This brief section is intended to help readers understand key terms and concepts of public deliberation, and the context of the collaboration between the OECD and Arantzazulab.
Promoting Deliberative Democracy in the Basque Country in Spain
Lessons from the Tolosa Citizens’ Assembly
OECD Public Governance Reviews
Representative deliberative process: a process in which a broadly representative body of people weighs evidence, deliberates to find common ground, and develops detailed recommendations on policy issues for public authorities. For shorthand, representative deliberative processes are often referred to as deliberative processes in this document. Common examples of one-off processes are citizens’ assemblies, juries, and panels. (OECD, 2021[1]). Other words such as citizen assembly or public deliberation are used in this publication to make reference to these processes.
Deliberation: weighing evidence and considering a wide range of perspectives in pursuit of finding common ground. It is distinct from:
Debate, where the aim is to persuade others of one’s own position and to ‘win’,
Bargaining, where people make concessions in exchange for something else,
Dialogue, which seeks mutual understanding rather than a decision,
and “opinion giving”, where individuals state their opinions in a context that does not first involve learning, or the need to listen to others.
Sortition: recruitment processes that involve random sampling from which a representative selection is made to ensure that the group broadly matches the demographic profile of the community (based on census or other similar data) (OECD, 2020[2]).
Understanding the Basque Country’s governance arrangements and institutions, as well as the national context in Spain, is essential to appreciate the precise context in which the deliberative process pilots took place and the different ways they could be institutionalised.
The Spanish Constitution of 1978 is the central law of the State, enshrining the right to autonomy of the nationalities and regions of which it is composed (Article 2). Title VIII of the Constitution establishes the territorial organisation of the State in Autonomous Communities and Local Entities, with the distribution of powers that this entails, and which is regulated in Articles 148 and 149. Based on these precepts, the Statutes of Autonomy for each of the Autonomous Communities are approved. The Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country, approved by Organic Law 3/1979, 18 December, for instance, sets out the historical territories that make up this Autonomous Community, as well as its competences, the organisation of its legislative, executive and judicial powers, and its main institutions.
The Basque Autonomous Community (Euskadi - Pais Vasco) is one of the 17 Autonomous Communities in Spain, and is divided in three provinces: Gipuzkoa, Araba and Bizkaia. The capital of the Basque Autonomous Community is Vitoria-Gasteiz, and the most populated cities are Bilbao and Donostia-San Sebastian, located in Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa provinces respectively. The political power in the Basque Autonomous Community is exercised by a parliament composed of an equal number of representatives from each historic territory (75 parliamentarians in total), who are elected by a popular vote for a period of four years. The Executive Branch is composed of a president - also called Lehendakari in Basque - who is designated by the Parliament, who in turn appoints counsellors to form a government.
The province of Gipuzkoa, along with the other provinces, is also called a “historic territory”, a term exclusive to the Basque Autonomous Community that describes the political and administrative system of its three provinces. The political system is led by the provincial bodies, which comprise a parliament (Juntas Generales) and a provincial council. Each parliament is composed of 51 members who are elected by popular vote for a period of four years. The parliaments have the capacity to approve provincial laws and regulations. The executive power in the three Provinces is exercised by the provincial councils, composed of a president (Diputado General) who is designated by the Parliament and a team of deputies, designated by the president, to lead the government. The main competencies of the provincial councils (which are greater in the Basque Country than in any other region in Spain) are tax collection and policy, territorial planning, roads and public works, environment, cultural heritage, and social welfare, as well as the economic and financial tutelage of the municipalities (OECD, 2019[3])
At the level of municipalities in the Basque Autonomous Community (like Tolosa), the political power is exercised by a local council composed of a mayor and of counsellors (concejales). Counsellors are elected by popular vote for a period of four years and designate the mayor. In Tolosa, the local council is formed by 17 counsellors, and the mayor.
Arantzazulab is a democracy and governance innovation laboratory that promotes new forms of collaborative governance between public institutions and civil society, with the ultimate aim of empowering citizens, promoting collaborative governance in public policy and deepening democracy. The Lab acts as a meeting point/innovation ecosystem catalyst to bring together different stakeholders: governments, academia, social and democratic innovation practitioners and experts, and citizens. The Lab's practice is based on introducing and proposing innovative and transformative approaches to governance innovation, building collaborations and networks, and internationalisation, while remaining connected to strong local community and cultural values. More information can be found in Arantzazulab’s annual report (Arantzazulab, 2023[4]).
The Lab is also a reference centre for collaborative governance within the Etorkizuna Eraikiz strategy (Etorkizuna Eraikiz, 2024[5]) of the Provincial Council. The aim of the Lab is to develop and promote collaborative governance through reflection, research, and experimentation on new models of relationships between public institutions and civil society.
