Policy Sci. (2006) 39:169–181 DOI 10.1007/s11077-006-9014-7
The steering group as policy advice instrument: A case of “consultocracy” in stadium subsidy deliberations Michael Patrick Sam · Jay Scherer
Received: 18 January 2006 / Accepted: 5 March 2006 C Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2006
Abstract This study considers the use of steering groups and private consultants as sources of policy advice to local governments. More particularly, our research addresses the combined role of a government-appointed working party and consulting firm in the deliberation process precipitating from proposals to renovate/re-build a sports stadium. Through this New Zealandbased case, we explore the political tensions arising from the Working Party’s mandates to consult and its role as vehicle to market policy solutions. Data is gleaned from interviews with working party members (and their consultants), observations of public consultations and analysis of documents (e.g., background papers, reports, and press releases). Implications of this institutional arrangement are discussed in light of recurring logics, tensions and paradoxes. We first consider the Carisbrook Working Party as an instrument of policy advice and distinguish its founding logic from other forms such as task forces or commissions of inquiry. We further discuss the paradoxes of the Working Party’s procedural and political imperatives including its roles as facilitators of the process, advocates of the “problem,”and as authoritative proclaimers of certainty. When compared to sports stadia, Eisinger (2000) notes: “no other type of major capital expenditure – not for roads, schools, wastewater treatment facilities, public buildings, jails, or sewers – has the potential to generate such intense divisions in local politics” (p. 328). The contentiousness of directing public funds towards sports stadia has come to the forefront in recent years largely because of the costs of their developments and the growing number of cities entering into subsidy agreements (Kennedy and Rosentraub, 2000). Critics of the trend have focused on the problematic conditions under which subsidies are offered including the power of professional sport leagues as cartels (Euchner, 1993), the opportunistic demands of sports team owners (Siegfried and Zimbalist, 2000), and the media’s role in affirming ideas M. P. Sam () School of Physical Education, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand e-mail:
[email protected] J. Scherer E4-25, Van Vliet Cntr, Edmonton, AB Canada, T6G 2H9 e-mail:
[email protected] Springer
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about civic identity and prosperity (Silver, 1996). In addition, there is a growing body of research aimed at providing empirical evidence regarding the extent of stadium costs and their lack of return. For example, claims of economic benefit have been challenged on the basis of consumer “leakages” (Siegfried and Zimbalist, 2002), or the way in which employment impacts are determined (Crompton, 1995; Hudson, 2001). The premise in these economic studies is that, given more informed data and evidence, public officials might not be so easily swayed to support stadia developments. Yet, because these initiatives continually re-surface, and in many cases succeed, scholars have sought to analyse the circumstances in which these decisions take place. Causes are generally attributed to the influence of powerful interests or “growth coalitions” (consisting of business or political elites) who, armed with stories of civic “decline” and ideas about urban regeneration, are able to frame debates in favour of stadia constructions and refurbishments (e.g., Brown and Paul, 1999; Delaney and Eckstein, 2003). However, while such explanations are certainly convincing, they tend to underplay the role of institutional features of the process including various sources of policy advice from government-appointed working parties and/or private consultants. Indeed, few studies analyse the institutional forms of civic policy advice that, while arguably shaped by dominant interests and factions, nevertheless have their own interrelated logics and implications. Dunedin’s Carisbrook Stadium became the centre of public debate in 2003 when its owners, the Otago Rugby Union (ORU) sought local government funding to expand the venue’s spectator stands and media facilities. While taking place in New Zealand’s fifth largest city (pop. 120,000), the case mirrored events elsewhere (particularly well documented in North American contexts), and encapsulated the usual claims around the public subsidy of stadia, including their potential for economic benefit, urban regeneration, and contribution to community pride. Initially, the ORU was unsuccessful in convincing the Dunedin City Council (DCC) to commit any funds to the project, however in response, the City Council’s chief executive officer established the “Carisbrook Steering Group” and enlisted the services of a consultancy firm to set out the background facts, outline the “problem”, and summarise the solutions under consideration. In the months that followed, the steering group and MWH invited submissions, administered surveys and facilitated public meetings across the region to ultimately determine whether the city should “do nothing”, fund a progressive upgrade, or contribute to building a new stadium. Despite the steering group’s efforts to engage the public, the consultation process has since become the subject of substantial public debate and vigorous criticism.1 In this article, we trace the role of a steering group in its construction and mediation of the public consultation process arising from proposals to renovate/re-build a sports stadium.2 Given that such proposals are often based on optimistic or flawed evidence (Siegfried and Zimbalist, 2000), we are not concerned with the accuracy per se of the claims coming from proponents.3 Instead, we ask: how did the institutional features of the steering group
1 As
yet, the City of Dunedin remains undecided on whether to subsidise the stadium at an estimated cost of $ 30 million and we are continuing to follow the process (see postscript).
