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Attitudes to citizen participation, neighbourhood and social inclusion in Scottish cities: Explaining Inter-Neighbourhood Variations

Draft: Not for quotation without permission

Ronan Paddison,
Iain Docherty and
Robina Goodland,

University of Glasgow

Paper read at EURA Conference. Area-based initiatives in contemporary urban policy. Copenhagen May 17-19 2001

In prescriptive terms contemporary notions of good practice in urban regeneration have become increasingly formulaic. The regeneration of cities is expressed in terms of two broad, and ideally inter-related, aims, the quest for competitive advantage fuelling economic growth within cities that are simultaneously able to be socially cohesive. Typically, these objectives are expressed at different spatial scales. Competitiveness is sought at the city, or city region, scale, while social cohesion, insofar as it is interpreted spatially, is commonly sought in terms of inter-neighbourhood social equity. In this sense social cohesion entails an assault on social exclusion particularly as it is identifiable in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Both tasks are dependent in turn on the ability of the system of local governance to foster economic growth within cities in ways that are inclusionary and responsive to the diversity of the city, and in particular to the reduction of social inequalities. None of the triumvirate – competitiveness, social cohesion (and including inclusion) and governance – is unproblematic, either in terms of theory or praxis. Masking these problems, good practice in urban regeneration has tended to canonise particular idea(l)s around which the triumvirate can and should be structured. Further, the inclusion of these is attested as being essential to the successful attainment of policy objectives.

Local participation, empowerment and the fostering of, and building upon, social capital are each contemporary canons of the regeneration process, particularly at the neighbourhood level. Where much of the urban regeneration effort in Britain, as elsewhere, has been directed at deprived neighbourhoods, the inclusion of local participation is commonly accepted as a necessary means by which neighbourhood revival is to be attained. Local participation, it is assumed, will bolster individual and community empowerment, building democratic practice into urban governance. Further, showing evidence of its inclusion has become a sine qua non to the attraction of funding to support local improvements. Participation and empowerment can build upon, and foster, social capital, the benefits of which, it is argued, are likely to contribute to the overarching objectives of regeneration, including greater social inclusion. Thus in its influential study on neighbourhood renewal the (UK) Government’s Social Exclusion Unit is explicit on the putative benefits of incorporating and building social capital, talking in terms of the ‘fostering (of) community links and building the skills, self-esteem and networks of those who give their time’ ( Social Exclusion Unit, 1998,68) as essential supports upon which renewal is created.

Where the modes by which urban regeneration is to be achieved have adopted a paradigmatic status, then like all paradigms the dangers in their use lie in the uncritical acceptance of the assumptions on which they are based. Such a criticism would hardly seem justified applied to the praxis of participation, nor even of the more recently fashionable concept of social capital. Both have been the subject of considerable critique. Successive evaluations of participatory practice, beginning with Sherry Arnstein’s still frequently-quoted typology through to a significant out pouring of more recent research scrutinising different facets of participation, from discourse analyses of its formulation ( Atkinson, 1999) through to its measurement ( Barnes, 2000) to praxis ( see for example, Burns, Hambleton and Hoggett, 1994).

Yet as much as community involvement is considered an essential part of the process of urban ( including neighbourhood) regeneration, diagnoses of its contemporary condition, in the United States as well as in Britain and elsewhere, suggest that encouraging citizens to participate is by no means unproblematic. Part of the explanation here may be that many, and possibly an increasing proportion of citizens feel themselves increasingly disengaged from local political processes. As one of the more influential writers in the field, David Putnam has suggested that civic engagement is in decline and/or operating at significantly lower levels than was the case two or three decades ago. In his most recent book, Bowling Alone, Putnam (2000) charts the considerable decline in social capital (much of which is measured in terms of community organisational life, patterns of community voluntarism and civic engagement including voting) in the United States. Yet in their useful ‘longitudinal’ study of voluntary organisations in Birmingham over the last three decades Maloney et al (2000) show that in certain fields, such as race relations, there has been a marked increase in voluntary activity, responding to broader shifts in the (local) political agenda and the growing portfolio of urban government responsibilities.

Yet in Britain there is a widespread perception, reflected most immediately in the low turnouts in local elections, that local democracy is failing, and that one symptom and cause of this is that the willingness to participate more generally in local political processes is at a low ebb. Thus in the drive towards modernisation of local government initiated by the Blair Government after 1997, the lack of civic engagement and the necessity for building local participation are both seen as essential steps by which (local) democratic renewal can be achieved ; electoral apathy and low levels of participation are both symptoms of the local democratic deficit. This is not to deny that, as Putnam is at pains to show, that high levels of community involvement can be correlated with a diverse array of desirable local social conditions, including the successful reduction of crime rates and economic regeneration. Rather, the recurrent questions centre on how such community involvement and civic engagement can be fostered, what structural factors and attitudes, as for example those towards local government, predispose or otherwise citizens to become involved in the micro-politics of their community, and how these vary between neighbourhoods within cities.

