Concept 1: Ladder of participation

The word “participation” has too many meanings. Show up at a meeting: you’re participating. Vote on your town’s budget allocation: you’re participating. Forward a virtual petition to a friend…are you “participating”?

A classic essay by Sherry Arnstein puts levels of participation on a “ladder,” from lower “symbolic” levels to contributions at the decision-making and “citizen control” levels. Arnstein explains that what we call participation, when done superficially, is actually just informing others. Welcome to our meeting! Let us now inform you about what we’ve already decided in your absence. These actions might be better classified as “non-participation,” she argues; tokenistic at best and manipulative at worst.

Source: Arnstein, S. “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 35, №4, July 1969, pp. 216–224. See also: https://www.citizenshandbook.org/arnsteinsladder.html

Inspired by Arnstein’s essay, and his own experiences working with street children, Robert Hart created an updated “participation ladder” that included the word “decoration” to describe events when children may be invited to speak, or to sing/perform at an event, but “have no say in the organizing of the occasion.” (Children’s Participation guide is here, see p. 8 for the updated ladder).

One way to think about participation is as opportunity.

We invite you to participate, to contribute, and you are free to do so (or not). When the invitation is not compelling, or timely, people may pass on participating altogether. To design opportunities for meaningful participation we must be willing to give up some control.

Key questions to guide the design of opportunities for participation in a given project or process relate to the timing, frequency and level of that participation:

1. How early can we get contributions from others? (Early participation helps shape the design of an intervention. It may be the case that financial or technical partnerships have determined the direction of your intervention and thus participation at the earliest stage is not possible);
2. How often can we seek contributions from others? (Since participation takes time, it may not be possible to have contributions from community members at every stage of an intervention process: design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, re-design/adaptation, etc.)
3. What level of participation are we seeking? In other words: How much control are we willing to give up? Granting decision making power to others may not be possible. There is a saying that “the hand that gives is always on top,” and this applies to financial partners who may not be willing or able to let community members design the program and its objectives, or decide how resources or allocated. To promote the “nothing about us without us” approach, it is important to find ways for community members to contribute when participatory decision making is not possible.

Two suggestions on the design of participatory approaches:

1. Manage expectations. Explain the opportunities for participation up front. If you are only seeking consultation or validation, just explain that. Never promise more than you can afford to spend, in terms of time and resources, both human and financial.
2. Consider the cost of non-participation. Early and frequent community participation can improve intervention design and implementation, grounding the project in local realities. The risk of non-participation is total irrelevance and failure. If you bake the bread without community members, using your own special “expert” recipe, do not be surprised if they don’t like the taste of it and refuse to eat it.

I always learn from examples, so I will give a few here, to illustrate ways to design for participation:

1. During the 2018–2020 Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo, we used a de-complicated human centered design approach to get community input for content. Unsurprisingly, people didn’t want to talk about Ebola! Therefore, our “co-creation” process with communities helped us design a new vaccination reminder card, gave us new ideas for promoting birth registration, and allowed us to get faster with shareable digital tools for COVID-19 prevention.
2. We had a “failed” yet positive experience when a prototype of digital Ebola prevention content showed that people did not want to use their mobile phone data to download and share the content. Sometimes non-participation tells you everything you need to know.
3. During a weekly community radio show on governance in Nepal, we invited community members to submit questions and contributions via SMS and interactive voice response. Listeners submitted everything from poems to songs and plenty of questions. We were able to include in subsequent broadcasts this crowd-sourced content. It did not take much to “design for participation” — all it took was the belief that community members would have important and creative things to contribute.

Speaking of participation… an invitation: Please feel free to share our ideas on how to improve or strengthen this first “concept” essay. I lose nothing and can only gain if/when readers choose to share their ideas. To manage expectations, I will share that I may not be able to accept all suggestions given the length of this short chapter. I will, however, be happy to publicly thank and acknowledge any inputs I am able to include here. Please send suggestions to: kgreiner-at-gmail. Comments and questions also welcome below.