This section encourages you to reflect on the question of the extent to which you intend to engage, and how much you intend to empower the participants of your activity. This helps facilitate the development of appropriate citizen engagement strategies based on and tailored to the decision-making context.
The 5Cs of Collective Action are a heuristic to help characterize the level of participation.
- Co-exist: Depicts one end of the spectrum, where there is no interaction or active relationship between decision-makers and citizens, as they co-exist independently in their own silos, without any means or infrastructure to collaborate.
- Communicate: Constitutes a one-directional relationship, originating from decision-makers to citizens, where citizens are informed and/or educated about topics and issues deemed as relevant by the decision-makers, contributing to a common understanding.
- Consult: Represents a hybrid interaction, standing between a one-sided and a two-way relationship, as decision-makers invite citizens to actively interact and contribute to the decision-making, through input, opinions and/or feedback, which will then be factored in and considered in the policy-making process.
- Collaborate: Indicates a reciprocal relationship, where decision-makers work together with citizens and stakeholders who are affected by and concerned with the respective topic and/or issue to participate on a stage of the policy-making process.
- Co-decide: Stands for the maximized participation end of the spectrum, where a multidirectional relationship takes place, and the decision-making power is equally distributed between decision-makers and citizens.
We’ve organized dozens of cases from Participedia and Latinno according to the SDGs targeted to support you in finding references and inspirations.
Additional Resources: