Who decides what is in the public interest?

Having read the conclusions of a doctoral thesis completed by Pia Backlund in Helsinki entitled "Tietamisen politiikka" - meaning something like "the Politics of Knowing", I have gathered valuable further ammunition to build the case for why participation is good in the context of local government.

I need all the evidence I can find, frankly, because most of the stuff that's happening out there carrying the label of "citizen/public participation/consultation"/ whatever/ is pretty depressing, from everyone's perspective. The residents who turn up are the "usual suspects" who hold their (stubborn) views and are thus oblivious to any messages deviating from their core beliefs, and then you get the ones who just turn up for the free biscuits. Generally, the general public are ill-informed, they have a narrow viewpoint often fuelled by "NIMBY" [not-in-my-backyard]. I raised this at the summer school last week, because everyone seemed to be raving about public engagement, perhaps erring on the side of (naive) enthusiasm. My challenge was that maybe everyone should just leave it to the professionals, there must be several studies carried out into the engagement of the public in decision-making which have concluded that most people take a short-term, self-centered view on things, where perhaps greater foresight and the "public good" should take precedence.

I'd like to illustrate this with the example of the proposed congestion charging in Manchester, the public debate (in the press) around which is strongly influenced by one heavy-weight interest group obviously positioned against the scheme.

The answer I got from the floor to my questioning of the value of public consultation was that a lot of resources have to dedicated to public education/information dissemination and all that, to make an informed public debate. Ah, but my problem with that is rooted in normative ethics: so the authorities should decide what is right/correct/unbiased, so as to make sure people know how to respond to the forthcoming consultation, to make the right decision?

I can't resist drawing on another practical example which was the Irish referenda (2001 "no"; 2002 "yes") on ratifying the Treaty of Nice. From the Government's viewpoint the public didn't quite get their facts right the first time, then more public education was required, and another referendum held until the majority at least got their facts right and voted in favour of the Treaty.

If Michel Foucault had been in the room at the summer school when the "public information campaign" was suggested as a solution to the public engagement dilemma, he might have had a thing or two to say about power/knowledge and all that.

Anyway, I said I had some positive evidence in favour of public engagement. Indeed, that engagement does not however take the form of "yes/no" type referenda or consultation even on issues predetermined by the administration, it's more to do with building bottom-up knowledge and the administration tapping into that information base, "the wisdom of many". The public servants' job is surely to understand what life is like in their jurisdiction and try to make the most of what resources they have to make life better, right?

This brings me to my final point: to describe it I'm going to use a term coined by Richard (the "PPGIS guru") in our supervision yesterday: "geographically referenced community information base" (that could be built, yes you've guessed it, with the help of Public Participation Geographical Information System, a mouthful and a half).

Maybe there is hope for us active citizens.