2 The
data for this paper was collected through three primary means: (1) participant observations of 5 public meetings facilitated by the Carisbrook Working Party (CWP) and its consultants, (2) semi-structured interviews undertaken with consultants and appointed members of the CWP, and (3) analysis of written documents including background papers, reports, press releases, council minutes and internal memos.
3 There
is an ongoing debate, mostly between economists in the U.S., over whether professional sports teams (and by extension their stadia) have a positive, negative or neutral impact on the economies of cities or regions. While many (Baade, 1996; Hudson, 2001; Rosentraub, 1999) are dubious of the claims Springer
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shape its capacity to produce a recommendation to city council? How did the group’s use of consultants shape its criteria of a “good” report? In addressing these questions, we aim to broadly examine the intersections between public participation processes and the deployment of a steering group to provide policy advice. We subsequently explore the political tensions between the steering group’s mandates to investigate options, induce public participation, alongside with its role as a vehicle to market policy solutions. To address these tensions, the article is divided into four further sections. The first begins by describing New Zealand’s wider political context with respect to public participation and the use of consultants within the public sector. We then provide more specific background to the case, paying particular attention to the professionalisation of rugby and the legislative circumstances leading up to the commissioning of the Carisbrook Working Party and its consultants. Particular features of their consultation initiatives are described, focusing on their deployment of three techniques (public meetings, submission brochures, telephone survey) that would ultimately be used to support their advice to the Dunedin City Council. The final section considers the Carisbrook Working Party as an instrument of policy advice and distinguishes it from other forms such as task forces or commissions of inquiry. This section further discusses the paradoxes of the Working Party’s procedural and political imperatives including its roles as facilitators of the process, advocates of the “problem,”and as authoritative proclaimers of certainty.
Public participation and “consultocracy” in New Zealand Like many Western Liberal democracies, New Zealand has endeavoured to become more citizen-focused in its approach to policy-making (Cheyne et al., 2005). Driven in part by public choice theory and its associated suspicion of politicians’ motives, this interest is traceable to various governmental reforms in the 1980s aimed at generating greater responsiveness, accessibility and accountability. At the local level, these reforms became manifest in the Local Government Act of 1989 which introduced a range of consultative, accountability and reporting requirements intended to promote more “open government” (Wallis and Dollery, 2001, p. 543). Recent statute changes such as New Zealand’s Local Government Act of 2002 have further widened the obligations for local authorities to undertake public consultation, particularly in special circumstances involving a new government role or activity. While potentially allowing for improved citizen participation, consultative mechanisms at this level have not been without their challenges. In Britain for example, Parkinson (2004) observes that deliberative techniques have been distinctly shaped by public management imperatives, not always resulting in achieving the democratic aims for which they were intended. In New Zealand, Cheyne and Comrie (2002) note that requirements to consult during annual planning have produced several tensions including the feeling that the process is an imposition on local made by professional team owners and civic boosters, a number of different correlations have recently been proposed to support a positive impact, noting relationships between sport franchises and larger regional income shares (Santo, 2005), higher average rents (Carlino and Coulson, 2004) and aggregate consumer surplus (Layson, 2005). In addition, there have been recent attempts to derive market values for the intangible benefits of professional sport using contingent valuation methods (Johnson et al., 2001). Taken together these studies are modest in attributing cause/effect to their findings and cite a number of limitations and caveats to their explanations. In light of their various nuances, these econometric models are beyond the scope of this article and thus, we maintain that political proponents of stadium subsidies tend to overestimate the economic/social benefits while consistently underestimating their costs. Springer