Evaluative analyses of citizen participation have typically been critical of how it has been defined, the purposes sought by and for it, its implementation, its ability to be able to represent the multiple voices characterising urban populations, or the extent to which its employment is tokenistic ( Burns et al, 1994). As much as fostering local participation has become commonplace, its practice is problematic, and particularly in the extent to which it is able to capture the intentions sought for it.

However justified these criticisms of the mismatch between outcomes and expectations, it is the obvious fact that participatory democracy is a highly contingent process that tends to be overlooked, in spite of its importance in explaining the variations between neighbourhoods (and citizens) in the way participation is perceived and unfolds. It is precisely because neighbourhoods vary markedly in their socio-economic makeup, in their problems, their history of local participation and in a host of other ways, that how the opportunities for local participation are perceived, and the experiences of them by groups and individuals, will vary. Yet, official rhetoric – in the Blairite project of local democratic renewal, for example – gives little credence to the contingent nature of public participation, offering universalistic solutions.

This paper looks at the background to local participation through an examination of attitudes towards it within four neighbourhoods in the two major cities of central Scotland, Edinburgh and Glasgow. The neighbourhoods have been paired so as to be broadly comparable between the cities, but differing within the two urban areas – that is, in both cities selection included neighbourhoods which include problem estates and which have been the subject of integrated regeneration programmes, together with areas which are more ‘mixed’. This allows for comparison between cities and within them, between neighbourhoods. The analysis is based largely on a questionnaire survey of households in each of the neighbourhoods, together with evidence drawn from interviews conducted among community activists, local politicians and officials, and from focus groups of local residents. The study forms part of a wider study investigating competitiveness and social cohesion in central Scotland under the ESRC Cities programme.

Our prime interest in this paper is to investigate inter-neighbourhood variations in what we term ‘political capital’, the stock of attitudes and experience underpinning local participation. The evidence affords an examination of the relative weight of neighbourhood as opposed to personal factors that underpin participation. Area-based regeneration is premised on the assumption that the neighbourhood is a meaningful space within which change can be orchestrated. The extent to which neighbourhood effects may be apparent in moulding attitudes towards local participation, as opposed to personal characteristics of residents provides an important basis on which to evaluate a key assumption on which area-based regeneration is founded.

The paper is divided into four sections. In the first we identify three key factors associated with the building of local political capital, the role of local social capital, local state-society relations and the ‘type’ of local neighbourhood. These factors highlight the important of contextual factors against which neighbourhood participation takes place. In the second section we examine more closely these contexts framing this analysis, the two cities and recent policy initiatives seeking to build local participation within regeneration processes, together with an account of the four neighbourhoods. In the following section we discuss the findings of the attitudinal survey focussing on four indices associated with political capital, testing for the relative significance of neighbourhood and personal factors. In the concluding section we draw out some tentative conclusions which link political capital to the wider processes of neighbourhood change.

Building Local Political Capital

In contemporary urban governance it is not just that the need to include community participation is widely accepted as good practice, but that good practice has set goals for it that have become increasingly ambitious. The trend has been clear in British urban policy over the last two to three decades. Its inclusion is explicit within the programme of Neighbourhood Renewal aimed at tackling the problems of social exclusion concentrated within the worst urban housing estates in British cities. At the very least tackling the problems of such estates requires a detailed knowledge of what are the community’s problems and needs. Local communities, then, will need to be consulted and listened to, so that problems in the delivery of those services which are of key importance to quality of life can be effectively addressed. Yet Neighbourhood Renewal envisages a more privileged position for participation than consultation alone; the intention is to ensure that communities are both able ‘to influence decisions and take action to improve their neighbourhoods’ ( Social Exclusion Unit, 2001, p.43). Community groups, then, would be important members of the ‘Local Strategic Partnerships’ projected to ensure that implementation of neighbourhood renewal is facilitated.

Neighbourhood Renewal is one of a number of regeneration initiatives in which the coopting of community participation is expressed as important not only for ensuring that local needs are met, but is seen as critical to the whole process of sustainable development in deprived areas. It is complemented by a growing array of initiatives, introduced by city councils, development agencies and other governmental bodies, aimed at drawing public participation into the processes of urban governance. Yet, expanding the opportunities for local participation, together with the boundaries of local participatory democracy, presume that, potentially at least, citizens will be willing participants. In other words, by accepting the responsibilities of citizenship introduced by such enhanced opportunities citizens will become more engaged members of the (local) state. Put this way, enough evidence exists to suggest that, at least in the British case, political participation is both an episodic and restricted activity. For all but a minority involvement tends to be limited to the relatively passive act of voting ; and indeed even in this case in Britain turnouts in local elections typically attract less than a majority of those entitled to vote.

It is the enhancing of citizen participation that is correctly identified as an essential component of the project of the renewal of local democracy. It is a formidable task, all the more so because of the increasingly ambitious goals set for community involvement. Fostering local participation requires the building of notions of trust and reciprocity, in effect of the building of local political capital, within communities as well as between them and the local state. Amongst citizens, the majority of whom, have become relatively disengaged from local political processes such a task is clearly likely to be problematic.

