THE CONCEPT OF CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND ITS RELEVANCE TO THE EU – RUSSIA RELATIONS.
Liliana N. Proskuryakova, Head of International Unit, St.Petersburg “Strategy” Center
1. Rationale for civic engagement and defining civil society
According to the UNDP Global Human Development Report 2004, it is necessary to make services of use for the poor and marginalized people and take into consideration their opinions, engage civil society through various forms of civic engagement as an inherent element of public policy. Civic engagement is an important instrument for better provision of services and speeding up the progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
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As of 1 January 2002, according to the data from the Committee on Statistics of the Russian Federation, the number of registered non-governmental non-commercial organizations (CSOs) reached 600 000. According to various estimations, at least as many civil society groups work in Russia’s regions without officially registering as a legal entity. Some unregistered civil society organizations and groups carry out socially important work with an outcome well noted not only in Russia, but also abroad.
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One of the most comprehensive studies of civil society in the World – Civil Society Index (CSI) - was developed and implemented by the World Alliance for Citizens Participation (CIVICUS). In Russia the CSI was implemented by the St.Petersburg Center “Strategy” using the following definition of civil society (developed by the project National Advisory Board):
“Civil Society is an arena, situated for the most part outside family, state and market, in which people voluntarily interact for promotion of their own, public interests and the common good”.
Opinions differ on the extent to which Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) influence public opinion and attitudes in local communities. Whatever its advocacy positions, the ability of a CSO to influence public opinion depends on its capacity (human, financial, etc.), the political environment in its area of operation, the size of its membership and/or number of beneficiaries, the organization’s visibility and information activities, and other factors. In other words, the ability of a CSO to influence public opinion depends on a complex number of factors and can be assessed only on a case-by-case basis.
An important condition for civic engagement is that participating civil society organizations themselves observe democratic principles of its operations. The WB study paper “Democratizing the Global Economy. The Role of Civil Society” outlines the major area of special attention, including ensuring the necessary competence to deal with the issues in question; tackling challenges to offer equal opportunities of involvement to all people, regardless of age, class, faith, nationality, race, sex and other social categories; maximizing own visibility and their own answerability to stakeholders and the wider society.
Different forms of civic engagement are available to international organizations and national decision-makers. These include, first of all, 1) consultations to sound out the views of various social actors and stakeholders on issues of key importance for international institutions and national authorities, and the creation of 2) consultative bodies. The latter can be standing councils with regular meetings on current and pending programs/projects of the institution/ ministry, and should be based upon clearly defined criteria for the selection and replacement of its members, democratic mechanisms of coordination and decision-making, and accountability to various social groups.
Other forms include: 3) public opinion research (though much data may already have been gathered by governmental and non-governmental organizations) and 4) independent expertise, that is, outside experts invited to track progress in project implementation and final post-project evaluation. Such public expertise can verify that the project in question has incorporated recommendations received in the course of consultations with civil society and other stakeholders.
International organizations and Russian officials can also organize 5) formal public hearings following individual or public consultations on projects; audits of project results may be put forward for discussion. In such public hearings the role of regional authorities is of particular value. Finally, there is 6) information dissemination to raise public awareness and make an institution/agency’s work understandable to citizens. Information on international institution’s work should be disseminated not only by the institutions themselves, but also by CSOs that monitor and analyze their performance.
Finally, on the issue of 7) funding, possible mechanisms include sub-contracting agreements, grant agreements, indirect funding through a foundation created with the support of an international institution, or through an independent foundation; a grant agreement with the federal or regional government and CSOs.
The list of CE forms above does not cover the whole multitude of CE forms, but gives an idea of the key CE categories. The IFIs in Russia have developed impressive policies that regulate CE and have somewhat advanced in their practical implementation.
2. Civic Engagement Policies of European Institutions: EBRD
As of the end of 2002 the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development invested EURO 4,9 bln in Russia in the form of direct and regional investments in such projects as credit lines to the Russian banks, construction of plants, development of corporate governance codes, program of restructuring of natural monopolies, construction of dam, etc. 25% of all investments of the EBRD are made in Russia. On average the Bank invests EURO 1,2 in Russia.
EBRD does not have a separate document or policy paper devoted to civic engagement. Principles of engaging civil society are integrated in documents that cover development of particular sectors of economy or in country strategies.