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authorities, that its compliance costs are significant and that the role of executive officers can be problematic. Alongside this movement towards increased public participation, New Zealand governments have also broadened their approaches to sourcing policy advice. Boston (1994) uses the term “policy advice” to encompass various analytical mechanisms, from far-reaching commissions of inquiry about the state’s role in society to more modest statistical reports about individual policy programmes. Since New Zealand’s passage of the State Sector Act in 1988, and consistent with the rise of New Public Management principles (Hood, 1991), national level departments have made frequent use of private consultants to secure policy advice on a broad range of matters including those related to organisational re-structuring, economic forecasting and leadership training. While this would suggest an increased capacity to influence policy outcomes, Saint-Martin (1998) suggests that the power of this “consultocracy” is not necessarily privileged – that like other state actors, the influence of consultants is heavily contingent on institutional arrangements and processes. In this environment, New Zealand local authorities have also contracted out some of their policy advice functions to meet expectations for market outcomes. This may be because, as McCann (2001) observes in the U.S., cities have become increasingly entrepreneurial in their outlooks and consequently, their policy activities are now characterised by cooperation between private and public institutions. However, the capacity for business leaders and their adviser consultants to influence local policy agendas, manifest in their roles in various economic development agencies or regeneration initiatives, is also not easily generalised (Harding et al., 2000). While much has been written about these relationships under the broader rubric of partnerships, considerably less attention has been paid to how these interactions channel into policy advice instruments like task forces, steering groups or working parties. The use of a steering group or working party is thus consistent with local governments wanting input consisting of more than written submissions (as with the annual planning process) to consist also of public hearings, forums or citizen juries. In this way, they are a distinctive source of policy advice compared to other locales such as council sub-committees (that often combine elected officials with civil servants), think tanks or special interest groups (e.g., chamber of commerce or business roundtable). As ad hoc instruments, steering groups are intended to reflect both the importance of public input in the policy process, as well as the value accorded to contracted experts and consultants. Given their roles as investigators and interpreters of policy problems, it becomes necessary that their activities be viewed within their political and procedural contexts (Sam, 2005).
The steering group in context The current local debate surrounding the provision of public subsidy to a club-owned stadium needs to be situated within recent changes to the sport of rugby at the international level. Rugby became professional in 1995 when the South African, Australian, and New Zealand Rugby unions signed a ten-year broadcasting agreement with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Since then, the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) has enjoyed increasing revenues from gate takings and lucrative sponsorship agreements with a range of multinational corporations. However, as is the case in other professional sporting codes and contexts, meeting the demands of both broadcasters and the individual teams translates into considerable costs, particularly in terms of facility improvement. Consequently, older stadia like Carisbrook have had to undergo numerous refurbishments to meet the needs of professional sport, including the Springer
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construction of corporate boxes, the improvement of media facilities and the addition of lighting for televised night games. At the root of this issue is the NZRU’s capacity to determine where international fixtures (featuring New Zealand’s national side, the All Blacks) are to be played locally. While these matches have customarily been allocated based on the significance of the “test” (e.g., Category-A test matches against primary rivals Australia go to NZ’s larger cities: Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch), the NZRU has more recently developed formalised “host criteria” on the basis of facility requirements such as the amount of “prime” covered seating and the quality of media/hospitality facilities. Thus, the main justification for the public subsidy of Carisbrook rests on the view that Dunedin’s status as a potential international test venue is “under serious threat” (MWH, 2004a, p. 11) and that the city’s iconic ground will be overlooked in favour of newer facilities. In May 2003, the city’s Draft Annual Plan Hearings Committee deferred the ORU’s request of $ 5 million for stadium renovations until further information could be sourced from a working party or steering group. With the city’s Chief Executive taking the role as Chair of this group, the appointees were intended to represent the major stakeholders. As potential sources of funding, the Chief Executives of the Otago Rugby Union, the Otago Regional Council, and the Otago Community Trust were included. However with the exception of the ORU, the other members repeatedly pronounced that their respective organisations had not formulated opinions on matters related to the public subsidy of Carisbrook. The working party’s other two members were appointed as general community interests: one from the general “business sector”, and the other from a regional sports planning body. Shortly after its establishment, the Carisbrook Working Party (CWP) enlisted the consultancy services of MWH New Zealand Ltd., selected because it employed experts who had worked at this level of the public sector and were familiar with the Local Government Act. The Working Party’s stated purpose in MWH’s background report was to “set out the background facts, outline the “problem”, and to summarise the options that have been considered by the Carisbrook Steering Group to date” (MWH, 2004a, p. 1). The consulting firm collected statistical information including attendance figures for games, levels of the ORU’s debt, its annual revenues, etc. MWH’s other sources of evidence came from a survey produced by the local university’s Marketing Department and various economic impact analysis reports produced by the City and other consultants since 2003. For example, a report prepared by the City and Business and Economic Research Ltd. (BERL), indicated that the economic return of a single test-match was NZ $5.3 million. While this was a significant departure from the ORU’s initial estimates of $16 million, the presentation of economic figures appeared frequently, noting for instance, how much the city would stand to lose if international matches were no longer played in Dunedin.
“The great curtain-raiser: Carisbrook’s sternest test” Given “citizen engagement’s” meteoric rise as a concept (Jones, 2003, p. 581), there is much scholarly discussion surrounding practices aimed at enhancing public participation.4 At the 4 There is also a substantial amount of relevant literature in political theory under the broader subject of “deliberative democracy” which spans both philosophical elements (e.g., justifications for deliberation, capacities for reasoned argument) as well as procedural aspects (e.g., ideal conditions or constraints to deliberation). While some of our discussion is located within this body work, there is insufficient space to address many of its particularities.
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centre of these discussions are concerns related to: (1) the legitimacy of participants (Carroll and Carroll, 1999) or the tendency for these to be non-representative of those who have most to lose (Bedford et al., 2002); (2) the obstacles, barriers and structural inequities affecting representation and participation (Arnstein, 1969); (3) whether participation mechanisms are interpreted as a means through which policy might be better developed or as a worthy end in itself (P. S. Jones, 2003); and 4) the unintended consequences of participation processes including the prospect that they may at best reproduce socioeconomic inequalities (Irvin and Stansbury, 2004) or at worst exacerbate them. Despite these tensions, the idea of citizen involvement in decision-making remains a fundamental priority in New Zealand’s local public sector (Cheyne and Comrie, 2002). New Zealand’s Local Government Act (2002) allows for considerable latitude in its requirements for citizen engagement and consultation. The statutory principles underpinning decisionmaking are based on principles of a cost/benefit analysis, including the clear definition of problems, the analysis of all “reasonably practical options,” and public consultation at every stage of the decision making process. In this context, the Carisbrook Working Party proposed two rounds of public consultation. The first round was intended to discuss the various options under consideration and ultimately help establish the publics’ preferred option. The second round of consultation, while having yet to take place at the time of this writing, was proposed to provide for public comment on the chosen/preferred solution. In October 2004, the Working Party initiated its preliminary round of consultation which consisted of two formats. First, the Working Part produced and mailed a brochure entitled: “the Great Curtain-Raiser” to every household in the province, to entice the public to select their preferred options on the Carisbrook issue through a series of “tick boxes.”5 Under the question “which of the three (sic) possible options do you favour,” four boxes appeared: (1) do nothing, (2) progressively upgrade the stadium, (3) replace the stadium and build anew at a different location, or (4) other. To facilitate responses, the selection sheet included a table of the three main options along with some of the pros, cons, and possible costs of each. All information included in the “Curtain-Raiser” brochure was attributed to MWH Ltd and respondents were directed to the City of Dunedin’s website to read the firm’s full report. As a second means of consultation, the CWP held public meetings in 5 centres throughout the Otago region. This time, the same options appeared in the form of a PowerpointTM presentation delivered by MWH Ltd. Throughout these consultations, the options became tantamount to a “Hobson’s Choice” where it became evident that new ideas or options introduced by the public would not be considered by the Working Party. But as one of the CWP members highlighted, reducing and simplifying the options to be considered was part of the strategy. I mean there are lots of other, sub-options, but broadly speaking, for the purpose of consultation at that strategic level, my view was that they were the 3 best ones to go forward with. I mean one of the problems I had was that some of these options. . .needed to be described so carefully, and you couldn’t do it in an easy description like “Do nothing” or “Establish a brand new facility”, they were sort of complicated options. And it was just going to get too hard to engage with the community over it (personal communication).
5 There
has been considerable debate in the local newspaper opinion section over whether every household received the brochures. The Working Party’s insistence at public meetings and afterwards that some of the 70,000 brochures were likely thrown out with Christmas advertising flyers fuelled discontentment over the consultation process. Springer
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Ultimately, the brochure and presentation preambles indicating that “the Brook is showing its age – and needs upgrading (emphasis added) if it is to continue to be a suitable venue for hosting International Rugby,” rendered the first option (i.e., “do nothing”) virtually untenable. Between the unappealing “do nothing” and the unrealistic “build anew,” it was perhaps not surprising that the end report cited an unequivocal mandate to move forward with the stadium’s refurbishment. Moreover, while most of the participants at public meetings agreed in principle that something needed to be done with the stadium, there was substantial resistance to the prospect of using $ 20 to $ 40 million of public funds to renovate it. As with the options for “what to do” with Carisbrook, the alternatives for how one’s “preferred option” might be funded were equally coarse. In contrast to cases in the United States, where numerous mechanisms have been proposed to offset stadium costs including “per-ticket charges,” taxes on professional players and charges to broadcasters (Swindell and Rosentraub, 1998), the brochure asked for respondents to assign (as a percentage) how the project should be funded and split among three sources: (1) loan funded by rates, (2) sports bodies, and (3) sponsors. In the end, and despite objections expressed in public meetings, the working party interpreted public concern about Carisbrook as widespread commitment for local government subsidy through taxation. Prior to the Working Party’s reporting deadline to City Council in December 2004, numerous opinion letters began appearing in the local newspaper criticising the process and chastising the Working Party. In response to the criticism, the CWP commissioned a telephone survey as a final means of canvassing public opinion. Here also, the most popular response was that the stadium required a progressive upgrade. In their final report, MWH (2004b,p. 14) concluded “there was a high degree of acceptance for public investment in Carisbrook via rating and this [was] consistent across the Otago region.” While critics, such as the head of the Dunedin Ratepayers Association, noted that results were skewed by the questions themselves (as well as by grouping of “yes” responses with “maybes”), the CWP nevertheless portrayed its report as a “strong mandate to continue investigating a progressive upgrade of Carisbrook on the basis of public investment.” The steering group as instrument for policy advice As instruments for policy advice, steering groups are similar to government-appointed taskforces or commissions of inquiry in that they are all essentially ad hoc bodies established to investigate, inform, report and recommend. Taken together, these organisations identify issues, draw reference to the interests associated with a policy concern and point towards particular prescriptions or solutions (Aucoin, 1990). Yet while they may serve many of the same broad functions, steering groups like the CWP are distinctive in at least two significant ways. First, unlike more formally appointed commissions at the national/federal level, steering groups at the local level are not necessarily intended to escape the biases of the existing bureaucracy and consequently, their membership need not be drawn from outside the public service. Indeed in this case, city officials favoured both internal bureaucratic and external private sector membership to address the issue. From the perspective of the Dunedin City Council, the Chief Executive’s legitimacy as advisor on the issue of public subsidy (and as Chair of the Working Party) shows the primacy accorded to internal policy advice in general, and to understanding of the Local Government Act more particularly. From the Chief Executive’s perspective, the decision to “partner” with public, private and semi-private interests (through appointments on the CWP) is indicative of local governmental concerns for economic growth and the maintenance of a competitive civic image, brand or identity Springer
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(McCann, 2004). Given rugby was often argued in local media to be part of the city’s “social fabric,” the CWP was neither intended to appear neutral nor objective on the issue of public subsidy. Rather, as one of the Working Party members reported, the establishment of the CWP was initially to help the Otago Rugby Union because they lacked the expertise to navigate through the new legislative process.6 Therefore, while the steering group retained sources of “free and frank” policy advice, it also subsumed a level of commissioned bias in order satisfy the demands of a particular “storyline” (Hendriks, 2005), one that promoted and legitimised sport/business involvement. The second feature distinguishing a working party like this from other instruments is the tenuous boundary at which it sits with respect to offering both technical and political advice. For the CWP, the technical imperatives of the process included more than the politics of choosing measures (e.g., gross versus net figures of economic impacts), classifying costs, risks and benefits. Indeed, the breadth and depth of its research was driven by the benefits/costs dichotomy inherited from the Local Government Act. Thus for instance, to not subsidise the project was presented as the “cost of doing nothing,” reported by BERL and the Working Party as an opportunity cost amounting to a “Net Present Value (NPV) loss of about $ 30 million in total visitor related expenditure between 2005 and 2020” (BERL, 2003, p. 15; MWH, 2004a, p.19). Furthermore, the narrowing of options to three conveys the idea that the issue of public subsidy had clearly defined boundaries with few shades of grey. As one of the consultants indicated, my experience is that when you’re engaging with the community in these sorts of things, you don’t want to complicate it too much. . .otherwise, the answer is not clear and the analysis becomes quite complicated (personal communication). Thus despite the contentiousness of public participation measures, the city’s decision to contract out the facilitation of public meetings suggested the CWP’s task was primarily technical in nature. Indeed throughout, the consulting firm referred to the exercise as a “project” rather than a process, and considered it possible to establish a definitive conclusion on the question of subsidy. Similarly, and in response to public criticisms, the CE emphasised that the consultation process was underpinned by sound technical principles, claiming that “these are extensive and legitimate techniques to discern public opinion and they have been used because they are transparent, robust and proven” (Harland, 2004, p. 13). In short, the CWP’s conclusion that consultation resulted in a “clear signal from the community” (emphasis added, MWH, 2004b, p. 9) reflected the conviction that an unambiguous mandate could be gleaned from the process of consultation. However, given our observations of the process, combined with literature that outlines the divisive nature of stadia subsidy debates (Eisinger, 2000; Scherer, 2001), the CWP’s conclusion can be read as somewhat fundamentally na¨ıve/flawed but also institutionally derived. That is, while the CWP was certainly supportive of the idea to subsidise the stadium, the desired outcome was not necessarily to “push the proposal through,” but rather to conduct a process in which certainty could be established and results subsequently defended in public. To follow Fisher’s (1990) more general observation of technocrats, the CWP saw “politics as a problem rather than a solution” (emphasis in original, p. 22) To the extent that MWH acknowledged the consultative process as a political undertaking, its perspective was defined in terms of efficiency and risk. Similar to Bedford et al.’s (2002) 6 This
is based on: (1) a memo in March 2003 sent from the city’s chief executive to the chief executive of the Otago Rugby Union, and (2) interview data from members of the Carisbrook Working Party. Springer
