Open Government Partnership must decide – American or British football?

Head of international law organisation says OGP countries must not be complacent when it comes to civic engagement
Cincinnati Bengals at Dallas Cowboys
In American football, like in OGP, once you're in the league you're basically safe. But poor performing countries should face relegation. Photograph: LARRY W. SMITH/EPA

At the Open Government Partnership (OGP) summit 2013 we spoke to Douglas Rutzen, president and chief executive of the International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law, about the work he does to encourage greater civic participation with governments around the world.

What does the International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law do?

We work in 100 countries on developing the legal framework for civil society, public participation and philanthropy.

What we really focus on is ensuring that citizens have safe legal space to try to improve their communities, their societies, their countries. So, the ability to form a charity, the ability to influence official decision-making, the ability to participate in issues that affect their daily lives.

What are the greatest barriers to civic participation in politics?

It depends on the country. We work in one set of countries where the governments have really constricted the ability of citizens to work collectively to improve their everyday lives. One country where we work if you want to set up an association at the national level you need 500 founders - so you and 499 of your closest friends would be required to do that.

Another country, one of the poorest in Africa, if you want to provide humanitarian assistance you need to collect $1m - which is 16,000 times monthly average GDP. As a result in these countries there are virtually no charities, no civil society organisations to speak of.

There will be other countries that might be higher performers on a democracy scale – I might put the US in this category – but we also have constraints and they'll come from different angles. For example, counter-terrorism laws squeeze civic space.

How do counter terrorism laws squeeze civic space?

In the US we have a whole set of rules around material support to what we call listed terrorism organisations. We wanted to work with groups to convince them to try to address their grievances through peaceful means, but since these organisations were listed terrorist organisations, the supreme court ruled that you couldn't provide any technical assistance to these groups even to convince them to renounce terrorism.

Why did you come to the OGP summit?

I was very interested in figuring out the positioning of OGP when it comes to this issue of civic space. There's a lot of talk about the fact that it's co-created with civil society, that they have an equal role, but it's not clear to me exactly how civil space issues are clearly integrated into the operations of OGP.

How can OGP address these issues?

One of the issues relates to eligibility. That there is a civil engagement eligibility criterion but it's a weak indicator. You could score quite poorly on the civic engagement indicator and still get in to OGP.

For me it comes down to this issue of whether we use the American football approach or the British football approach. In the American football approach, once you're in the league, you meet the eligibility criteria, you're basically in the league forever. In theory you could get thrown out, just like in theory in OGP if you have two bad reports you could get thrown out but I think we should be realistic it's not going to happen.

My understanding of the British system is that if you get promoted into the premier league but you continually are at the bottom of your table you face relegation. And you could imagine a system in OGP, where if you score very low on a particular eligibility criterion, for example civic engagement, they would allow you in only if over time you show improvement and move up the table on that criterion. But right now that doesn't exist. There need to be teeth embedded in the system.

You run training programmes for foreign diplomats. What advice do you offer to governments around the world?

There are some countries that recognise that openness and transparency and the empowerment of citizens can help government solve social problems and they're running with openness.

But I think that there's a backlash and there are a number of countries that are really concerned about the downward diffusion of sovereignty to citizens. It scares them. What's interesting is that the zeitgeist of 1989-1990, the fall of the Berlin wall, was one of openness and democracy because countries were transitioning to democracy and they wanted international assistance.

But now, years later, these countries are no longer transitioning , some didn't fully transition, and the political elite now want to consolidate power. So the last thing they want is international assistance towards openness and democracy rather their zeitgeist is more consolidation of power and squeezing out independent voices and dissent. So what we tend to tell diplomats is engage in that debate. As David Cameron said, "History isn't written for us, it should be written by us", and we need to engage in exactly this – creating the legacy of civic engagement for the 21st century.

What do governments gain from greater civic participation?

For me it's not necessarily about benefiting a sector like government or civil society but at the end of the day we should be trying to benefit the citizens. The greatest challenges of today are beyond the capacity of any sector to address on its own. Think of climate change, the HIV/aids epidemic, economic development and so forth. Government can't solve these issues on its own; we need to engage everyone. Openness allows this to happen – the government can't view itself as being the central repository of solutions.

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