& Oxford University Press and Community Development Journal.

2013
All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
doi:10.1093/cdj/bst049
Advance Access Publication 6 September 2013

‘It’s who you know’: community

empowerment through network
brokers
Sarah Morgan-Trimmer*

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Abstract This article presents a case study of a regeneration programme which
explored ways in which residents involved in the programme exerted
influence over local decision-making for public services. The participation
literature has extensively documented constraints on resident empower-
ment; this article explores the opportunities for resident influence within
this context of limitations. The study employed a form of network analysis
to conceptualize the regeneration partnership as a network and to
explore the ways in which individuals adopted roles as ‘network brokers’
which facilitated resident influence. Institutional arrangements of the
regeneration partnership were designed to promote participation through
formal meetings but resident influence also occurred through network
brokers in both formal and informal peripheral network spaces, thereby
representing an opportunity for resident influence over and above formal
participation arrangements. If this type of central–peripheral network
structure and brokering is a normal pattern for participation, then the
implication here is that although institutional arrangements and numbers
of residents participating are important, we should also pay attention to
how individuals are networked, because this seems to have implications
for resident influence. This was something of an ideal case, given the
comparatively benign environment for participation in the case study area,
and influence for the majority of residents remained limited overall, but it
points to the importance of key individuals in local participatory initiatives,
their location in networks and their ‘brokering’ work in empowering local
communities, which may have applicability in other contexts.

*Address for correspondence: Sarah Morgan-Trimmer, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University,
Cardiff CF10 3BD, UK; email: morgan-trimmersa@cardiff.ac.uk

Community Development Journal Vol 49 No 3 June 2014 pp. 458– 472 458
 Community empowerment through network brokers 459

Introduction
While important in the analysis of participation, concerns about representa-
tiveness and numbers of people participating have tended to obscure the
question of whether participation actually had any impact on influencing
decision-making and, therefore, how empowering initiatives have been.
The study described here attempted to address this by exploring resident in-
fluence on local area regeneration and public services through a case study of
a New Deal for Communities (NDC) regeneration programme, which oper-
ated in England between 1999 and 2010, and which had a relatively strong

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participatory element in its design (Batty et al., 2010). The findings presented
here indicate how opportunities for resident influence may operate through
local networks, within a wider context of institutional constraints, and dem-
onstrate how a network-based perspective might be useful for conceptualiz-
ing and promoting participation.

Participation and its discontents

‘Participation’ is used here to refer to direct public involvement in and influ-
ence over local decision-making for public policy and services, and hence is
closely related to the notion of empowerment (Bridgen, 2004). ‘Influence’ is
defined as changes brought about in local services or policy decisions as a
result of residents’ aspirations or requests. While participation has a long
history in the United Kingdom, during the 1990s and 2000s public services
and programmes were increasingly required to work in a participatory
way through mechanisms such as consultations, partnerships, service user
groups and local area committees (SEU, 1998). However, many studies
have concluded that participants gained little influence, especially at the stra-
tegic rather than the local delivery level due to overall programme design,
staffing and financial control remaining in the hands of national and local
government (Foley and Martin, 2000; Dinham, 2005). In addition, institution-
alist perspectives have highlighted ‘rules-in-use’ which limit participation
(Lowndes, Pratchett and Stoker, 2006; Barnes, Newman and Sullivan, 2007),
and post-structuralist literatures have drawn attention to the complex
power relations involved in the framing of participant roles and interests in
particular ways (Atkinson, 1999).
This literature, taken together, tends to inspire an image of epic power
struggles but, in fact, the general response to participatory regeneration part-
nerships was largely one of non-engagement: ‘community’ participation
rarely attracted the majority of residents (Mathers, Parry and Jones, 2008;
Batty et al., 2010). This is likely to be due in part to the relationship between
public services and local populations. In deprived areas, levels of trust and
460 Sarah Morgan-Trimmer

involvement in local organizations have tended to be low (Grimsley et al.,

2005), with relationships with services sometimes characterized by conflict
or resentment about poor services (Annette and Creasy, 2007; Mathers,
Parry and Jones, 2008). While regeneration programmes represented poten-
tial change, residents may have perceived the cost of participation as being
too high because of prior experience of interventions having little perceived
benefit, leading to mistrust, fatigue or disillusionment (Foley and Martin,
2000; Docherty, Goodlad and Paddison, 2001). Influence was certainly a
critical issue for residents of deprived areas who tended to be more inclined