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findings, the process of consulting was seen to be primarily related to political expediency and less so as a commitment to public participation. One Working Party member for example expressed that, given the amount of resistance and controversy over the issue, the group would have been better served by a public relations firm rather than consultants familiar with the Local Government Act. Other members of the Working Party also regretted parts of the deliberation process – not because of the poor quality of public input but rather, because they felt they had committed errors and had made the process more contentious or troublesome than it needed to be. As one member of the CWP expressed, Sure, if we had a chance to have a second go at it, then with the benefit of hindsight, you might have made it a bit better such that the public criticism of the core issues surrounding them might have been less well-based (personal communication). Perhaps most significant in this respect is how policy advice is ultimately mediated by appointed working parties (or steering committees) and their private consultants. As with inquiries and task forces (Bradford, 1999), one of the main functions of steering groups is the construction and articulation of public problems. Through their production of feasibility studies, strategic plans and forecasts, steering groups and their consultants are akin to “helping professions” whom, in devising methods of intervention, legitimise perceptions of the problem and “authoritatively define social reality”(Jamrozik and Nocella, 1998, p. 74). This explains how such a comparatively small public issue (i.e., the potential loss of one Category-A Test per year) could be magnified and transmuted into a larger problem of economic vibrancy and civic identity. The problem for instance, is presented as if it were just recently introduced, a new problem rather than a challenge emanating from factors such as Dunedin’s relatively slow population growth, the increasing demands from media and corporate sponsors and ultimately the globalisation of professional rugby.7 Thus, by virtue of its given mandate to determine a preferred solution, the CWP had to effectively advocate for a particular version of the problem itself – that the potential loss of top-level rugby “would most certainly impact negatively on the City and [the regions’] social and cultural wellbeing, and on business activity and economic well being, as well as on the Otago/Dunedin City brand” (MWH, 2004a, p. 11). As conduits for shaping the public agenda, the steering group also reflected the tenuous relationship between elements of public consultation and marketing. Certainly this relationship bears resemblance to other policy instruments that undertake consultation; task forces and commissions of inquiry inevitably involve presenting proposed solutions and arguably “selling” them to the public (Salter, 1990). In a study of the UK Audit Commission for example, Henkel (1991) notes that this organisation’s modus operandi was complex and involved the skills of argument and persuasion as well as those of analysis. In a similar vein, the Carisbrook process was framed by marketing principles throughout: from the look (and content) of the submission brochure to the slides shown at public meetings. Presentation slides for example, resulted in a none-too-subtle sleight of hand where, participants were left to express support for either the “nothing” option (with obviously no photographic evidence provided), or for a “vision” of the future that included various computer-enhanced architectural designs. The very naming of the submission brochure (“the Great Carisbrook Curtain-Raiser”) also gives some indication as to the tensions between wanting to induce the public to participate while simultaneously needing to glean (reasonably) objective public opinions on the issue. 7 For instance, it was nearly a decade ago since Higham (1996) noted that Dunedin was “behind” other NZ cities with respect to its status as a rugby hosting city.
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Moreover, the conundrum between informing the public and effectively selling a definitive conclusion to City Council became starkly manifest in the Chief Executive’s attempts to diffuse criticisms of the process. For example, amidst growing criticism of the consultation process, he defended the certainty of the steering group’s recommendation because of its “robust” and “proven” consultation techniques yet simultaneously suggested that public criticisms arose because “the facts relating to the Carisbrook “problem”and the decisions to date [were] not well understood”(Harland, 2004, p. 13). Ultimately and despite the deployment of three consultation techniques, the paradox between the amounts of information required to glean “informed” opinions and the validity of subsequent claims (derived from these opinions), could not be reconciled by the Working Party.
