Session 4: Citizen participation in practice.

This article was written by Thaiane Pereira and Adriana Roldan

Building up on previous lectures, this session aims to elaborate on the different ways through which citizens can get involved in decision-making processes, as well as what part of this process citizens should step in and the very concept of citizen participation. This session has special relevance since it is based on the participation of citizens, which is an essential part of open governments.

Citizen’s participation nowadays is far from only traditional forms, such as voting or protests on streets. It can be perceived also though digital ways to participate, such as in online petitions, referendums, consultations, etc. increasing their influence in political issues, such as climate change. As an example, according to EIT Climate-KIC (2020), Madrid, together with Amsterdam and Milan, are three cities where citizen participation is helping to boost climate action. In fact, “Madrid acknowledges citizen participation in urban planning as a way of having valuable input in processes and urban regeneration” (EIT Climate-KIC, 2020). Citizens, through the “Decide Madrid” (an online platform to engage local communities in Madrid), are able to propose ideas, as well as to vote for legislative texts introduced by the body.

During the class, to have a sense on how the young generation is participating in their governments and influencing policies’ decisions, some polls were done. We saw that most of us (81%) voted in the past electoral process, although the majority is not engaged in a political party (69%). However, more than half has been participated in political acts, such as protests (57%). Nevertheless, on the polls was also possible to notice that new forms of citizen participation are increasing, since 69% of us has participated in online and non-traditional mechanism (like petitions or hashtags).

Through the class we discussed traditional and non-traditional forms of citizens’ participation, as well as this concept, which is wide and vary among organizations. For example, while the OECD included stakeholders, Sheedy includes the concept of respect among actors, and Callahan focuses on policies and decisions themselves, and not only on the system. That is why participation can be explained though different ways, like the level of engagement of citizens, and also how that process is done.

Citizens’ participation can vary in forms and levels of engagement. The OECD Recommendation on Open Government introduces the concept of the “Ladder of Participation”, which sets three levels for participation: information, consultation, and engagement. These conform a way to give citizens tools to be taken into account during decision-making processes. Another understanding can measure participation in different steps: inform, consult, involve, collaborate, and empower. For example, inform would be letting citizens know how their money is spent, why some decisions are taken and also sharing data; and empower would establish a permanent mechanism, meaning that citizens’ participation would be institutionalized, and thus, it would be biding (citizens can actually shape legal decisions and initiatives).

Timing is an important issue when thinking about involving citizens in decisions. It is crucial to decide at what point of the decision-making process citizens must step in. GovLab at NYU, for example, proposes six levels of policymaking process: problem identification, solution identification, drafting, decision-making, implementation and evaluation. They propose that in the drafting level, citizens could collaborate writing legislation or regulation drafts, as well as commenting on proposal drafts.

Like perspectives, definitions and timing, goals might vary as well. In theory, they can have as objective preventing policy and democratic capture by elites, foster social stability and reduce conflict, promote a more robust democracy, increase transparency and accountability, build trust in institutions, strengthen legitimacy of decisions, reflect citizens’ needs and priorities, improve quality of services and policies, and promote fairness and social justice.

Thus, in practice, citizen participation involves different layers, for example, political will (commitment), legal framework, institutional setting, administrative organization, cultural change, as well as ICT and technology, as we saw in some examples in the class.

We discussed the three different participatory processes: Mexico City, Chile, and Island.