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to participate if real change was a possibility (Docherty, Goodlad and
Paddison, 2001).
These literatures suggest participatory initiatives have been limited in
terms of influence for those who participated, and in any case (or because
of this) engagement tended to be unattractive to the majority of residents.
While this article does not dispute this overall finding, I want to argue that
this perspective is an incomplete account of participatory processes
because it does not adequately address any impact resident participation
might have had, however limited. Despite significant constraints, some
opportunity remains for resident influence in participatory initiatives since
there are both institutional changes designed to promote participation and
a small number of active resident participants: opportunities to influence
decision-making, while not extensive, may nevertheless exist. This notion
follows Barnes, Newman and Sullivan (2007), who conclude that despite
the difficulties of participation, there may be possibilities for influence
through ‘opportunity structures’ in a system (Newman et al., 2004). This
perspective is based on new social movement theory which describes
social actors who make use of opportunity structures for empowerment
(Tarrow, 1998) which emerge from institutional factors and socio-political
structures interacting with the ‘agency of the poor’ (Narayan, 2005). Similarly,
a participatory regeneration programme can be viewed as an opportunity
structure for residents of deprived areas to influence local decision-making
which, while limited, represents the potential to learn about how participa-
tion might promote resident empowerment within a wider context of con-
straints. Again, this does not contradict the findings of many studies which
demonstrate the limits of participatory initiatives; it is rather to point out
that it is worth exploring potential ways in which influence might occur in
order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of participation
dynamics and to discover whether anything useful, such as how participation
might influence decision-making, might be learned and perhaps replicated
on a bigger scale.
 Community empowerment through network brokers 461

Network brokers
A network perspective is taken here in order to examine the relationships and
interactions between actors in a regeneration partnership during decision-
making processes, where certain interactions within the network are concep-
tualized as an opportunity for resident influence. This analytical approach
was adopted when it became apparent during the study that networks
were a significant theme in the data on resident influence. Concepts from
social network analysis (SNA) can usefully be adopted here: individuals
are conceptualized as the ‘nodes’ of a network, while the relationships

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between them are referred to as ‘ties’ (Wasserman and Faust, 1994). A regen-
eration partnership, as well as being established as a formal institutional
arrangement, can also be conceived of as a local network where various indi-
viduals representing different sectors and groups meet to contribute to regen-
eration efforts in various ways. The contention here is that (i) participatory
initiatives, and regeneration programmes in particular, should be understood
in terms of a network of relationships between nodes, where nodes are
individuals rather than groups and (ii) that certain individuals (nodes) may
carry out functions as network ‘brokers’ which create opportunities for
resident influence.
To take the first point, membership of regeneration partnerships tends to be
described in terms of the different groups which are represented, such as
‘local public services’ or ‘the voluntary sector’. However, the partnership is
enacted, often at meetings, through individuals who cannot be regarded as
being equivalent to the group they represent since the group’s membership
may be diverse. This has been highlighted with respect to ‘community partici-
pation’, which has been critiqued for representation of the entire community
by a small number of people who do not necessarily reflect its diversity
(Millward, 2005). This point, however, also applies to representatives of
other sectors in regeneration partnerships. The partnership should, therefore,
be understood as a network of particular individuals rather than being a
conglomeration of groups. This is not to say that the organization or groups
that the individual represents are an unimportant factor in understanding
how partnerships operate: their aims, cultures, resources and other attributes
play a role in determining the individual’s contribution. For example, an
organization might be trying to demonstrate engagement with local commu-
nities, or it might be concerned with budget constraints or performance
targets; these will have considerable impact on how public service represen-
tatives engage in a regeneration partnership. However, in partnerships,
participation is enacted through an individual and this has implications
for participation processes.
462 Sarah Morgan-Trimmer

The second point follows on from the first: what goes on in partnership dis-
cussions and the processes of decision-making will, to some extent, depend
on the natures of the individuals attending rather than merely the groups
they represent. Individuals do not necessarily conform to the norms of their
group completely but operate partly as individuals with their own character-
istics, behaviours, ideas and values, depending partly on how much inde-
pendence and discretion they are granted. For example, public service
managers working in partnerships may have organizational rules to follow
but also have a certain amount of discretion to solve local problems (Smith,

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Mathur and Skelcher, 2006); even where this has not been the case, public
service employees may nevertheless use their own discretion (Lipsky,
1980). Individuals may take an active ‘entrepreneurial’ approach to judging
and reacting to local situations based on their local knowledge (Durose,
2009), experiencing tensions between participant aspirations and their own
organization’s priorities (Barnes, Newman and Sullivan, 2007) but coping
with this by making judgements drawing on their personal as well as organ-
izational backgrounds (Barnes and Prior, 2009). The interaction between
an individual’s ideas and values and their organizational rules, aims and so
on will vary. This will depend on specific attributes of the individual and
the organization, how much authority the individual’s position carries
and other contexts such funding and broader policy constraints.
Of particular interest for this study are individuals who use their position in
a network to link or form a ‘bridge’ to other individuals; these are nodes who
bridge individuals or clusters in a network and enable a link to exist between
nodes even if they are not in direct contact. Not everyone in a network is
necessarily a bridge; there tend to be particular individuals who are well con-
nected compared with others (Gilchrist, 2004). Individuals in partnerships
can be understood as bridges: residents, for example, who attend regener-
ation partnership meetings can form a link to local community networks
(Purdue, 2001). Public service employees who represent their organization
in a partnership can also be regarded as bridges. In regeneration partnerships,
although those attending meetings initially form some kind of link by virtue
of their presence, individuals will exercise discretion in the extent to which
they actively develop relationships with others in the partnership and to
what extent they bridge the partnership to other individuals or groups in
the locality; the individual choices and exercise of discretion of these nodes
are, therefore, meaningful.
For the purposes of this study, bridging individuals were termed ‘brokers’
because their discretion in carrying out brokering functions such as commu-
nication and advocacy to promote resident influence were explored, not just
whether they formed bridges. SNA characterizes the arrangement of nodes in
a network as interdependent, with relational ties between them through
 Community empowerment through network brokers 463

which resources and influence pass (Wasserman and Faust, 1994). Influence
may pass through ‘broker nodes’ more than others and they are, therefore,
an opportunity for resident influence over and above what institutional struc-
tures, such as formal partnership meetings, might facilitate. Discretion
enacted by brokers creates an opportunity for resident aspirations to be fed
into policies through individuals who take on and support ideas about com-
munity participation within their organization (Fagotto and Fung, 2006). This
may occur in a variety of ways, such as through ‘revising, resisting or refusing
policy imperatives’ (Prior, 2009, p. 32). In some cases, public sector employees

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may change services in response to local resident concerns, but in an unoffi-
cial, hidden capacity if it represents a departure from officially sanctioned
ways of working (Smerdon and Robinson, 2004). Even where no particular
tension or conflict is involved, individuals may choose which of multiple
policy aims, including participation, to prioritize. Therefore, even in
‘difficult’ organizations, ‘there are windows of opportunity and cracks in
the system; there are allies in the most uncompromising institutions’
(Taylor, 2003, p. 224).
Furthermore, while brokering may occur in formal partnership settings
such as meetings, there is some evidence that change may also occur
through informal spaces (Dinham, 2005), including through one-to-one rela-
tionships (SQW Ltd, 2004). Thus, while individuals have formal partnership
roles, such as representing a group, they may also develop informal relations
based on personal face-to-face interactions and communication. Emmel et al.
(2007) found that residents in low-income estates often achieved a response
from public services through trusted intermediate professionals who were
helping them with another issue. Informal mechanisms may also increase
the amount of information exchanged between individuals (Taylor, 2004)
and promote the inclusion of residents’ aspirations into local agendas
(Ray et al., 2008). Brokers may, therefore, be able to create opportunities for
resident influence through informal network spaces as well as in formal
network settings, within the wider context of partnership structures, but a
greater understanding of these is needed (Taylor, 2003).

Methods
An ethnographic case study method was employed to capture data on any
potential routes of resident influence over local public services; in order to
prevent this becoming too extensive in scope, environmental departments
(providing services such as rubbish collection and park maintenance) were
selected as a sub-case study and data collection on resident influence concen-
trated largely on these services. Methods included observation of local
public meetings during one calendar year, as well as interviews with eleven
464 Sarah Morgan-Trimmer

participating local residents, six regeneration programme officers, three

government officers, six voluntary sector representatives and thirteen
employees of public services at different levels. Interview and observation
data were coded and analysed in two stages using NVivo 2, grouping over
100 initial free codes into 8 major overarching themes. Networks emerged
as a significant theme from this analysis; a traditional quantitative SNA
(using SNA-specific software) was not carried out.
The case study regeneration programme was purposively sampled from
public initiatives promoting participation; NDC at the time had a strong par-

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ticipatory element, for example requiring its boards to be made up of at least
50 percent residents. East Manchester NDC (‘Beacons for a Brighter Future’,
or ‘Beacons’) was selected for its reputation for good community engagement
from the amount of information available at that time (CRESR, 2003). This
positive bias in the sampling was used in order to find a case study where par-
ticipation was actively promoted in order to explore how the dynamics of
participatory processes might operate. A second consideration was the pro-
gramme size and maturity: each NDC programme area received around
£50 million and ran from 1999/2000 for ten years. The fieldwork was con-
ducted during 2007, which provided several years for a relatively substantial
programme to be fully operational and for participatory processes to poten-
tially have some effect.
Because of the small number of interviewees of each type, and because the
case study was a relatively small area where most of the interviewees knew
each other well, identifying details are omitted and some job titles or local
authority departments are broadly described, in order to preserve anonymity.

Findings
Data on the role of network brokers in resident influence, comprising one
aspect of the dynamics of the participatory processes, are presented here.
This section discusses three types of brokers: Beacons officers, public
service employees and residents participating in the Beacons programme
(referred to here as ‘active residents’).
The Beacons programme initially established itself as a partnership with
representation from individuals in public services, the voluntary sector and
local resident groups who met at regular Beacons meetings. The programme
was embedded within wider local networks, often through overlapping
attendance at local public meetings by the same representatives from
Beacons, public services and residents. This represents formal relationships,
roles and procedures of participation in local decision-making. However,
much of the data presented here also demonstrate the informal processes
 Community empowerment through network brokers 465

that occurred, often overlapping or interweaving with the formal procedures

of the regeneration partnership.
Beacons officers were the first and most significant brokers for residents
because they created a new link to public decision-making. In the initial
stages, Beacons officers built relationships with local residents; this was crit-
ical since there had been distrust and lack of communication between resi-
dents and local public bodies in the area: ‘A lot of it is about forming
relationships and developing trust with the local people. . . . I think it’s an ab-
solutely critical thing in terms of where we’ve got to and how we’ve got there’

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(NDC Officer 1).
Beacons did this firstly by locating its offices in the local area and operated
an open-door policy where residents could walk in and speak to any of the
NDC officers directly: ‘NDC has an open door policy which it’s always had
where you can just go in and ask to see whoever’ (Resident 2).
This relationship-building formed a basis on which Beacons could broker
relations between residents and public services. Beacons officers’ close rela-
tionship with local residents meant that they were often the first contact resi-
dents would make if they were unhappy with a service, and could mediate
between them:

So he’d [public services employee] come in and go ‘I’ve had bloody

[resident] moaning on about that’ and I’d go ‘Oh come on, he’s only going,
he only wants [an improvement]’. They go ‘Right’ you know, so those kind
of relationships, yes, we’ve helped there.
(NDC Officer 4)

Beacons officers also followed up residents’ concerns themselves and advo-

cated for them when necessary, for example using their status and relation-
ships with services to make sure public service employees attended
meetings and gave adequate responses to resident requests:
INTERVIEWER: How much influence do you think residents have on services, how
much influence have you had?

RESPONDENT: When I can get them to the table, I can meet them table [sic], over
a table, but, but if we didn’t have NDC as a go-between I don’t know what kind of
influence we would have.

INTERVIEWER: So why is NDC important?

RESPONDENT: Because they’re open to it. They’ve got the residents a voice.
(Resident 3)

Resident influence on strategic-level decision-making remained very limited,

due in part to the Beacon’s focus remaining very much on the local area that
received the regeneration funding. In this context, Beacons officers were a
466 Sarah Morgan-Trimmer

significant broker for residents because of their status with and links to the
city council:
If a certain issue came up [in a meeting] [NDC Officer] would say ‘Well look,
I agree with that, that’s a point I’ll raise outside of this meeting with the
management group that run that particular business’. . . . And then that
person would see a result, or not a result, but nine times out of ten they
would change. (Resident 8)

INTERVIEWER: So when you’re faced with services who don’t respond, how do you

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try and overcome that?

RESPONDENT: Well we take it through the Beacons, we use [NDC Officer] really, and
[they] expresses in writing, you know, the unhappiness that is going on. And [NDC
Officer] is quite a powerful [person] really because [they’ve] got the council’s
backing. (Resident 1)

Regeneration meetings also provided opportunities for direct contact

between active residents and services through which relationships could
be built. These were residents who were usually already active in commu-
nity groups, as is common in participatory initiatives where the ‘usual
suspects’ become involved. While these were formal network spaces, indi-
vidual relationships became more personal through interaction in these
arenas, through chatting after meetings for example, and individuals
would often then start contacting each other directly outside of these meet-
ings. There were overlaps and interweaving, therefore, between formal pro-
cedures of the regeneration partnership and informal processes. Certain
communication methods were particularly favoured. Contact by telephone
was valued by residents because it enabled fast, direct communication with
a known person in a public service, in contrast to their previous experi-
ences where they felt they had been passed around by different disinterest-
ed local authority departments, and it also prompted a good response from
services:
All the residents, or all the [group members] have all got my mobile number
and the landline number, and quite often they’re in touch with me with any
issues they have. (Public service employee 6)

You say ‘Hello this is, hi this is [name], on a such and such a thing’. They
they’ll know you and you’ll know them and it’s easier to get, if something
happened in the street or rubbish has not been moved, or bins are left, we get
onto [environmental service employee].
(Resident 7)

Relationships also developed through some public service employees being

located in the local area as it made direct communication with residents easier,
particularly in policing and environmental services which had patrolling
 Community empowerment through network brokers 467

staff in the area; any resident could literally walk up to them on the street. This
type of informal space was particularly useful for non-participating resi-
dents, as the informality and minimal effort required created a low threshold
for contacting services.
Public service employees working at ground level often acted as a first
point of contact for residents and would link them to other services if
necessary:

People know we can, now, they can come to us for basically anything and if
we can’t do it we can steer them in the right direction of, so they know, they

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know that . . . . I’ll point them in the right direction. So I personally think my
job is like middleman. (Public service employee 3)

So they [ground level public service employees] will know the right people.
So it’s having, ports [sic] of contact’s important obviously. But there’s that
breakaway as well, ‘Well I can’t help you with that because I don’t know
what to do but I do know someone who can’ . . . , it’s like a friendship thing,
it’s networking. . . . It’s not a matter of passing you to a different department
to shut you up, it’s that networking thing you know.
(Resident 5)