Amongst the factors which can be associated with the building of local political capital and community participation are the role of social capital, (local) state-society relationships and the characteristics of the community itself. We shall look briefly each in turn. At the outset what needs emphasising is that these factors are not independent of one another. Indeed, strong inter-relationships exist between each. Further, none is unproblematic where the role of each of the three factors has been subjected to considerable criticism, probably no more so than in the currently fashionable notion of social capital (Levi, 1996). Their value lies in providing propositions that begin to unpack the notion of local political capital and why and how its unfolding through community participation is likely to vary between places.

The role of social capital in fostering effective (local) political processes ( as well as its contribution to economic revitalisation) has become the focus of considerable recent debate ( Schuller et al,2000). Though not the first to coin or use the term, Puttnam’ s developing thoughts on the nature and roles of social capital have been amongst the more influential. In Making Democracy Work Puttnam (1993) argued that how civil society functions influences government performance and that strong networks of civic engagement enhance the success of economic development as well as having positive effects on the local polity. It was in fact in a later work that a definition of social capital was offered as ‘the features of social life –networks, norms and trust – that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives’ (Puttnam, 1996,56). Clearly participation is a basic component of social capital, the existence of which would be directed instrumentally for the collective good.

In a number of respects the notion of social capital is not dissimilar to previous accounts of the ‘well-functioning community’. Such communities were characterised by the vibrancy of their social networks and of their associational life. Yet, the existence of strong social ties need not necessarily mean that local political association is enhanced. As Maloney et al (2000) point out Puttnam’s correlation between the social and the political draws heavily on de Tocqueville’s work, but the association between the two is by no means inevitable. However appealing at an intuitive level it may be to argue that ‘strong’ communities with dense networks of social interaction provide the basis upon which political association can be built, such a relationship may be far from being clear-cut. For one, social networks have boundaries and may be, therefore exclusionary as well as inclusive. For another, it tends to overlook the reality that political communities are both arenas for conflict as well as they are of cooperation.

Perhaps surprisingly, few attempts have been made to measure and assess the role of local social capital as part of the process of urban neighbourhood regeneration. Based on a typology developed in a Third World context, where much more work has been developed to operationalise the concept of social capital, Hibbert et al (2000) provide one of the few analyses measuring and offering an evaluation of the concept applied to neighbourhood regeneration, in their case in Merseyside. Their conclusions are valuable in suggesting that while the notion of social capital is of intrinsic value, its major weakness is that it overlooks its interplay within the wider structures of (urban) power. Though by no means the only criticism that can be applied to social capital, its importance is that it confronts the over-significance attached to horizontal linkages within Puttnam’s work. To the extent that social capital can be linked to the development of political capital, the development of the latter is itself also moulded by the nature of the linkages between the community and the wider arena, the city, of which it is a member.

In other words, the building of local political capital is influenced by the vertical linkages tieing neighbourhoods within the wider networks of urban governance as well as it by the horizontal linkages which help define the sense (and strength) of community. The current process of modernising local government/governance gives explicit recognition to the importance of these linkages encouraging local councils to innovate with different techniques fostering community/citizen participation. Leach and Wingfield (1999) show in the case of English authorities how innovative many councils have been, experimenting with the use of citizens juries and panels, visioning groups and cyber-democracy in order to lessen the distance between themselves and the diverse communities for which they have strategic and service delivery responsibilities.

The institutions through which local participation is channelled, and within which local political capital is accumulated, are typically both initiated and structured within frameworks devised by local agencies. How participation is to be incorporated is often consulted upon with local community and other groups. Further, the spread in popularity of local partnerships has brought together public and private sector representatives together with community and voluntary organisations in institutions aimed at improving the local quality of life, marking the shift identified by some towards a more ‘bottom-up’ approach to neighbourhood change. But, fundamentally, even if it is accepted that neighbourhood regeneration has become more sensitised to the inclusion of the local community, the ‘rules of engagement’ remain a top-down initiative, structuring the institutions through which participation can take place, its purposes and the constraints under which it operates.

The practice of local participation reflects the opportunities and constraints created in particular by top-down initiatives. Inevitably, then, the practice and limitations of community participation are the outcome of interaction within wider power networks. The widening of opportunities for citizen participation under the ongoing modernisation process has increased access to policy-making, but where it has often involved consultation whether it has influenced decision-making is a moot point.

Where the methods and rules of participatory engagement are set within parameters largely structured by local agencies, inevitably between authorities there will be differences in the objectives set for participation. Perceptions as to its purpose will differ between local participants and officials besides elected members of the local council. Enhancing public participation, and thereby building participatory democracy into local politics, may not be incompatible with representative democracy as Stewart has argued, but this is not necessarily the way in which the development may be perceived. As Leach and Wingfield (1999) argue ‘ Even in one-party (local) states, where one of the normal conditions of representative democracy – the presence of a significant opposition –is lacking, there is no guarantee that the dominant party (at present typically Labour) will perceive the need for a more participatory approach’ (p.53). Such an argument resonates with experience in parts of Labour-dominated urban Scotland.

