CEE CN site

A look from Citizens in Central and Eastern Europe

Chuck Hirt - Director of Central and Eastern European Citizens Network 

Twentieth anniversary

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the change from socialism to a democratic system in Central and Eastern Europe.  The last couple of months have been filled with considerable reflections in the region.  The change came with great hopes, enthusiasm and energy.   Today the reality is marked more by words such as fatigue, frustration and lack of trust.  Many find themselves disappointed by the changes and unsure how to maneuver in this new environment.  There are some being left behind in all these changes.  Citizens are certainly in this category. 

Much of the region has changed.  There has been considerable building and re-building; both literally and figuratively.  New countries have been formed.  Significant goals have already been achieved like EU integration.  It is quite remarkable to consider all the new construction - houses, businesses, banks, shopping centers, roads and other infrastructure.  McDonalds and Coke Cola are everywhere.  Color has returned.  We can now buy strawberries in December. 

Completely new structures and systems have been needed for a functioning democratic and capitalist system to function.  The changes that have taken place in this relatively short time frame are remarkable.  It may be hard to appreciate the new opportunities that now exist.  For active citizens under socialism it was very threatening.  It is now possible to be active without having, what you thought was your best friend, reporting on your activities.  And not only you but members of your family and close friends.  The changes have been so vast that many looking from the outside may have the sense that there is an ever smaller difference between Western and Central Europe. 

But if one were to look at the area of democracy, citizen participation or activism one would see a quite different picture.  There is quite limited citizen activism and there still is almost no infrastructure like community centers or other public spaces to support this aspect.  There are a number of reasons for this.  First of all, citizens' input is not often wanted by local authorities.  Citizens are not invited to participate.  In the best case, this is because it makes their lives more complicated and they already have enough to worry about.  But in a number of cases, the reasons are darker in that they do not want citizens messing around and holding them accountable for their business deals.  But the truth is that even if citizens were invited, they often would not be able to meaningfully contribute.  They simply are not prepared.  There is also a legacy of socialism that citizens learned to be dependent on the government and not trust institutions. 

Unique aspects and challenges

The lack of meaningful citizen participation is a shared experience across all of Europe.  But there are also many unique aspects and challenges in the Central and Eastern part.  For adults, there is a heritage left over from days of socialism.  One of these is that people do NOT want to be members of civil society organizations.  There is a general mistrust of institutions.  There is a real reluctance to be a leader.  There was a learned dependence under Socialism that carries over today.  This is further exasperated by the fact that there are very limited public spaces for citizens to meet.  There are almost no community centers or places other than schools. 

I remember being introduced several years ago to a book entitled Including the Excluded.  The author was describing the need to find was to ensure that the voices of minority groups who are often left out of the public arena in West Europe are brought in.  But as I thought about it in the context of the CEE region, I realized that virtually everyone was part of the excluded at this point.

Positives from the region

It is tempting to emphasize the negative aspects of the situation in the region.  However there are a number of important pluses from the region that should also be emphasized:

• One very positive legacy of socialism is that neighborhoods are economically integrated.  This means that when citizens gather to solve problems, there are considerable resources available to them from within their own communities including architects, accountants and lawyers who live there.
• There is a remarkable spirit and energy that is occasionally evident in the region that is demonstrated in people joining together to fight for needed changes at both the local and national level.  These have been most evident in events such as the "orange",  "rose" and "velvet" revolutions but this occasionally shows up at the local level as well. 
• In the area of citizen institutions the region is primarily in a building stage.  They are not having to re-building citizen based institutions and this is often easier.
• Less laws and regulations governing this area which provides more flexibility and informality.
• Significant new resources available to support new projects
• There are a number of "bottom up" activities emerging - partly in response to lack of top down efforts.

Civil Society Forum

There have been a number of events connected to the 20^th anniversary of the fall of communism.  One of these was the Civil Society Forum which took place 16^th -18^th September in Bratislava, Slovakia.  Much of the focus of the event was on a similar topic of "who speaks for citizens?".  A few of the conclusions from the distinguished group of participants included:

• We are not reflecting enough on democracy.  We should stop talking about 20 years and democratic institutions and ACT.
• Political activism, voting, demonstrations and public affairs in general are shrinking.  There is also a low level of active participation at the grassroots level.
• We are not able to communicate what democracy is to people.  People think of the representation as a political party issue or election issue which is a limited notion and not engaging for citizens.
• There is a myth of representation: citizens expect government to do all the work for them.
• Engaging or activating people is very difficult and not many programs doing this.  They are much needed.
• There is a need for civic education.  But there should be less theory and emphasize learn by doing.
• We should direct people towards their local community where they can make a difference instead of trying to get them involved in changing the world.  Results are needed to gain trust of people in their ability to change the situation.

There were many other comments reported as well.  One that I did not see listed but which I believe is a very important one is the emergence of young people and the critical need to pay more attention to this group.  They were not directly affected by the previous two generations of socialism and seem to be looking for meaningful involvement.

What does all this mean?

There is a growing awareness of attention to the topic of e-governance and e-participation within the CEE region. There is some recognition of this issue at a national governmental level.  Progress is being made in the CEE region.  Estonia is undoubtedly the leading country in the region as they have managed to make a considerable investment into high technology and it cuts across all sectors of the country.  There have been several interesting uses of this technology in Slovenia in the last several years as well.