• In Mexico, the experience to develop the Mexico’s City Constitution was an attempt to increase citizen’s participation and trust in the government, which was very fragile at the time. So, in order to start a constitutive process, the Mayor established a working group, engaging lots of different stakeholders (among activists, poets, artists, Olympians, constitutional experts, etc.) to develop a methodology and a platform for the city’s constitution. The Lab for Mexico City was then set up, as a type of taskforce and allowed citizens to participate in different forms, based in digital tools, but also kiosks, which enabled all citizens to participate, regardless of their knowledge of the Internet, or even their personal means. As a result, the engagement was improved and the final Constitution was considered to be the most progressive one in Latin America, being also recognized by the United Nations. Some key points of the Mexican case that can be connected with the content and definitions are a) the multiple formats to allow citizens’ participation, mixing digital and non-digital tools, b) leadership and commitment from policymakers to promote the process’ legitimacy and engagement, c) important partnerships to increase credibility and trust (GovLab, 2020).
• In the case of Chile, we read about how Chile, as the first South American country to join the OECD, has been developing its citizens participation thought conducting a public consultation to promote debate and gather information on how Chileans would like to shape their Constitution. Because of its historical low tradition of citizen engagement, Chile had many challenges to overcome regarding with transparency, democratic participation and low confidence in public authorities and the Government. Although not all of them were solved, and the OECD still considered the public participation in Chile as a work in progress, important steps have been taken. On the 25th of October 2020, there was a constitutional referendum where the majority of Chileans voted for a new more inclusive constitution (the results came after the class session we are referring to), which represents big progress towards a new legal framework that could strengthen Chilean democracy (OECD, 2017).
• Finally, the case of Iceland was slightly different that the other Latin American countries, since its process was more deliberative. In Iceland’s experiment, citizens were directly involved in writing the constitutional draft, and it was considered something revolutionary in many aspects, because for the first time, the constitution has been written with people’s direct participation. Although the draft made had popular support in the referendum, it hasn’t been fully approved for the Parliament. Nevertheless, Iceland experience can be considered very innovative and some takeaways are important, such as: a) the direct participation in many phases, b) the transparency during the whole process. (Landemore, 2014).

Besides those three case studies, we also had the opportunity to take a look into other readings that discussed for example, local practices to increase digital participation and tools to transform political engagement. In the report “Digital Democracy: a guide on local practices of digital participation” some main takeaways were that: a) technology is a way to support democracy decision-making process, but it is not and end on itself and won’t solve everything, b) when governments use properly digital democracy, citizens are able to better understand what is happening in the decision-making processes and have more opportunities to participate, generating a positive effect on the legitimacy and trust (Netwerk Democratie, 2020).

Last but not least, we read in the “Digital Democracy: the tools transforming political engagement” report about the importance that technology has been taken into our lives and in the political arena. However, as a major consensus, the report also highlights that digital is not the only answer, and that traditional outreach and engagement still matter when trying to improve citizen participation. Besides, this participation needs to be honest and very well planned, and just not formal and used as a “trend”. In fact, digital democracy is not always the easiest and cheap way to do things, and it is necessary that policy-makers take into account that building a digital government involves a lot of investments, in terms of resources but also qualified human-capital (Nesta, 2017).

Thus, after seeing the main concepts applied into case studies and readings, we summarize the main definitions discussed in class and how they vary among different approaches:

Defining citizen participation.

There are etymological and traditional definitions of this term, although the importance of new perspectives has grown over time.

• OECD: all the ways in which citizens and stakeholders can be involved in the policy cycle and in service design and delivery, including information, consultation, and engagement
• Sheedy: citizen participation and citizen engagement are different from traditional forms of interaction between governments and citizens because they are based on a two-way interaction. Citizen engagement empathizes the sharing of power, information, and a mutual respect between government and citizens.
• Callahan: citizen participation in the interaction between citizens and administrator that focuses on policy issued and service delivery. As such, it differs from political participation, which encompasses voting or contacting elected officials. It also differs from the broader concept of civic engagement where individuals support their community though volunteer efforts and civic activism.

Ladder of participation (OECD): it is an imaginary ladder of the levels of stakeholder participation. It is composed by the following:

• Information: An initial level of participation characterized by a one-way relationship in which the government produces and delivers information. It covers both on-demand provision of information and “proactive” measures by the to disseminate information.
• Consultation: A advanced level of participation that entails a two-way relationship in which citizens and stakeholders provide feedback to the government and vice-versa. It is based on the prior definition of the issue for which views are being sought and requires the provision of relevant information, in addition to feedback on the outcomes of the process.
• Engagement: When citizens and stakeholders are given the opportunity and the necessary resources (e.g. information, data, and digital tools) to collaborate during all phases of the policy-cycle and in the service design and delivery

Spectrum of Public Participation (Sustaining Community, 2017): it helps to clarify the role of the public or the community in planning and decision-making, as well as how much influence the community has over those processes. There are five levels of public participation

• Inform: Government keeps citizens and stakeholder informed.
• Consult: Government keeps citizens and stakeholders informed. Listens to and acknowledges concerns and aspirations, and provides feedback on how public input the decision. They seek feedback on drafts and proposals.
• Involve: Government works with citizens and stakeholders to ensure that their concerns and aspirations are directly reflected in the alternatives developed and provides feedback on how public input influenced decisions.
• Collaborate: Government works together with citizens and stakeholders to formulate solutions and incorporates advice and recommendations into the decisions to the maximum extent possible.
• Empower: Government and citizens / stakeholders make joint decisions.