Active residents also acted as brokers, linking other residents to Beacons and
public services. This was crucial for non-participating residents, since,
despite various outreach initiatives, the proportion of residents participating
was typically low in Beacons and other NDC programmes (Duffy, Vince and
Page, 2008; Mathers, Parry and Jones, 2008; Batty et al., 2010). However, to say
that a few residents participated while the rest did not does not accurately
characterize the pattern of participation. Residents participated to various
degrees: a relatively small proportion attended meetings regularly, some
attended meetings less frequently and some residents would only attend
meetings or the Beacons office in order to solve a specific problem, leaving
once it was resolved. Some residents were not involved but were in contact
with an active resident and would communicate through them. Other resi-
dents only attended occasional Beacons community events or had no
contact with Beacons at all. Resident participation was, therefore, located at
various points in the local network centred around Beacons, some more cen-
trally and some at the periphery. Residents who participated in Beacons and
other local public meetings often acted as brokers for local residents nearer the
periphery, passing on information about local problems to public service
employees and Beacons officers, and also passing information about
the Beacons network and services to local residents. In this way, non-
participating residents, as long as they knew an active resident, had oppor-
tunities to communicate with public services. Active residents were often
those who had been involved in some form of participation previously at
468 Sarah Morgan-Trimmer

local or regional/national levels, and tended to be relatively confident and

articulate although not necessarily formally educated. They had a variety
of reasons for participating which were usually derived from some sense of
contributing to the community and/or wanting to improve their local area.
They were often also older and had lived in the area for some time. The prox-
imity of these active residents to non-participating residents was usually a
matter of luck, they lived in the same street for example, so network relations
at this level were unevenly dispersed. These connections were also fairly con-
tingent, since if an active resident moved house, the connection between the

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non-participating resident and public officials would be lost. Those partici-
pating from the periphery, therefore, as well as being distant from the
centre, also had relatively unstable links to decision-making structures.
Active residents would often pass on information about helpful public
service employees and their contact details to other residents so they could
build up their own contacts directly and expand network links: ‘It’s not what
you know it’s who you know. . . . If we can get people we can pull strings
with and let everybody else know, it’s ideal’ (Resident 4). Participating residents
would also sometimes advocate for other non-participating residents:

If I were coming to the Resident Forum I’d go back out and say
[to a neighbour]:

Did you actually get any result when you phoned?

And they’ll tell me. And if they had any problems then I’d bring it up at that
[Beacons] meeting and say: Well you didn’t really do what you’re supposed
to do, you should have done this really.
(Resident 11)

This case study reveals how resident influence occurred in formal and infor-
mal network spaces through brokers. Beacons officers, public service employ-
ees and active residents formed the structure of the network and also
brokered influence through passing information and advocating for resident
influence over local services. Resident influence was promoted by indivi-
duals who created opportunities within a wider context of a nationally
driven programme with predefined structures and targets, even for some
residents who occupied fairly peripheral network spaces.
Two caveats should be noted here: first, that these findings are drawn from
one in-depth case study in an area with relatively strong support for resident
participation and with a sub-case study of a public service with a strong
street-level presence, and was therefore something of an ideal case for exam-
ining network brokers and resident influence. Second, this article highlights
where resident influence occurred and has not gone into drawbacks, such
as the unstable positions of brokers, in detail. However, the purpose of
 Community empowerment through network brokers 469

presenting these data in the limited space here is to draw attention to potential
opportunities in this area and, in doing so, to bring some balance to the
existing literature which tends to focus on institutional constraints.