But in fact, this issue has rarely ever reaches citizens themselves.  The fact that some national services are available on-line has not reached many people and will have limited impact as they are more concerned with services locally.  However, citizens are intuitively learning about these issues though their own life experience and are beginning to utilize tools such as social networks, e-mail groups, websites and blogs in the public area. 

There are of course a number of real obstacles for citizens to be able to take advantage of these tools.  The first of which is the basic access to computers and internet connection.  A growing number of people have access at their work but the use for public area activity is prohibited or certainly limited.  There are also a number of people who have been able to purchase a personal computer and can afford to connect to the internet but this constitutes a significant minority of the population.  There are a number of internet cafes available and increasingly schools are able to offer a computer and internet connection.  But the usage is still quite limited. 

What are critically missing in most areas of the region are community centers with available capacity for access to computers and internet.  Along with this is the need for training for many, especially the elderly and minorities that are so often left behind in these strategies.

Money is of course then another critical factor to make progress in this area.  Funding will be needed to broaden the number of computers, internet connections, provide the training and to create the public spaces for the thousands without the ability to finance their own.  However, the primary obstacle to making this happen is the interest, vision and will to make it occur.  Once this starts to move forward, the resources will follow.

On the other side, there is a fundamental desire by people to be informed and be active.  Current technology is supporting this desire.  Social networks and mobile phones are increasingly popular in the region and offer a real opportunity to utilize this technology.  The impact of things like „twitter" was noted this past year in places like Moldova where thousands gathered to protest the results of the Presidential election.  The size of the crowd was considerably larger than anticipated and „twitter" was creditied as one of the major reasons that people knew about the vent and its location. 

The CEE Citizens Network was formed in 2000 as an attempt to bring together the leading NGO's in the CEE region who were attempting to improve citizen participation in their countries. We now have members from nineteen countries.  The mission of the Network is to promote citizen participation in Central and Eastern Europe and provide opportunities for grassroots initiatives to learn and exchange experiences and ideas.  We carry this mission out through a number of activities including Citizen Participation Week, an annual training event, an e-newsletter and an every other year conference. 

The issue of e-participation has come more clearly to the attention of our Network and we have decided to become more directly involved as we believe that it will serve as a critical capacity in the near future.  We know that new forms of democracy will continue to emerge in the digital era.  E-participation will serve as an important tool in helping us to accomplish our mission throughout the region.  But in fact, we have realized that we ourselves are far behind in this capacity as well.  While there is limited use of technology within the Network itself, we are behind the private sector and sometimes the public sector in many ways.  There was clear realization that if our member organizations are far behind, citizens and more particularly, citizen groups themselves must be nearly left out of the conversation entirely at this point.  Thus a group has been formed to develop a strategy for how to move forward with this issue and to prepare a pilot project for the Network.

Our long term objective in this work is to ensure that citizens are engaged and prepared to be able to utilize the emerging technological tools which will help promote participation.  As citizens continue to press for increased participation, they need to be prepared to enter into the public area.  The CEE Citizens Network would set as an ideal to ensure that citizens are provided training in technology that provides:

• Development of attitude - to provide knowledge to citizens which is linked to the reality of the public discourse, to make this as useful and simple as possible and to give them the skills to meaningfully engage.
• Knowledge - make this easy to use, affordable (if not for free) and provide variety.
• Culture - not just entertainment and access to games but also provides invention, innovation, education and change.
• Contents - appropriate, motivating and useful and lets the users contribute and develop as well.
• Real chances for participation - they must experience that it means something, it can help and make a difference and that it is for me! And by me! It is important that people are able to express what they need and also offers appropriate opportunities.
• Encouragement - give reflections and real feedback 

This is an ambitious goal for the Network. But we strongly believe passionately in the value of and need for significant citizen participation in our countries.  We know that new technologies can assist this effort.  We look forward to our future cooperation together.

So what are some possible conclusions?

1. It is important to recognize the differences between the conditions in Western and Central/Eastern Europe related to active citizenship.  We must develop strategies to address the democratic deficit or building of active citizenship which address the real conditions faced in the CEE region as well as the issues facing Western European countries.
2. Focus more on the local level.  This is the place where citizens primarily encounter and will get involved in the public arena.  The focuses on national and European wide issues are understandable from a European donor but it is not the place where citizens are going to most meaningfully engage.
3. Encourage and support more "bottom up" activities.  It is critical that citizens initiate their own interests, agendas and projects.  We are encouraging this through the creation of "Citizens Agendas" at local election times in Slovakia or the Citizen Networks' event Citizen Participation Week at the end of September.
4. Expand support for NGOs and other civil society efforts that are serving as the critical intermediaries with citizens.  This is a delicate issue because neither local governments nor businesses are going to fund groups that are seriously helping citizens to raise issues with how they operate.  So how to fund this type of work requires special attention. 
5. EU projects and projects using other funds need to be designed and funded to address issues faced in the CEE region like connecting computer literacy skills with  community development.

I wish to close with a photo that characterizes some of the paradoxes in the CEE region in relation to e-democracy.