Participation in the Policy Cycle: it is a guide of the process that describes how policies should be created and implemented. It has 6 stages:

• Problem identification: Participation is linked to identify issues of concern and to prioritize them.
• Solution identification: Participation is linked to formulate, deliberate upon, and propose innovative approaches to solving a problem.
• Drafting: Participation is linked to collaboratively writing, commenting on, and documenting draft constitutions, legislations, regulations, or policies.
• Decision making: Participation is linked to endorse initiatives and vote between options.
• Implementation: participation is linked to refine the action plan for delivery of a given legislation or policy and to co-creation.
• Evaluation: participation is linked to monitor the outcomes and evaluate the impact.

Conclusion

As our main reflection on the class, we can state that currently we are accessing more innovative forms of participation in democracy in our societies, mostly digital forms, and the phenomenon of “Clicktivism” has been very present into our lives in the past years. Increasing participation through technology has positive and negative sides, in one hand, it can be more inclusive and integrated, broadening the audience and preventing policy-capture only for a minority group or elites. On the other hand, it can also exclude some marginalized groups who don’t have access to those tools or help to spread misinformation or distrust if not conducted carefully. Either way, it clears that technology cannot be seen as an end per se and won’t solve all the democracy participation problems. Instead, technology can be used as a facilitator to engage more people and improve government transparency and people’s trust in the public administration.

Besides, although governments are more willing to ask citizens for their participation than before, case studies have proven that they are still not empowering citizens sufficiently in the final decision-making. Citizens need to be aware of their role in the processes and governments should be clear about when involving stakeholders. At the very end, participation in practice is not about opening a digital platform but goes way beyond that. It is about planning, engaging in the right time, increasing accountability and conducting processes carefully, not to harm people’s trust in governments.

However, today in a context of a crisis and social distance we are facing a hard situation that should be studied in terms on how citizens are participating. Since many processes are right now online, have citizens changed their behavior towards a more participative one? What can be learned from the new mechanisms that have to be put in place because of the lockdowns and how can they affect citizens’ participation? Those questions remain unanswered yet and make us reflect about the future of democracy and the increase role of technology on it — for the good and for the bad.

This article has been published as per submission by the student (the author) and based on the lecture given by the professor in the context of an assignment, for comments or edits please contact the author : name.lastname@sciencespo.fr

Slides session 4: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UF2NzDGllXX4xDrYxA8UGLjVKoWRhWDu/view?usp=sharing

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

“Constitución CDMX: Crowdsourcing Mexico city’s Constitution”. GovLab. 2020. https://congress.crowd.law/case-constituci%C3%B3n-cdmx.html (accessed December 18, 2020)

“Digital Democracy: the tools transforming political engagement” Nesta. February, 2017. https://www.nesta.org.uk/report/digital-democracy-the-tools-transforming-political-engagement/ (accessed December 18, 2020)

“Digital Democracy: a guide on local practices of digital participation”. Netwerk Democratie, February, 2020. https://northsearegion.eu/like/news/digital-democracy-a-guide-on-local-practices-of-digital-participation/ (accessed December 18, 2020)

Landemore, H. “Inclusive Constitution-Making: The Icelandic Experiment”. March, 2014. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264715817_Inclusive_Constitution-Making_The_Icelandic_Experiment (accessed December 18, 2020)

“Madrid, Amsterdam and Milan: Three cities putting citizen participation at the heart of climate action”. eit Climate-KIC. November 12, 2020. https://www.climate-kic.org/news/madrid-amsterdam-and milan-three-cities-putting-citizen-participation-at-the-heart-of-climate-action/ (accessed November 23, 2020)

OECD Public Governance Reviews. “Chile: scan report on the citizen participation in the constitutional process”. OECD, 2017. https://www.oecd.org/gov/public-governance-review-chile-2017.pdf (accessed December 18, 2020)

Peña-López, Ismael. “Citizen participation and the rise of the open source city in Spain”. IT for Change. 2017. https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500.12413/13006/Research-Brief Spain.pdf (accessed November 23, 2020)

“What is the Spectrum of Public Participation?”. Sustaining Community. February 14, 2017. https://sustainingcommunity.wordpress.com/2017/02/14/spectrum-of-public-participation/ (accessed November 23, 2020)