This year we joined the Governance Futures network, a group of organisations and individuals working on Democracy Innovation around the world

Written by Ione Ardaiz Osacar.

This week we participated in the annual gathering to reflect on the knowledge we are developing in our contexts and to connect all the lessons learned. On the first day, different participants we were asked to share about our context and our work to kick-off the conversations. From Arantzazulab we shared some reflections based on three Basque concepts that reflect our Basque culture and underpin our practice in Arantzazulab. For each concept, we shared what the meaning of the word is, the concept that underpins it and what does this mean for the future of governance. 

1. Auzolana:  

Meaning: it is a traditional system of cooperation between neighbours, citizens, friends and partners. The purpose of Auzolana is to accomplish something valuable for all the community through the voluntary work of the neighbours to promote communal living, tolerance, solidarity and community values. 

Concept: behind this word it is the very rooted Basque tradition of collaborative work to achieve bigger objectives. It implies having rights and benefits of being part of a community, but also having duties and responsibilities. Nowadays the philosophy and concept still remain alive and refers to working in collaboration. It could be a whole morning story, but in short: Auzolana was one of the key elements on which Basque traditional public institutions were created. 

What does this mean for the future: as all of you very well know and that is one of the reasons we are here, the world is undergoing profound political, economic, and social changes. Globalisation and the context that has evolved from it have brought to the fore a new political agenda. Moreover, this current model of globalization transcends and weakens the framework of the nation-state and, with it, democracy. The State is not only in crisis in terms of space, it also faces identity crisis; on the one hand, political structures do not control the economic and social reality, and on the other hand, the political identity of citizens is being profoundly transformed, which determines the reality of the political structures of representative democracies. Liberal democracies have lost the ability to manage the demands of their citizens and have therefore entered a crisis of performance, and in advanced democracies citizens have moved away from national politics which has weakened democracy. Therefore, it is fundamental to research and reimagine the relationships models between citizens, public institutions, and organised society, to involve them meaningfully in public decision making and public policy making. That is, starting from the culture and philosophical values of Auzolan, we need to explore new models of Collaborative Governance.   

2. Topagunea:  

Meaning: literally means meeting space, and this word it is used to refer to networks or ecosystems of stakeholders that come together with a shared purpose. 

Concept: currently we are increasingly using it to refer to diverse groups of people that come together in a semi-structured space to work collaboratively (through Auzolana) towards a shared objective.  

What does this mean for the future: in this current time of transition no single person or organisation has the information or knowledge to explore pathways to address the complex challenges we face. Therefore, we need to design, facilitate, and sustain over time spaces to connect diverse perspectives, different political sensitivities, and different types of knowledge (theory, practice, experiential…). We need spaces to listen to one another, recognize one another, deliberate and design together ways forward. A lot of people are feeling excluded, and they are pushing back, this is weakening our democracies and governance structures. All over the world there are similar figures, in the Basque region 2 out 3 citizens are not satisfied with how the democracy is working, in the same proportion, 2 out of 3 believe that politicians don’t care about what a regular citizen wants and needs. In this context, we need new structures and governance models to activate deliberations across different groups and envision shared actions, we need to work through conflict and difference, not ignore it. 

3.  Herrigintza: 

Meaning: this word means community development and nation building from the people and for the people themselves understood in a very broad way. Herrigintza includes all the elements needed in community building: auzolana (collaborative work), topaguneak (collaboration ecosystems) and all the elements needed to ensure people wellbeing as well as taking care of nature ecosystems. 

Concept: Community involvement and participation is deeply rooted in our Basque tradition. Basque society understands the value of responsibility and solidarity in the distribution of wealth, it is generally active and participates in society, we have significant social capital, we have a rich and diverse organised civil society.  

What does this mean for the future: to build a rooted and rich Herrigintza we need to able to envision ways to improve those elements that are holding us back, that are damaging our planet and natural ecosystems. Moving forward we need creativity and imagination to envision potential futures that we can build together, and start imagining the new roles, new ways of being and doing, new stances, that we will need to activate those new types of collaborations. We need to generate a sense of possibility. The arts, creativity and design will be crucial. 

When I talk about design, I refer to the definition proposed by Nigel Cross: a competence to engage with complex challenges, a way of thinking and working that involves strategic, adaptive, and collaborative intelligence. Design proposes frameworks, methodologies, and processes for navigating complexity, for imagining better futures and for exploring the steps we need to take to get there.  

Design is based on principles that are essential in this context: including different types of knowledge (theoretical, experiential, lived experience), rethinking power structures, making the steps we take tangible, following a constant adaptive logic (the word iterate is used to refer to the action of reflecting on practice and adapting actions according to the information gathered). 

Saward on his book Democratic design describes it as: Design—the intentional creation of plans to solve a problem—is the key to understanding today’s and creating tomorrow’s democratic governance. Building on recent influential ideas of democracy, it focuses on democracy as something designed, and open to redesign, using methods that a wide range of people interested in democracy can embrace.  

Summarising the three Basque concepts and actions that will be important moving forward:  

• Auzolana: collaborative work >> Researching and practising new models of Collaborative Governance. 
• Topagunea: meeting spaces or networks >> Ecosystems for deliberation, working through difference/conflict and agree on connected actions.  
• Herrigintza: community development >> Imagination and abductive reasoning, exploring ways through practice and building on the arts, creativity, and design.