
Psychologically there is an awareness of the value of working together with the previous power
group, to accomplish mutual goals. It is a recognition of inter-dependence or perhaps more
descriptively, inter-dependence, in that the relationship is one of equals. The relationship is one

2
ibid

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of mutual respect and empathy for each other’s positions, strengths and limitations. Both
parties are free “from” and free “to” interact as appropriate in the situation.
Appropriate activities or interventions during this phase involves structures that support shared
decision-making among relatively equal partners. Round Tables are an example, as are other
consensus-based processes.

Research and observations have shown that groups and individuals do not move to partnering
– or sharing power as equals without going through the protesting and proposing stages. Many
of those in the business of development or social change would prefer that this were not the
case. They would rather not face the negative emotions associated with protesting, nor
experience the rejection often associated with withdrawal and focusing inward that occurs
before proposals are made. Yet both phases are necessary precursors of partnering.
Furthermore, experience shows that this process is not a direct linear progression, but is rather
a cycle on another set of issues, and then work through a similar cycle on another set of issues.
Thus, the cycle becomes a spiral leading in the long-run to increased political space.

Implication of the Empowerment Cycle

For public participation practitioners, the fact that groups and individuals go through certain
predictable phases of behavior and exhibit predictable attitudes, allows the practitioner to
assess where the group is at and to identify appropriate interventions that would be needed to
reinforce the group’s status or move it to a next stage. Happily, groups will seldom allow anyone
to manipulate them or move them until they are ready, so it is not really so much a matter of
diagnosis and intervention, as it is a matter of reflecting to the group a picture of its own
behavior and asking where it wants to be or to go.

Understanding the empowerment cycle may contribute to an understanding of why certain

activities related to public participation take a different course than the one intended by the
government officials or private sector staff wanting to engage the public or community. Often
the public activity – a consultation, hearing, or public meeting – is intended to inform or even to
listen to the views of stakeholders, but it is not intended as a vehicle for sharing power or
making joint decisions. Community groups however, may attend believing that they will have
real input and expect that they are entitled to power. Clarifying the expectations before and
during the event will help. Recognizing as well that public events may be used differently by
different interests is also important. Groups in the protesting stage will often hijack the process
for their own ends.

The first question to be asked remains: what is the purpose of the participation process? IF it is
to share power and build partnership for joint action, then one can look to using Round Tables
or the Ottawa process. If that is not the case, given the sophistication of advocacy groups in the
present context it is likely that some of those involved will try and change the agenda. They will
demand more voice and influence. Thus when one considers building the capacity of groups to
influence decisions and participate more democratically, one must also recognize the need to
build the capacity of governments or the private sector to respond appropriately to active and
demanding groups. The use of police or para-military to quell protests only escalates
polarization and leads towards conflict rather than towards resolution. Participation
practitioners need to use knowledge of the phases of empowerment to guide their facilitation
efforts and require skills in conflict management as part of their tool kit.

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