Social networks are emerging from our research as critical to shaping individuals and the resources and opportunities they have to participate. The RSA’s latest paper has some thought provoking findings that link very closely in places to our work.

‘Power Lines’ is based on an analysis of social networks in New Cross Gate in south London. A selection of the key findings included:

• ‘Those with fewer local connections in general were more likely to be isolated from local influence’;
• ‘Being retired, unemployed, and living in certain areas, all made it more likely that people would be disconnected from local influence’;
• ‘Even within the relatively small area [there was] considerable variation. Some areas had much denser social networks than others’;
• ‘Poorly connected areas are characterised by a few very well connected individuals, and many poorly connected people. Well-connected neighbourhoods are composed of individuals who have similar amounts of connections as others’;
• ‘Community networks are resilient when they have numerous connections both internally and externally’.

The report’s overarching argument is that the government’s current approach to the Big Society is focused too much on ‘citizen-led service delivery’ and not enough on ‘utilising and building people’s social networks’. These social networks – the authors argue – ‘largely determine our ability to create change and influence decisions that affect us’.

They suggest that participation is often defined too narrowly, focusing on ‘so-called “active” citizens’, who are regularly engaged in public participation and are often regarded as the ‘vision of what it is to be empowered and to have influence’.  Rather, the authors argue that in order to increase individuals’ access to local power, the focus ‘must first be on fostering overall social connections and neighbourliness’.

This argument, I feel, fits well with both the approach of our research and our findings. It suggests that rather than focusing on trying to increase participation in narrowly defined activities, we must take a step back and look from the perspective of individuals at the factors and forces that shape participation as a whole, of which social networks are a key part. Then, by focusing on building these resources and opportunities, we can begin to empower citizens to feel able to participate – if and where they wish to – and to feel that their involvement will make a difference.

The report highlights that if community groups are to be involved, policies to engage people in community action need to be informed by a more sophisticated understanding of how and why community organisations operate. It notes that people primarily take part in community action for very personal reasons rather than from a sense of civic duty, and questions whether this can be co-opted to deliver particular policy objectives. Voluntary action for many is about social needs, ‘fun’, doing something different to the ‘day job’ or taking action about something that directly affects them.

The report also finds that there were major concerns among organisations involved in this activity that the Big Society agenda would create greater inequalities, by favouring communities with the resources to engage. The research identifies a need for policy to be informed by a much stronger analysis of power relations within and between communities and the state. Where government has been successful at directly motivating people to act, anger has also played a major role as the anti-Iraq war demonstrations or the more recent demonstrations against increased tuition fees show.

A 4-page summary of the report is available here.

The report provides a practical tool and framework for analysing power and achieving social change. It also looks at how the organisations that took part in the programme used power analysis and what changed for these organisations as a result of their involvement. We’ve mentioned in the past other publications that look at power frameworks but the main advantage of this report is that it actually examines how organisations have used these tools and to what effect.

The second chapter focuses on the successes and challenges of the process that was used (selection criteria for recruiting organisations; workshops for participating organisations; one-to-one support; introduction to power frameworks and analytical tools; stakeholder workshops to share learning; and self-documentation). The feedback provided in this section is very timely for the Pathways project as we’re currently organising participatory workshops in the three local case study areas to present findings and explore with local stakeholders what they mean in practice.

The Participation, Power and Social Change team at the Institute of Development Studies (where John Gaventa works) has recently launched a new website – powercube.net – to help people think about power relations within organisations and beyond. It explains how the power cube can be use to analyse and understand power but also provides information on a range of other approaches to power and a very rich collection of resources (case studies, handouts, papers, videos etc).

Demos has published this report to contribute to the debate about power and powerlessness in the UK. It is intended to provide an initial framework for measuring and mapping power and powerlessness, to enable others to do their own investigations, and to challenge the defnitions and indicators of power Demos are proposing. The report includes ‘power maps’ of the UK with scores for each political constituency in the UK.

The Pathways project will be using the ‘power maps’ to provide an additional dimension to the area profiles that are now being drafted for the three case study areas (in Leeds, Suffolk and Enfield).