Arantzazulab is set up as a non-profit and non-partisan foundation and is supported by key institutions in the Basque Country – which have been instrumental for the Lab's influence in the local governance context.
The OECD – Arantzazulab collaboration on public deliberation in the Basque Country
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), through its Innovative, Digital and Open Government Division (INDIGO) supported Arantzazulab in the implementation of the first representative deliberative process in the Municipality of Tolosa, in the Gipuzkoa region of the Basque Country in Spain. This project can be considered as the continuity of a previous Open Government Review of Bizkaia published in 2019 which provided a complete analysis of Bizkaia’s initiatives regarding transparency, accountability, and participation and how they impacted the quality of public service delivery.
The project with Arantzazulab aimed at building capacities across the innovation ecosystem in Gipuzkoa to design and implement a process of public deliberation with randomly selected citizens to help the City Council better address the mental health and wellbeing of its residents. The aim of this cooperation is to experiment on a small scale to learn, generate knowledge, disseminate and be able to establish the conditions for institutionalising representative deliberative processes in the Basque Country more broadly.
Source: Author’s own elaboration
The OECD supported Arantzazulab and Tolosa town Council throughout the design process by organising learning sessions with experts to detail how to organise a representative deliberative process from start to finish. The session covered the main aspects of a deliberative process: civic lottery, communication, learning and deliberation, and evaluation.
The civic lottery session explored the details on how to run a civic lottery, agree on the criteria by which stratification will be done and decide on the most appropriate civic lottery approach in the context of Tolosa based on the guide “How to run a Civic Lottery” (Mass LBP, 2017[6]). External speakers included Jonathan Moskovic, democratic innovation advisor to the President of the Francophone Brussels Parliament.
The communication and commitment session explored different elements of communication involved in implementing a deliberative process, as well as the commitment from public authorities to take into account recommendations that citizens will produce based on the guide Democracy Beyond Elections (NewDemocracy, 2018[7]). External speakers included Rafael Besoli Minguela, communications expert responsible for communication in Barcelona’s Youth Forum.
The deliberation session explored two important elements. First, information, meaning that assembly members should have access to accurate, relevant, and accessible information, as well as the opportunity to hear from speakers chosen by citizens themselves. Secondly, group deliberation which focuses on creating an environment in which citizens can find common ground. External speakers included Kyle Redman, who presented the methodology implemented by the NewDemocracy Foundation in Australia to run their representative deliberative processes.
The evaluation session explored different approaches and possibilities to evaluate the deliberative process in Tolosa and Gipuzkoa, as well as different aspects that evaluation could entail based on the OECD Evaluation Guidelines for Representative Deliberative Processes (OECD, 2021[8]). External speakers included Dr Stephen Elstub, Director of Research at the Department of Politics at Newcastle University.
In addition to the learning sessions, Arantzazulab consulted various stakeholders and considered examples from other countries and contexts. In particular, Deliberativa, a Spanish non-profit specialised in civic lottery and deliberation, provided further knowledge around the design of these sessions, with more practical information and, crucially, much more focus on the particularities of the Spanish context. Other organisations involved in the design of the process included the cooperatives Aztiker, Artaziak and Prometea.
This project was promoted and financed by Arantzazulab and implemented together with the OECD Open Governance, Civic Space, and Public Communications Unit.
References
[4] Arantzazulab (2023), Annual Report 2022, https://arantzazulab.eus/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/ArantzazuLab_2022-annual-report.pdf.
[5] Etorkizuna Eraikiz (2024), Plan Estrategico 2024-2027, https://www.etorkizunaeraikiz.eus/documents/33991264/c1be5f67-14a7-d853-0d78-a86e1bd7974a.
[6] Mass LBP (2017), How to run a Civic Lottery, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6005ceb747a6a51d636af58d/t/6010cf8f038cf00c5a546bd7/1611714451073/civiclotteryguide.pdf.
[7] NewDemocracy (2018), Enabling National Initiatives to take Democracy Beyond Elections, https://www.newdemocracy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/New-Democracy-Handbook-FINAL-LAYOUT-reduced.pdf.
[1] OECD (2021), “Eight ways to institutionalise deliberative democracy”, OECD Public Governance Policy Papers, No. 12, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/4fcf1da5-en.
[8] OECD (2021), Evaluation Guidelines for Representative Deliberative Processes, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/10ccbfcb-en.
[2] OECD (2020), Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/339306da-en.
[3] OECD (2019), Open Government in Biscay, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/e4e1a40c-en.