For local political capital the significance of these vertical (local state-society) linkages is that they contribute to both the historical and contemporary experiences citizens have of participation. Crudely, these may be expressed as positive, where participation has culminated in some individual or collective preference, and where group and/or individual involvement is perceived as contributory to the outcome, or negative. Obviously, such a representation may over-simplify what is a much more complex process, though it highlights the importance of the experiential nature of participation, passive or active, which in turn will colour the attitudes that individuals and groups may have towards it and which may influence future behaviour.

Where the historical and contemporary experience of participation contributes to the formation of local political capital, it is in local neighbourhoods that much of this accumulated experience takes place. Neighbourhoods are important if only because they constitute the arenas within so much of our daily lives take place. Even where the force of such an argument differs between individuals – those of different gender, age, mobility, for example – the neighbourhood in which we live is a vital component of the quality of life.

Coming to terms with the interaction between neighbourhood and the formation of local political capital means coming to terms with their diverse nature. Neighbourhood diversity is measurable in numerous ways, by class, income, housing tenure, race and so forth. Urban policy has become focused on the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in which there are substantial concentrations of the socially excluded. Yet, to the extent that social exclusion is linked to poverty, in most cities the geography of poverty is more dispersed than the boundaries of urban neighbourhood renewal programme areas would suggest. The point is to emphasise the exclusionary outcomes of boundary-making – not an unimportant point as is apparent in one of the Glasgow neighbourhoods. But it also illustrates that the geographies of neighbourhood classification rarely conform to the discrete parcelling of urban space.

Hutton’s typology of contemporary Britain as the 40:30:30 society provides a convenient, if somewhat generalised, way to envisage how the quality of life is experienced in urban neighbourhoods. In the typology 40% of British society experiences a relatively high quality of life with its households in secure, well-paid, often professional jobs, the middle stratum experiencing much less security and typically in lower paid forms of employment. The lowest stratum includes the excluded, households that are marginalised ( or wholly outside) the formal labour market and which are dependent on state welfare to meet survival needs. Extrapolated onto urban society the typology maps into the basic divisions between neighbourhoods into which cities are recognisable, affluent areas characterised by high levels of home-ownership. Even where privatisation may have made some inroads into housing in disadvantaged areas, and where new forms of management have reduced the monopolistic position of the local state, housing remains dominantly social.

The typology is of particular value in pointing to the ‘fragile’ position of the ‘intermediate type of neighbourhood’, more mixed in its socio-economic and housing composition, and in which ‘pockets’ of poverty are likely. Such areas – represented in two of the neighbourhoods in this study – include a mix of households, both the poor as well as the more secure. Largely excluded from the neighbourhood renewal process, they may include sub-areas and certainly households that share similar characteristics to those living in sink estates. Importantly for the formation of local political capital such areas lack the institutional thickness characterised by the multiplicity of local programmes aimed at renewal in the poor neighbourhoods. Further, they are the more likely to lack the homogeneity, and more certainly the resources households in affluent areas can muster to defend the local collective and individual quality of life.

Two cities and four neighbourhoods: contrasting contexts and patterns of urban governance

As the two major cities of Scotland its is the differences between Edinburgh and Glasgow that are the better known than the similarities. Matching their very different histories, Glasgow’s long term economic decline over much of the last century, and particularly in the latter decades of it, contrasts with Edinburgh’s more static position over the longer term and, more recently, its slow but steady growth. These differences in economic structure and change are matched by contrasts in the social and political complexions of the city. Reflecting the fact that the capital is a more middle class city – a product mainly of the more tightly drawn city boundary in the case of Glasgow – party political dominance has been the less marked in Edinburgh. It is only in the last two decades that the capital has become Labour controlled in the post-war period, contrasting with the situation in Glasgow in which the party has maintained a hegemonic position for nearly all of the period.

In spite of the many differences characterising the two cities, both are home to severely deprived neighbourhoods which have been the subject of successive area regeneration initiatives spread over the last two to three decades. It is true that in Glasgow the scale and intensity of deprivation and social exclusion are considerably more pronounced than in its eastern neighbour. According to the analysis by Gibb et al (1998), in which a Scottish Deprivation Index was devised using census and non-census variables, more than half of the of the city’s postcode sectors were defined as deprived. Further, of the worst 1% of postcode sectors in Scotland, Glasgow accounted for all of them. In Edinburgh just 5% of postcode sectors in the city were deprived. Yet, precisely because of the stronger current economic growth of the capital city, and its more middle-class composition, deprivation achieves the visibility and political significance it does in Glasgow by virtue of the scale of the problem alone.

Within the two cities the study focused on two paired sets of neighbourhoods, representing deprived areas, and more mixed residential areas. The former were chosen using the Scottish Deprivation Index and in the case of both cities are council estates ranked within the worst 10% of deprived areas in Scotland. The other type of area was more mixed in terms of housing tenure and socio-economic composition; they were chosen from the same city sector geographically as the deprived areas. The names of the four areas have been anonymised.

