Although we used many elements of the well known citizens' jury technique, Nanojury was a 'two-way-street' or 'mutualistic' process in that it allowed jurors to spend as much time discussing a subject completely determined by them, as it did a second topic that had been pre-determined by the jury's core funders.
Bottom up or top down?
Well established mechanisms of 'top-down' consultation are regularly used by governments, quangos and large NGOs. A number of other tools have been used by local communities to achieve a bigger say on issues 'from the bottom-up'.
Top-down approaches suffer from a perception that they are merely being used to rubber-stamp decisions that have already been made. Bottom-up dialogues, such as the case study in Lancashire, can often fail to connect with decision-makers to a sufficient extent for them to achieve change.
The most successful attempts to engage people in changing policies have been those that have attempted top-down and bottom-up engagement processes.
Two-way street engagement
Such two-way street (or 'mutualistic') engagement approaches have sought to connect participatory processes such as citizens' juries with the interests of government while also giving people a say on issues that they choose (read an example of mutualistic engagement). Carefully designed safeguards are, as always, required to ensure that such processes are also transparent, and informed by a diversity of perspectives, and with enough resources to influence decision-makers on the issues that matter.
By combining elements of two contrasting types of dialogue process, top-down and bottom-up, two-way street engagement provides a more effective approach to engagement that carries a greater democratic legitimacy than conventional top-down consultations. Though they do not describe themselves as mutualistic, many initiatives around the world - such as the Farmer Field Schools in Indonesia - have used the principles described here.