Mori gives ‘power to the people' as it launches its Participation Unit

Mori took a step towards delivering what UK Government minister Patricia Hewitt has called “democracy beyond the ballot box” with the launch of its Participation Unit last week.

The research and opinion polling agency unveiled its latest offering at a packed event in Westminster on Friday, where it debated the pros and cons of deliberative and participative approaches to research.

Research director Bobby Duffy told the assorted national and local government researchers that participative techniques where “no better or no worse than traditional research”, but they can help “shift power to the citizen, resident or service user”.

Participative approaches include the use of citizen researchers, who design, carry out and interpret the research findings, and peer interviewers, where members of a hard-to-reach group, such as drug users or the homeless, are trained to interview their peers. Deliberative techniques include citizens' juries and workshops.

Duffy said: “There does seem to be a real appetite for this type of research at the top level of government.”

However, the Audit Commission's Davy Jones cast doubt on this, asking Mori's expert panel – including Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee – whether central and local government were “really going to start letting local people take decisions” via the use of deliberative and participative techniques.

Mori associate director Julian Thompson said it was “incumbent on the research industry to make this happen”, while Toynbee said that if government was serious about greater citizen involvement, it would need to “devolve a little bit of money”. “Empowerment comes with money,” she said.