Dalside ( Edinburgh) and Westfields ( Glasgow) are both peripheral estates, built by the local authorities in the 1950s and 1960s to provide public housing for people displaced from cleared inner city slums. Following the economic recessions of the 1970s and 1980s, increasing unemployment and selective out-migration resulted in a residualised population within areas which showed the signs of deprivation and who have had to shoulder the added millstone of ingrained stigmatisation by the city’s population at large. However, both areas have a long history of physical and economic regeneration initiatives, some of which have achieved substantial improvements in the physical environment and made inroads into improving the local quality of life. In the current round of regeneration initiatives both areas have been given Social Inclusion Partnership (SIP) status, programmes designed to tackle problems of social and economic exclusion. Both neighbourhoods have also seen the development of successful local area-based housing associations, which have either renovated older local authority stock or built new houses for rent or shared ownership following demolition of unpopular council housing. As the local authority stock continues to be transferred, renting from housing associations is becoming more and more prevalent, and is the current tenure of over 20% of the household sample in Dalside and Westfields(Table 1)

Decades of socially selective out-migration have left legacies of highly polarised populations in each neighbourhood, with social classes D and E significantly over-represented (Table 2).

Table 1 Tenure by Neighbourhood

Tenure	Neighbourhood
	Dalside (E)	Lockhart (E)	Westfields (G)	Leaflie (G)
	%	%	%	%
Owned	27.4	69.2	20.2	73.4
Private Renting	1.6	20.2	1.0	1.1
Local Authority renting	48.9	3.0	50.5	23.9
Housing Association /co-op renting	22.1	7.6	28.4	1.1

Table 2 Social Class by Neighbourhood

Social Class	Neighbourhood
	Dalside (E)	Lockhart (E)	Westfields (G)	Leaflie (G)
	%	%	%	%
AB	2.1	24.7	1.4	12.0
C1	14.7	42.9	7.7	25.5
C2	15.8	15.7	8.7	26.6
DE	67.4	16.7	82.2	35.9

Lockhart and Leaflie offer several contrasts to the peripheral estates. In many ways they represent ‘aspirational’ neighbourhoods for the residents of Dalside and Westfields. This is partly because households may migrate to them from the nearby peripheral estates when personal circumstances allow. But it is also the case since they represent the kind of neighbourhood that the estates themselves might become if successfully and comprehensively regenerated, being close to the Scottish average on a number of socio-economic indicators including tenure, employment and income.

Lockhart is less than one mile away from Edinburgh city centre. It comprises mainly late 19^th and early 20^th century tenements focused around a major radial road, and also has a large number of modern flats that have been built on former brownfield land reclaimed from industry and the railway. In total, flats represent some 82.3% of the neighbourhood’s housing stock. This particular built form, coupled with the area’s proximity to vibrant service economy of the city centre, is reflected in the fact that almost half of the respondents lived in single adult households (Table 3) and in a social mix dominated by professionals/managers and other white collar workers. Of the four neighbourhoods, Lockhart is alone in having a substantial private rented sector

Table 3 Household Type, by Neighbourhood

Household Type	Neighbourhood
	Dalside (E)	Lockhart (E)	Westfields (G)	Leaflie (G)
	%	%	%	%
Single adult	26.8	49.0	18.8	11.4
Lone parent	11.6	4.0	18.8	6.0
Couple, no dep. Children	18.4	9.6	16.3	34.2
Couple dep children	15.8	19.7	17.3	21.2
Single pensioner	16.3	13.1	16.3	16.3
Pensioner couple	8.4	3.5	8.7	8.7
None of the above	2.6	1.0	3.8	2.2

 

Leaflie provides a contrast not only to the other Glasgow neighbourhood, but also to Lockhart, since it is a classic suburb, rather than an area in the inner city. Although on the edge of the city, the neighbourhood is well connected to the motorway network, which provides relatively easy access to jobs in the city centre and other closer employment centres. A former mining village, its nature has changed within the last fifty, and particularly the last twenty, years to becoming more suburban. Its core is dominated by tenemental housing, though a majority of the housing is detached or semi-detached, ranging in period from inter-war to current new-build. Indeed, a large area of former greenfield in the north of the neighbourhood is currently being developed for lower-density owner-occupied housing. Reflecting its housing stock and relatively high status, the neighbourhood has a high proportion of couples and families, and a low proportion of single people. The social mix is much less polarised than the other neighbourhoods, and includes the highest proportion of skilled manual workers of the four, although groups A and B remain under-represented in comparison to many other Glasgow suburbs.

Changing mechanisms for participation in urban governance

The opportunities for citizen participation in these neighbourhoods have widened, and in some respects have deepened, in both cities, and particularly within the last decade. Fostering community participation has often been stimulated by national initiatives, beginning with the development of the community council as part of the 1970s reorganisation of local government through to the more recent attempts to encourage local councils to decentralise (Paddison and Jeffrey, 1999) and to incorporate other participatory techniques as part of the wider project of democratic renewal. Building in community consultation has also become part of the modus operandi of the other local development agencies besides the local council, and forms a key element of the SIPs. Local governments and the developing network of local development agencies have been under common pressures, often backed with the force of legislation or as a precondition of funding, to ensure participation within their working practices ; how they have done so, however, tends to differ between localities. In this paper we offer only a basic description of the main channels through which participatory practices have evolved.