Conclusion As Bedford et al. (2002) note, the limits to public participation is certainly not new. However, the contexts in which processes of deliberation take place are continually changing and it is these changes that are worth exploring further. Some have suggested that “consultocracy”has been one of the characteristics of a “new urban politics” and the privatisation of policy-making activities (McCann, 2001, p. 207). As with other mediating institutional arrangements, the use of steering groups and their consultants contribute to the blurring of boundaries that may ultimately alter relations of authority and legitimacy, patterns of consent, and investments of attention (Forester, 1993). Thus, the analysis of steering groups in policy decisions may be of significance simply because of their contribution to the changing “institutional matrix” over time (Lowndes, 2005, p. 299). Certainly the combination employed by the Working Party, with its reliance on consultant reports, and hired facilitators, is not the deliberative process envisioned by Forester (1993) and others (e.g., King, 2003). And while it may be optimistic to hope that deliberations can neatly transform participants into accommodating preferences countering their own (thus resulting in some converging agreement on issues), King’s (2003) perspective at least rejects the idea that participation is about voters trying to identify an option than is “correct”in an objective sense. Undeniably, institutional arrangements designed to obtain public opinion present epistemological quandaries insofar as the amount of information provided to participants/respondents, what counts as “support”or a “majority”and whether or not solutions are provided beforehand. As with other policy advice mechanisms, the use of steering groups and consultancy firms represent an institutional arrangement with particular “logics of appropriateness” (March and Olsen, 1989). In terms of its founding logic, this consultative arrangement was inherently shaped by imperatives for mixed sources of policy advice, namely arising from the Local Government Act of 2002 and the apparent need for collaborative planning with private sector interests. Secondly, and with respect to its capacity to produce a policy recommendation, the Working Party’s propensity was to favour a technical view of the process over a deliberative one – partly because the consultation process was effectively viewed as a “project” (with the promise of clearly identifiable solutions) but partly also because of the Chief Executive’s adherence to principles of the Local Government Act prescribing cost/benefit analyses. By extension, the steering group’s predilection for certainty and clarity on the question of public subsidy gave rise to its initial preference for delimiting options down to three, rather than for building in the capacity to change course. Effectively, the importance of achieving a definitive and timely conclusion superseded the need for carrying out more meaningful public discussion. Springer
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Lastly, the Carisbrook Working Party and its consultants reflected the inherent tensions that arise with having to advise, advocate, consult and in many ways persuade the public. On one hand, they needed to induce the public to participate, resulting in a submission form/brochure that resembled an advertisement flyer as much as it did a survey. Similarly, to procure opinions, the steering group needed to be an advocate of the “problem”and persuade the public of its features (that the stadium was a public issue rather than a private one, that hosting international rugby was either cost or benefit to the city, etc.). Paradoxically, the CWP had to appear as a relatively neutral conduit through which the application of consultative techniques could translate into an objective recommendation. Despite the evidence that public subsidies for sport stadia are not justifiable, some scholars note that they are almost inevitable (Jones, 2002; Nelson, 2002). Also inevitable it seems is the propensity for such initiatives to polarise communities (Eisinger, 2000; Smith and Ingham, 2003). Thus while participatory processes in local governments are effectively introduced to increase public trust (Bedford et al., 2002), the approaches in this case seemed to have just the opposite effect. Ironically, the benefits of the participation process were perhaps not that it resulted in more varied solutions or a more informed populace but rather, its advantages lay in the process” “by-products,” namely a certain instrumental public restlessness (Elster, 1997). Ultimately, the way in which consultations were carried out by the steering group did alert the public of the issue and by extension, gave some the basis for challenging what they perceived as the existing power structure.
Postscript Since submitting its report to Council in December 2004, the issue of public subsidy for Carisbrook stadium has been devolved from wider Council meetings to the City’s Economic Development Committee. Since March 2005, there have been repeated resolutions to exclude the public on the grounds that “good reason for withholding exists”.8 Meanwhile the CWP has continued with project planning and design work, commissioning another consultancy firm, Beca Ltd., to provide a detailed development programme including design, construction stages and costs for the final project. During this time, the Working Party has also been producing a comprehensive business plan for a re-developed stadium and preparing options for ownership, governance and management so that “comprehensive consultation with the public can be undertaken” (Economic development committee, 2005). While a final decision on the public subsidy of Carisbrook has been scheduled for June 2006, New Zealand’s recent award to host the 2011 Rugby World Cup means that there is additional pressure to upgrade the stadium so that the city can showcase one of the pool games. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank members of the Carisbrook Working Party for their cooperation as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback.
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