Discussion
The idea of a ‘network’ can be used in a metaphorical sense in qualitative
research, but in some cases it can be useful to pay attention to network struc-
ture in a more literal way. SNA provides the concepts and language to do

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this. This study used a network perspective to explore how individuals
used their discretion as network brokers to promote resident influence. The
difficulties of participation have been extensively documented in the litera-
ture; a network approach provides a conceptual basis for exploring how
opportunities for influence might operate within the wider context of the in-
stitutional limits of regeneration partnerships. Further research could explore
how non-participating residents engage in peripheral network spaces, how
they are linked to various types of brokers such as active residents and
public service employees and the implications of this for resident influence.
In terms of policy and practice, the findings suggest that brokers have been
somewhat overlooked in favour of institutional perspectives, whereas a
network perspective draws attention to the role of individuals and their rela-
tionships in participation. Brokers were not always highly visible in terms of
their brokering function, perhaps because brokering is taken for granted;
although many professionals might acknowledge the importance of
relationship-building as critical to regeneration and community work, this
does not necessarily have prominence when participation is being consid-
ered. The work of brokers may also be overlooked because network building
and brokering can occur in less formal and less visible spaces rather than at
public meetings where recognized participation processes occur. However,
if these network brokers represent a route for resident influence, they
should be considered more explicitly if participatory processes are to be
better developed.
Findings here indicate that participation initiatives could be improved by
developing network approaches, paying particular attention to peripheral
areas. This analytical approach – participation from a network perspective –
reframes the question of what effective participation looks like. If this type of
central–peripheral network structure and brokering is a normal pattern for
participation, then the implication here is that although numbers participating
are important, we should also pay attention to how individuals are networked,
because this seems to have implications for resident influence. Questions are
raised about whether and how to promote routes of influence through
networks; this could entail considerations such as recruiting public service
470 Sarah Morgan-Trimmer

employees with good relational skills to work as brokers. The physical location
of public service employees also seems to be important for networking to take
place. Additionally, the culture of public sector offices, meetings and events
was important in creating welcoming spaces where residents could engage
with regeneration officers easily. These features are likely to be especially im-
portant to groups that are distant from public services or find them difficult
to engage with, and could, therefore, also be considered explicitly and with
care when designing public services or initiatives to promote participation.
These features, however, are more relevant for residents most likely to

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participate; there are also implications of network perspectives for how
to overcome current limitations of participatory practice with respect to non-
participation, namely focusing on routes of influence from the periphery
rather than numbers represented in meetings. Some individuals will never
be interested in community activities, especially formal meetings, and will
remain engaged on the periphery or not at all, and it may be more useful to con-
centrate on supporting those who are engaged and their brokering work with
less-engaged individuals instead (Jones, 2003). This could include promoting
links between participating residents and informal local groups such as a gar-
dening group. Another key point is to make sure that brokers are supported by
ensuring they are listened to and responded to (with information at least, even
if services are not changed), thus raising their credibility to other residents and
the likelihood of both the broker and the unengaged resident maintaining
these links to decision-making processes. One weakness of networks is the
turnover of public service employees entailing loss of brokers; a policy of
making sure replacement employees are introduced to residents would
reduce this problem. Power relations – which are a central concern for partici-
pation – should also be considered with reference to networks. Power relations
between actors occupying different spaces in the network, central or periph-
eral, need to be taken into account: for example, while access from the periph-
ery to decision-making structures was useful in this case study in that network
links were preferable to no access at all, residents on the periphery were disad-
vantaged by being dependent on somewhat unstable brokers to link them to
decision-making structures. There is also the question of those residents
who act as nodes, and, therefore, potentially as gatekeepers, and how they
mediate access to decision-making for non-participating residents. These are
challenging aspects of participation, but, understood from a network perspec-
tive, address existing concerns about inequalities and power relations in a new
way. This case study has explored how residents gained influence through
network brokers and has also noted various limitations; in doing so, it has
demonstrated how the identification of networks and closer attention to
network processes can shed new light on the question of whether community
participation has any impact.
 Community empowerment through network brokers 471

Funding
This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council
(PTA031200400127).

Sarah Morgan-Trimmer is a Research Associate at the Centre for the Development and Evaluation
of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement, Cardiff University, Wales.

Downloaded from http://cdj.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universitas Negeri Semarang on May 15, 2016

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