Amongst the agency-led ( or ‘top-down’) participatory institutions in the two cities three main types can be identified, neighbourhood-level organisations, episodic methods of citizen consultation and special-purpose forms. In each there are differences as to how the institutions have been implemented in the two cities and what role they play within decision-making processes. Neighbourhood –level organisations, including community councils, tenants associations and residents associations, are among the longest established forms of local participation. Each of the four neighbourhoods is represented by community councils and/or tenants associations, though their signifiance differs between the areas. How these local fora relate organisationally to the wider city also differs; within Edinburgh recent moves towards cabinet style city government (an idea rejected by Glasgow city council) have been accompanied by the installation of Local Development Committees, on which there is local community representation. The committees constitute a territorial component to the system of checks and balances designed to scrutinise the workings of the cabinet. In Glasgow a relatively long-established system of area management has been replaced recently by a network of Local Area Forums, on which local communities are again represented, but which is a somewhat weaker form of decentralisation compared to the system envisaged for Edinburgh.

Partly as a result of democratic renewal, and partly because of the democratic deficit attributed to the shift towards urban governance, new forms of more ‘episodic’ participation have been introduced. Their purpose is often to help steer strategic planning and service delivery policy. The spread in popularity of the citizens’ panel is one such innovation, episodic in that it is used by local agencies to investigate particular issues on a periodic, sometimes irregular, basis. Essentially a consultative mechanism, their purpose in Glasgow has been to feed in citizens’ views into strategic service planning and review. In Edinburgh the first round of sampling provided a wide-ranging survey of citizen attitudes towards service quality and aspirations. As this use of the panels suggests their function has been oriented to city-wide needs. Though the panels are relatively large – 2000 in the case of Edinburgh – it is clear that viewed from the local community such innovations are relatively distanced. Even where, as in the case Of Best Value, the use of consultative survey-gathering techniques to inform service delivery may percolate downwards to neighbourhood level, knowledge of the innovation amongst community activists may be at best hazy.

The same is less likely to be the case, at least for local activists if not for ordinary citizens, for special-purpose forms of participation, and particularly those that are area-based. Chief amongst these within both cities are the SIPs, typically area-based initiatives but which, as in Glasgow are also theme-based around issues including the elderly and race relations. Community groups are included within the membership of the SIPs. Attempts are being made to draw these (and other) neighbourhood level partnerships close to urban decision-making processes through engagement, in Edinburgh, with the Capital City Partnership, a group of representatives from key public agencies charged with achieving the social inclusion objectives of Edinburgh Community Plan.

In both cities, as elsewhere in urban Britain, these developments have resulted in a plethora of institutions. As the neighbourhood renewal process has identified the multiplicity of local, area-based, organisations has emphasised the need for more holistic local governance (Wilkinson and Applebere, 1999). The multiplicity of opportunities for participation, at city-wide level, more locally and through interest-based groups, harbours its own problems of coordinating what might be conflicting opinions expressed through these new mechanisms.

Explaining Variations in Local Political Capital ; Citizen Perceptions of Consultation and Participation

Earlier local political capital was equated with the stock of attitudes and experience citizens, including community activists, have of participation. Both attitudes and experience influence the predisposition citizens may have in becoming participants within local political processes in the future. Several factors were suggested as contributory to inter-neighbourhood variations in local political capital.

In this section we identify the statistical correlates of the perceptions and attitudes towards consultation and participation in the four neighbourhoods. The data are drawn from the Central Scotland ICS household survey which included a number of questions measuring local political participation and attitudes towards it. The survey was based on a stratified sample of households in the four neighbourhoods. Interviewees were asked to respond to a number of different attitudinal questions according to a standard 5 point Likert scale. Reponses to the questions were grouped in such a way as to create a number of ‘attitude indices’. These measure the extent of disaffection with the system and processes of local governance (the ‘Disaffection Index’), the extent to which respondents felt that the council was responsive to the needs of their neighbourhood (the ‘Council Inclusion Index’)` and perceptions of efficiency (the ‘Council Efficiency Index’). A five point Likert scale ( 0-4)was used to assess responses with the scores adjusted for the directionality of the question ( i.e. so that a score of 4 always indicated a positive response). The data were analysed using logistical regression techniques, a range of profile characteristics measuring housing tenure, employment, social class, educational qualifications, self-rating of the area of residence and whether respondents felt that the area was changing for the better, or otherwise, together with the sample neighbourhoods being used as independent variables. Discussion is restricted to those variables that achieved the more explanatory power of the indices ( 95% level of significance).

Disaffection from the systems, processes and institutions of local governance remains a fundamental obstacle to encouraging participation. Its measurement was achieved through combining responses to five statements:

– Individually people like me can have no say in what the local council does ;

– Most people who are active in local community groups are out for themselves rather than the public good;

– A group of people like me can have no say in what the council does ;

– Most of the time you can trust the council to do what is right;

– Community groups in this neighbourhood are generally effective in influencing the council.