Certain civic engagement principles were published in the EBRD Public Information Policy (PIP) in September 1997. All Bank’s obligations to assure transparency of its operations are based on PIP and the Independent Recourse Mechanism (IRM), created in 2004. The two mentioned documents and some other key policy documents were translated into Russian and could be found at the Bank’s web-site. In formulating the Country Strategy, EBRD previews an electronic consultations process through its web-site. The public may learn about each Bank’s project from the Project Summary Document (PSD), which consists of brief project description and objectives, key financial indicators and summary of environmental impact.
The EBRD institutional structure does not preview existence of specialists, responsible for civic engagement in the Bank’s country offices. Only two specialists, a manager and a consultant, are directly tasked to work with civic engagement issues and are placed at the EBRD Head office in London working in the Outreach and NGOs Relations Unit. These experts are tasked to provide for efficient information exchange on civic engagement issues between the country office and Headquarters.
Outreach and NGO Relations Unit is responsible for collecting and processing comments on Bank’s policies and strategies received in the course of civil society consultations, as well as all other information requests and correspondence from civil society groups, addressed to EBRD, which should not remain unattended. Among the key stakeholder, EBRD identifies local communities, NGOs, international financial institutions (IFIs), bilateral and multilateral environmental organizations and other bodies, including national and sub-national authorities and businesses.
In 2005 EBRD started preparing a special monthly Newsletter for NGOs in two official Bank's languages – Russian and English. This Newsletter adds up to a number of other electronic resources, including EBRD News, electronic consultations with civil society through EBRD web-site, NGO Dialogue mailing list available only to NGOs by registering with the EBRD NGO Team and NGO updates available to general public. EBRD has plans to create separate web-sites of its country offices in local languages. A Practical Guide for NGOs could also be found at the EBRD web-site since 2005, making a brief overview of the Bank’s rationale to work with NGOs, as well as various options for civil society to become engaged with the Bank.
In cases when senior managers or members of the Board of Directors travel to countries of operation, their program, as a rule, includes meetings with civil society organizations. When selecting CSOs for participation in Bank’s events, such as annual meetings or civil society consultations, EBRD relies on its country offices, despite absence of specialists, assigned to work on civic engagement issues. The key selection criteria are relevance of the topic discussed for a CSO’s work, previous experience of interaction with the Bank, etc.
Parallel to official program of the EBRD annual meetings, the Bank organizes a special program of meetings for CSOs, attending the meeting. When forming the program for CSOs, the Bank tries to cover maximum issues that are of interest to participants. At some meetings of EBRD management with CSOs, the NGO Relations Manager takes minutes, which are later disseminated to participants of the meeting for comments, regardless that such minutes would be an internal Bank’s document.
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EBRD undertakes consultations with civil society on projects that require Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). External relations and outreach activities in projects, carried out with the financial support of EBRD in Russia, are for the most part previewed for environmental issues at the stage of the project called “Environmental Procedures”.
A difficult challenge for EBRD in Russia in terms of CE became the project of oil and gas industry development “Sakhalin-2”. Judging by the number of stakeholders, clashes of various interests and protests of the public, “Sakhalin-2” may well be compared with the “Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan“ oil pipeline project. EBRD developed the “Sakhalin Oblast action plan” (April 2004), which was placed at the Bank’s web-site next to general information about Bank’s operations in Russia.
Watchdog organizations, working on monitoring IFIs, such as CEE Bankwatch
[4], claim that companies, working on oil and gas extraction in Sakhalin Oblast since 1994, do actually affect in a negative way the population of grey whales, marine environment of the region and threaten the livelihood of tens of thousands of fishermen. According to these NGOs, of particular danger are plans to construct two 800 km oil and gas pipelines in a seismic region, with projected funding from EBRD. Russian and international civil society organizations joined forces in the coalition and undertake a number of advocacy efforts, including formal and informal meetings with EBRD officials for presenting their claims and suggesting changes that are to be undertaken by implementing companies and the Bank.
Russian EBRD offices, as well as Bank’s offices in other countries, does not publish big volumes of information materials for wide public dissemination about own work and projects and, since EBRD does not consider it necessary to actively disseminate such information to the general pubic. Regarding particular projects, implementing companies, as well as Russian executive authorities that are responsible for a project, initiate preparation and dissemination, as well as translation of the project documentation for stakeholders in the frame of a given project. As needed, for example, at the end of a project, the Bank organizes public hearings with participation of the interested civil society organizations from the project region.
