Interesting things we’ve been reading, watching or listening to this month:

• Winning The Story Wars - Jonah Sachs’ new book discusses the need for stories to create meaning and inspire change, and the shortcomings of our cultural stories, currently dominated by marketers.
• Story of Stuff – Story of Change - Why we need citizens, not consumers, to create real change.
• Brandalism - Subvertising spreads around the UK. “Here comes the boom of the end of your civilisation and don’t you look pretty in your cool new jeans.”
• 5 popular forms of charity that aren’t helping- Breast cancer awareness campaigns – from pink buckets of KFC chicken, to breast cancer vodka and T-shirts encouraging men to ‘save a life, grope your wife’.
• The Guardian discusses the Hodgson Report - The report controversially suggests charity trustees could be paid (there’s also a poll on this recommendation here).
• The real reason conservatives win - Joe Brewer discusses political differences through the psychology of groups, and how a values-based strategy can aid progressives. “We need to focus on building communities of shared identity that bind us together… Building trust across organizations requires a three-pronged approach. First, we have to know our own values so that we can articulated them with authenticity and authority. Secondly, we must make these values explicit and engage in the practice of radical transparency to leave no questions about where we stand and what we care about. And third, we’ve got to seek out those who resonate with these values at the core level of their personal identity.”

The European Parliament: between ice cream and development education

How much did it promote intrinsic values to adopt a European Parliament declaration on development education and active global citizenship when this relied in part on enticing Members of the European Parliament with “Earth balloons” and photo opportunities?

This was the question Tobias Troll of DEEEP (Developing Europeans’ Engagement for the Eradication of Global Poverty) asked the Common Cause Brussels chapter on 12 July.

Tobias first gave us a crash course in written declarations of the European Parliament: They become automatically adopted once a majority of the Parliaments’ 754 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have signed them (within a deadline of three to four months). The declarations have to be less than 200 words, have no binding force, can be linked to any policy area of the European Union and do not automatically give rise to any specific follow-up. The main purpose is political: with a written declaration in your pocket, it is easier e.g. to ask the Commission to take action. It gives you a political “foot in the door”. Read more

We’ve drawn attention to the strong synergies between Common Cause and the work of Michael Sandel before. He’s in the UK (speaking at LSE) tomorrow, and I’ve just read his latest book – “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets”.

The arguments that Sandel develops in the book revolve importantly around the way in which charging for a good or service changes its nature. He writes:

“Standard economic reasoning assumes that commodifying a good – putting it up for sale – does not alter its character” (p.113).

And he then argues that this is far from the case – that, in many instances, creating a market for a good or service profoundly effects its character. For example, paying people to give blood changes the nature of blood-donation.

“As markets reach into spheres of life traditionally governed by nonmarket norms, the notion that markets don’t touch or taint the goods they exchange becomes increasingly implausible” (p.114).

In another example (one also mentioned in the Common Cause Handbook), Sandel cites a study of community attitudes to nuclear waste dumps in Switzerland, finding that offering citizens financial incentives for supporting the local siting of a dump erodes their support.

In discussing this further, he presents some insights which Common Cause has itself worked to highlight: Read more

This blog is written by Eivind Hoff in Brussels.

How to use the Common Cause perspective in the design of dialogue processes? That was what we discussed through a case study at Common Cause Brussels on 19 April.

The case was a real example of an EU-funded research project that is to start soon with the aim of fostering better dialogue between R&D communities and civil society on low-carbon energy technologies that sometimes are controversial, such as wind turbines, CCS or power transmission lines. One of the first big tasks in the project will be to conduct a large number of interviews in 10 European countries with different types of stakeholders on their opinions on these technologies and the low-carbon energy transition in general. Read more