The levels of disaffection varied between neighbourhoods in both cities, being higher in the poorer areas. Even so these neighbourhood differences were insufficient to be significant statistically, though perceptions of the local area and of recent changes to it were significant in influencing the level of disaffection from local governance. That is, among citizens who rated their neighbourhood more lowly (compared to other areas of the city) disaffection from the system of local governance tended to be higher. The same is the case for those who considered that within the recent past that the neighbourhood rating had stayed the same or had become worse, typically those areas which achieved a low overall rating. In terms of the profile ( personal) characteristics which had a significant relationship with disaffection, the chief were age ( the older were less likely to feel disaffection), and class. However, the relationships between class and disaffection do not appear to replicate previous findings on participation in a straightforward way. While, as expected, those in the professional classes are the least likely to feel disaffection, it was amongst the intermediate (C1) class, and particularly those living in the poorer neighbourhoods that such perceptions were at their most significant. While living in a poor neighbourhood such householders have higher levels of employment and income than is true for households in the area, forming what Dean and Hastings (2000) define as ‘aspirational leavers’.

The Council Inclusion Index was constructed in order to gain insight into citizen perceptions of those consultation and participation strategies that had been introduced by local agencies in the two cities. The index was calculated in the same manner as the Disaffection Index, combining Likert scores (adjusted for directionality). Respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statements:

– The council does not care about this neighbourhood

– The council does not keep residents in this neighbourhood informed

– The council involves residents in decision-making in the neighbourhood

Again the rating of the neighbourhood given by its residents correlated strongly, the lower the rating the less the sense of inclusion. Residents in neighbourhoods which they thought conditions had the stayed the same or got worse, along with those in social classes D and E were also significantly more likely to feel excluded. Differences in housing tenure also influenced resident’s sense of inclusion ; in particular, residents living in housing association stock were alone among those who rented property in feeling included. Finally, a neighbourhood effect was apparent in the case of Westfields in which compared to residents in areas they tended to feel significantly less included by the council.

A third attitudinal index measured the perceived efficiency of the city council in delivering services. While the questions did not attempt to disagregate by type of services, attitudes will tend to gel around those, such as housing, education, social work, which are key to quality of life. The index was derived from two questions

– The council is efficient in its service delivery in this neighbourhood

– The council gives good value for money for the Council Tax you pay

Variables correlating significantly broadly matched those of the other indices, notably the rating given to the area, its perceived change for better or worse and those living in housing association ( as opposed to local authority) properties. However, for this index class did not appear a significant variable.

The patterning of these results, in which some consistent trends are apparent, begin to provide pointers as to the kinds of factors, personal as well those of the neighbourhood of residence which correlate strongly with perceptions citizens have of local consultative and participatory practices. Those variables that registered significant relationships do not depart radically from factors identified in previous empirical studies of political participation (see, for example, Parry et al 1992). Housing tenure is marked out, by residents of housing association properties feeling clearly that their landlords are more responsive than is the local authority.

It is in the interpretation of the importance of the neighbourhood – in other words, of the significance of area – that the differences are more nuanced. In conventional definitions of the neighbourhood effect the argument is expressed in terms of ‘geography mattering over and above other factors, such as class or housing tenure (Jenks and Mayer, 1990). Where it has been discussed in the social sciences, as in its effects on local voting preferences, it has been contentious; the argument that the neighbourhood can have (statistically) significant and independent effects has been hotly disputed. From the analysis here there is some but limited evidence of neighbourhood effects being apparent statistically. Yet the importance of area is apparent in each of the indices not so much in an objective sense, as a measured geographical unit, but more subjectively. That is, self-perceptions of the area in which citizens live, and the feeling that the quality of life in the area has improved or not within the recent past, do appear to have consistent importance as to whether residents feel disaffected or more excluded from their local council. The finding is perhaps less surprising than it is salutary; that in the deprived areas in spite of the greater local institutional thickness, projects aimed at the regeneration of area in which consultative and participatory strategies are built into the mechanisms of neighbourhood governance, that citizens in such areas remain much more likely to be politically alienated. In the final section we return to the concept of local political capital to draw out these findings more fully.

Inter-Neighbourhood Variations in Local Political Capital; Some Tentative Conclusions

For householders in the four neighbourhoods it is their perception of them that has consistent bearing on their attitudes towards how responsive is the system of local governance. Those living in the deprived estates are the more likely to harbour negative attitudes, and feel that much more distanced from local political processes than those living in better neighbourhoods. But the patterning of these attitudes varied, with those living in housing association areas less likely to feel disaffected, while the ‘aspirational leavers’ were the most likely to harbour negative attitudes. For these households, living in deprived neighbourhoods with their multiple social problems and with the stigma that this brings, underlines their dissatisfaction with the effort of local agencies and their desire to exit should this be possible.

Overall, if the perceived quality of the neighbourhood does have a bearing on the attitudes citizens have of local governance, this relationship is cross-cut by differences of housing tenure, social class and economic position characterising different households in the four areas. As differences in local political capital several questions arise. To what extent do such attitudes mirror those factors considered important in building local political capital, and in particular the contribution of horizontal and vertical linkages? Critically, how does local political capital impinge on the citizen’s participatory behaviour? Does a relatively low stock of local political capital undermine the capacity to develop sustainable neighbourhood regeneration in which there is an emphasis on community self-help? Clearly, we are not able to provide answers to these questions in this paper. Rather we offer briefly some pointers from the experience of the four neighbourhoods.