3. Cross-border interaction of civil society organizations: policy centers
Policy centers (think-tanks, research centers, centers for public policy) from the EU member-states, candidate countries and Russia cooperate closely in a variety or areas, including economic issues, policy and political studies (i.e. Policy Association for Open Society), social matters (i.e. NGO Network Russia-Finland), cultural issues (i.e. societies of friendship), etc.
Policy centers are the intellectual elite of non-profit sector. They carry out analytic work, for example: development of draft laws, social technologies and recommendations to government bodies concerning reform of various sectors of economy.
It may be the case that research centers execute orders of government bodies, business structures and donor organizations. In addition to that, research centers often lobby at home and in Brussels, for various factions’ interests: both interest of financial structures supporting them and investing in them, and interests of the customers who order to do a research, as well as interests of business structures and various strata of population. Therefore, policy centers have to take care of own internal democracy and place advancement of democratic values in the heart of their work.
As set out in the Strategy Paper, adopted at the founding Assembly of the Policy Association for Open Society (PASOS) in Prague in December 2004, the mission and strategic goals serve to put into context the activities outlined in this paper. This relatively new and influential network, appeared with the support of Local Government Initiative of the Open Society Foundation, is one of the most rapidly developing ties together policy centres from the new EU members-states, candidate countries, neighbouring countries, Russia
[5], Caucasus and Central Asia.
According to the Mission of PASOS, the Association promotes and protects open society values, including democracy, the rule of law, good governance, respect for and protection of human rights, and economic and social development, by supporting entities that foster public participation in public benefit matters. Among the strategic goals of PASOS are to achieve concerted policy impact in building open society; to promote and support research and analytical capacity of entities formulating public interest policy; to have a continuous say in key issues of international relations, the future of the regions, and social transformation; to assist decision-making processes of public interests by providing information to decision-makers and the general public; to foster co-operation among PASOS members and other entities formulating public interest policy.
In its work, PASOS is backed up by the whole institutional structure of Open Society Institute, including its Brussels lobbying office. The latest General Assembly of PASOS members gathered in Brussels and had a chance to hear about the supra-national decision-making process from European Commission policy-makers from and expereince from Brussels-based think-tanks.
As an international agenda-setter, PASOS also needs to play a role on the international stage, in particular by driving civil society policy inputs from PASOS members into EU decision-making processes, for instance budget allocation mechanisms and external relations decision-making structures. I would highlight two aspects:
(a) Strengthening the voice of civil society policy centres from new EU members, from candidate countries and countries covered by the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).
(b) PASOS, with OSI partners, can lead a drive for a new multipolarity of decision-making in the EU, so that more initiatives and agenda-setting come from the new members states (from where a network of civil society policy centres can set the agenda on local, national and EU level).
(c) Strengthening the public policy-making process and strengthening civil society’s input into this process.
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(1) - Issues and Options for Improving Engagement Between the World Bank and Civil Society Organizations. The World Bank. Draft from 24 October 2003 and final version from March 2005.
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(2) - Ïðåññ-ðåëèç ïî ðåçóëüòàòàì ïðîåêòà êàôåäðû ÞÍÅÑÊÎ/ÈÍÊÎÐÂÓÇ Ãîñóäàðñòâåííîãî óíèâåðñèòåòà óïðàâëåíèÿ (ÃÓÓ) "Ðàçðàáîòêà ó÷åáíî-ìåòîäè÷åñêèõ ïîñîáèé ïî êóðñó "Ìåíåäæìåíò íåïðàâèòåëüñòâåííîé íåêîììåð÷åñêîé îðãàíèçàöèè" (ïðîåêò UNESCO-CEPES ¹873 499.1).
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(3) - Interview with D. Caloianu, Manager Outreach and NGO Relations Unit, EBRD, Belgrade, July 2005.
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(4) - http://www.bankwatch.org/
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(5) - There are two members in the Association from Russia: Center for Legal Support to Local Government (Moscow) and St.Petersburg Center for Humanities and Political Studies “Strategy”.
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(6) - PASOS Action Plan, 4 July 2005,
http://www.pasos.org/
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