The austerity dialogue in Zeist: How the Municipality of Zeist harnesses the ideas of ‘citizen-experts’

Learning points

In retrospect, three main difficulties can be highlighted.

1. Zeist found some difficulties in involving young people. Believing that they also had an important role if the choices made were to be sustainable, extra effort was put into attracting adolescents and students as well. For instance, a contest was launched to capture their best ideas.
2. Many experts argued that the process took place under serious time pressure. Some results of the expert committees might have been better if more time had been available for reflection. On the other hand, the time pressure may well have been necessary to keep thing moving.
3. Some experts have suggested that the open and sincere attitude of local councillors came under pressure at the final stage, when they had to make hard decisions within the context of political competition. Furthermore, some ‘citizen experts’ were a bit put off by how their ‘citizen expert’ proposals were translated in generic policy documents, as well as by the political jargon being used. However, apart from a dozen proposals, the solutions of the expert committees were adopted without any adjustments. The rejected proposals did not meet the initial framework (e.g. “we should not cut back on social benefits”) or had an uncertain fiscal contribution.

Looking at the success factors, two aspects should be emphasized. First, without the sincere belief of the local politicians in the strength, expertise and creativity of the citizens in solving local problems, this process would have been doomed to fail. As the mayor said:

“The strength of society lies within people. By giving them confidence
and allowing them to get close to us, this strength grows to ultimate levels.”

 (Koos Janssen, Mayor of Zeist)

The intrinsic motivation of politicians to leave the challenge to society and of public officials to listen to the people in the street was crucial. The extent of this far-reaching paradigm shift was clearly articulated by one of the participating public officials in the journey:

“And what if I don’t trust the people in the street? Then it’s time to look out for a new job.”

(Municipal staff member)

A second success factor was the flexibility of the approach. Apart from a set of guidelines from the council (containing limitations and criteria), there was no blueprint for realizing the goals of rebalancing and participating. There was no template describing how to roll out the ideas. As the city managers argued:

“The world is far too complex to change it using a blueprint. Besides that, we want to use and develop talent. “

(Ineke Lissenberg, City Manager of Zeist)

The key resource was a couple of intrinsically motivated officers, who truly believed in the challenge and who were appointed to manage the process. Every decision they made was associated with underlying belief in the dialogue (WHY) and its principles (HOW). The process was managed incrementally and adjusted gradually, using only the proceedings of the dialogue. A special committee which was appointed to be responsible for unforeseen issues did not come together once during the journey.

1. The success of the austerity dialogue in Zeist shows that citizen participation has added value. Although citizen participation is time-consuming for citizens, and therefore has to be used selectively, citizen participation has become ‘a way of life’ in Zeist.
2. Where we believe in the strength, expertise and creativity of citizens, co-design is a good way to develop better policy alternatives, instead of focussing on cuts. However, it is important to limit the influence of citizens to areas in which they can use their own expertise, experience and interest.
3. Where we believe in the strength, expertise and creativity of citizens, dialogue is a good instrument to enlarge the support for policy alternatives in local communities.