This research report for the London Empowerment Partnership has been recommended (full report; summary).  It takes a qualitative look at people’s feelings of influence and researched how our value base informs our feelings and how we approach issues in different ways.  It is challenging for anyone who is seeking to involve people.   Key findings include:

• most people are interested in reactive influence, solving particular problems, and may not be satisfied with their experiences in this regard
• many mechanisms used by local authorities are proactive, so looking to address wider issues. Those people who do seek to have a proactive influence, are often attempting to address issues which are outside the scope of local institutions
• this results in an ‘influence gap’
• people cite the biggest factors to not getting involved are lack of information and not having been approached to take part.