The notion of social capital, as was discussed earlier, has been drawn into

Table 4: Attitudes towards Social Cohesion, by Neighbourhood

Statement of Cohesion	Percentage Agreeing or Strongly Agreeing
	Dalside	Lockhart	Westfields	Leaflie
	%	%	%	%
I feel like I belong to this neighbourhood	63.7	57.3	72.1	79.3
The friendships and associations I have with other people in my neighbourhood mean a lot to me	65.8	56.1	77.9	79.5
If I needed advice about something I could go to someone in my neighbourhood	62.5	54.9	74.5	70.4
I borrow things and exchange favours with my neighbours	35.0	33.6	53.7	32.7
I would be willing to work together with others on something to improve my neighbourhood	69.0	67.4	77.4	69.8
I plan to remain a resident of this neighbourhood for a number of years	45.4	54.0	69.1	33.4
I like to think of myself as similar to the people who live in this neighbourhood	57.8	58.4	78.2	78.6
I regularly stop and talk with people in my neighbourhood	71.2	59.5	81.9	81.9

Arguments on local participation. A decline in the associational life linked with higher stocks of social capital has been linked with the decline in civic engagement. The proposition is far from unproblematic ; as Maloney et al ( 2000) point out just because a citizen is a member of some local club doesn’t mean that (s)he is either more or less likely to become involved in local politics. Rather than attempt any comprehensive mapping of the social capital of the four neighbourhoods, Table 4 represents one measure of it commonly considered to have important bearing on the extent to which the neighbourhood is perceived as a social collectivity. The data is drawn from the household survey in the four neighbourhoods, again using a Likert Scale to assess opinions on a range of statements relating to social cohesion.

The overall conclusion from the attitudes citizens have towards the social cohesiveness of their neighbourhood is that in each area there is a relatively high degree of social cohesion, but that it is noticeably more pronounced in the more deprived areas. A majority of householders in each area felt that they belonged to it, more so in the two Glasgow neighbourhoods than in Edinburgh. ( Paradoxically, while there was a greater sense of belonging in the more deprived area in Edinburgh, the reverse was the case in Glasgow, reflecting differences in the ‘stability’ of the two mixed areas.) Yet, only in two of the neighbourhoods does this sense of belonging translate itself into a loyalty to the area. Within Glasgow the configuration of responses is intriguing with more than twice the number of households in the more deprived areas suggesting that they plan to remain residents of it than in the more affluent neighbourhood.

As a measure of social capital these indicators of social cohesion would appear to have little relationship with the variations recorded in political attitudes between the neighbourhoods. Whereas it was suggested that it was in the more deprived neighbourhoods that local political capital appeared to be the weaker, and more negative, simultaneously it is in these areas that social cohesion would appear to be high, and sometimes greater than in the more affluent areas. What this may indicate simply is that in spite of the low quality of life of many households, there is general contentment towards the social relations(hips) residents have with each other. But the responses throw doubt on any simple linear relationship between these social patterns and political predispositions. Further, as the responses to statement 5 suggest there is considerable potential for participation within all of the neighbourhoods, and particularly in the deprived estate in Glasgow. Yet, where more than two-thirds of respondents claimed that they would be willing to become involved to meet some local collective good, this is not matched by the willingness to become politically involved, even within the relatively passive act of voting.

Fostering participation, either consultation or more deliberative forms of interaction, is also a product of the experiences citizens have within the wider ( urban) power networks which function in an enabling capacity. Some earlier survey evidence collected in one of the more deprived areas is instructive here ( McArthur et al 1998). Under the auspices of the Urban Programme the five neighbourhood forums established in an earlier round of regeneration were to be targeted for support within a project aimed specifically at community empowerment. Targets were set for participation for the forums – that amongst the over 16s some 10-12% of residents should have attended during the course of a year and that there should be turnouts of some 4-500 residents at the monthly meeting. The targets may have been unrealistically ambitious, but the proportion of residents attending the forums was a fraction of the target. Further, attendances tended to drop over time, and significantly those attending a meeting tended to be new – in other words, few residents went back for a further meeting of the forum once they had attended the once. This is not to suggest that the experience of participation had been negative ; attending the once may have been rationale in that it resolved the question or issue the individual had ( or their worst suspicions!). But, community activists aside, it does show that the potential for establishing participatory behaviour as habit amongst citizens at large may meet particular constraints

The reality is that, as widely attested in the literature on community development, more deliberative forms of participation attract only a minority of citizens and that the opportunities created for encouraging participation become dominated by community activists. Notwithstanding the potential for ‘becoming involved in improving the community’ suggested in the social cohesion questions discussed previously, levels of actual volunteering tend to be low, and lowest in deprived areas. (The Scottish Household Survey identifies 24% of households indicating some form of voluntary group involvement amongst citizens in affluent areas, and less than half this rate in deprived estates). Whether these limits on active citizenship to meet local neighbourhood improvement is likely to undermine the target of current regeneration programmes to foster self-help community effort is an open question.

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