Analysis of the South Africa IRM Report
The South Africa IRM report captures well a reality which has been evident for a while. There is strong government commitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action... to accountability and responsiveness – but citizens are often excluded from decision-making and able to ensure that government does what they want only by mobilising behind demands. The country may have more laws mandating citizen participationAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, citizen participation occurs when “governments seek to mobilize citizens to engage in public debate, provide input, and make contributions that lead to m... More than any others – yet citizens can get government to do what they want only by mobilising in support of demands.
As the report also shows, government and civil society do not work well together to ensure more open government. But is all this necessarily a problem? Is the solution more and better formal forums for participation and more government-civil society harmony?
Democratic government is meant to serve the people. This possibity is restricted when government alone decides the forums in which citizens should talk to it. Democracy is inevitably about the expression of difference: it seeks to offer all a say and, since people differ, it is authentic only when differences are heard. Mutual respect is essential – co-operation is not. This is a model for government-civil society relations.
The problems highlighted by the report can be addressed by more serious engagement, not more harmony. Democracy is also for everyone and everyone is not in civil society: in South Africa, most people are not. Either they lack the resources to take part or they live in areas where the rights which civil society requires are denied them by local power holders. They cannot be accommodated by formal forums or by civil society. All this means that the route to open government lies not in more formal processes or in anointing a civil society which excludes most citizens as the representative of all. It lies, rather in strengthening practices which enable more citizens to insist that government does what they want; and in ensuring that more and more people can decide how they want to hold government to account, restricted only by the law and the constitution, rather than in more processes in which government decides how it wants to talk to the people.