Activism in the Public Sphere: Exploring the Discourse of Political Participation by Wayne Clark

Author:Wayne Clark [Clark, Wayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351749053
Google: JlM8DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 3626177
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2000-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Policy and Decision-Making Roles

Within Amnesty International UK, several members of the Campaigns Department staff felt that Amnesty International needs to provide a policy role for members. For instance, the Outreach Team Leader observed that ‘In terms of Amnesty’s structure….the AGM is weighted in favour of ensuring that the local group membership have a very significant role in deciding what Amnesty’s strategies and priorities should be’. He went on to note that ‘The membership lead Amnesty, unlike other organisations such as Greenpeace….we are lay led’. Taken in conjunction with the details presented in Chapter Four, we can see that it is only a partial representation of Amnesty International UK to suggest that it does not provide opportunities for members to take part in internal decision-making processes. As the Campaigns Co-ordinator puts it: ‘the parameters of the organisation are in some shape or form decided by our members’. However, it is important to note that there are discernible limits to the perceived role that members should play in such a process. On the one hand, the Campaigns Co-ordinator went on to outline the practical difficulties associated with an inclusive policy making process:

Sometimes it is just a complete mess to go through all this consultation and dialogue all the time, but it is quite important for bringing people along with the thrust and direction of different policy directions. And a lot of the biggest policy changes that have happened in Amnesty have come from bits of our membership. So, for example, deciding whether Amnesty should adopt people as prisoners of conscience on the grounds of sexuality was something that came out of the membership.…but that probably took about ten years to actually get changed. And even then it was a bit of a fudge. But it got there…in terms of big changes to areas that Amnesty works on it requires a level of global consensus. And that can be a process that takes a long time. And sometimes it can be laughed out of court for being slightly barmy. But there is a dynamic that goes on between the centre and the membership.

At the same time, I detected a more negative interpretation of the value of the involvement of members in policy formation. The emphasis on internal democracy was not necessarily perceived in a purely normative manner. For example, a member of the Individual Action Team warned that:

If any idea was mooted and we had to consult before making any decisions with some kind of representative body, or to whom we were responsible, it would be an anathema to us. It would really hold up our work. It wouldn’t contribute anything useful. It might make us more democratic and we might be more accountable but there are plenty of other mechanisms for holding us accountable.

There is clearly a tension between the concern with ensuring a policy role for members and achieving the specific aims of Amnesty International. The Urgent Action Co-ordinator was critical of the idea that Amnesty International UK needs to pay extensive attention to the concept of internal democracy.

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