Promoting Deliberative Democracy in the Basque Country in Spain

1. Introduction

Abstract

As part of its open government agenda, the OECD has been exploring innovative ways to involve citizens in public decision making that go beyond consultations. In particular, the OECD has gathered extensive data and evidence on the benefits of public deliberation as a way to enable citizens to deliberate and provide informed recommendations on complex policy issues.

The OECD’s work on innovative citizen participation and deliberative democracy

The OECD’s work on innovative citizen participation and deliberative democracy is anchored in the OECD Recommendation of the Council on Open Government (2017[1]), the first and only internationally recognised legal instrument in the area of open government. The Recommendation defines open government as “a culture of governance that promotes the principles of transparency, integrity, accountability and stakeholder participation in support of democracy and inclusive growth”.

The principles of open government – transparency, integrity, accountability, and participation – are deeply related and intertwined in practice. Conceptually, they can be defined as:

• Transparency, understood as the disclosure of relevant government data and information in a manner that is timely, accessible, understandable, and re-usable (OECD, forthcoming[2]).

• Public sector integrity refers to the consistent alignment of, and adherence to, shared ethical values, principles and norms for upholding and prioritising the public interest over private interests (OECD, 2020[3]).

• Accountability is a relationship referring to the responsibility and duty of government, public entities, public officials, and decision-makers to provide transparent information on, and be responsible for, their actions, activities and performance. It also includes the right and responsibility of citizens and stakeholders to have access to this information and have the ability to question the government and to reward/sanction performance through electoral, institutional, administrative, and social channels (OECD, forthcoming[2]).

• Participation includes all of the ways in which citizens1 and stakeholders2 can be involved in the policy cycle and in service design and delivery through information, consultation and engagement (OECD, 2017[1]).

Open government is a concept that touches upon every single aspect of governance and aims to lift the barriers between citizens and public institutions – with the goal of strengthening democracy through renewed government–citizen interactions. Citizen and stakeholder participation is thus a core element of an open government.

What is citizen and stakeholder participation?

Citizen and stakeholder participation refers to the efforts by public institutions to hear the views, perspectives, and inputs from citizens and stakeholders. Participation allows citizens and stakeholders to influence the activities and decisions of public authorities at different stages of the policy cycle, and at all levels of government. The OECD (2017[1]) distinguishes among three levels of citizen and stakeholder participation, which differ according to the level of involvement:

• Information: an initial level of participation characterised by a one-way relationship in which the government produces and delivers information to citizens and stakeholders. It covers both on-demand provision of information and “proactive” measures by the government to disseminate information.

• Consultation: a more 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. It acknowledges equal standing for citizens in setting the agenda, proposing project or policy options and shaping the dialogue – although the responsibility for the final decision or policy formulation in many cases rests with public authorities.

The OECD Guidelines for Citizen Participation Processes (OECD, 2022[4]) outlines the benefits of citizen participation and suggest a ten-step path for any individual or organisation interested in designing, planning, and implementing a participatory process. The guidelines cover eight different methods that can be used to involve citizens in policy making, from consultations to more advanced deliberative processes.

What is a representative deliberative process?

The OECD has been exploring innovative ways to involve citizens in public decision making that go beyond consultations, for example, through representative deliberative processes. In such processes, a broadly representative body of people weighs evidence, deliberates to find common ground, and develops detailed recommendations on policy issues for public authorities (OECD, 2020[5]). Common examples of one-off processes are citizens’ assemblies, juries, and panels.

There are three elements that make representative deliberative processes markedly different from other methods of citizen participation (OECD, 2022[4]):

• Random selection of participants through a civic lottery. To be able to organise deep and substantial deliberation, the group of citizens participating in it must be relatively small, usually ranging from 15 to 100 participants. Randomly selecting citizens, stratified based on criteria such as age, gender, location, and socio-economic background, has the benefit of capturing the diversity of views, perspectives, and lived experiences of different members of society and ensuring broad representativeness of that community.

• Deliberation. Deliberation involves dialogue and debate, but also implies a careful consideration of a range of different arguments and opinions in a respectful way. It requires accurate and relevant information and adequate time, so that those deliberating can go into the core of the issue and find common ground.

• Impact. Deliberative processes differentiate themselves from other forms of participation by formally integrating a following-up phase during which the public administration must respond in a timely manner to recommendations presented by assembly members. Monitoring, evaluating and creating a learning loop based on the outcomes and outputs of the processes are key features of the deliberative culture. The impact of deliberative processes has also been shown in the members’ engagement in the years following the process. For instance, some members have shown to actively engage in the monitoring and evaluation of the policy recommendations they produced (e.g. "Les 150", an association created by the 150 members of the French Citizens' Convention on Climate to maintain their engagement post assembly).

Overall, because of these properties, representative deliberative processes focus on the depth of deliberation and all parts of society being represented within a smaller group of participants, whereas the majority of other methods of citizen participation place the focus on the breadth of participation – aiming to ideally directly involve everyone affected by a specific issue (OECD, 2020[5]). This combination of principles is rooted in ancient Athenian democracy and were applied throughout history until two to three centuries ago. It is their modern application to complement representative democratic institutions that make such processes innovative today (OECD, 2020[5]).

When and why should public authorities convene a deliberative process?

Representative deliberative processes are one way for public authorities to involve citizens in public decision making. These processes can lead to better policy outcomes because deliberation yields public judgements rather than public opinions. When conducted effectively, they can enable policy makers to make difficult decisions about the most challenging public policy problems and enhance trust between citizens and government (OECD, 2020[5]). Drawing on the evidence and existing theoretical research in the field of deliberative democracy, the OECD (2020[5]) highlights seven reasons why deliberation and sortition can help lead to better public decisions:

• Representative deliberative processes can give decision makers greater legitimacy to make hard choices. These processes help policy makers to better understand public priorities, and the values and reasons behind them, and to identify where consensus is and is not feasible. Evidence suggests that they are particularly useful in situations where there is a need to overcome political deadlock.

• Representative deliberative processes can enhance public trust in government and democratic institutions by giving citizens an effective role in public decision making. People are more likely to trust a decision that has been influenced by ordinary people than one made solely by government or behind closed doors. Trust also works two ways. For governments to engender trust among the public, they must in turn trust the public to be more directly involved in decision-making. It can also demonstrate to citizens the difficulty of taking collective decisions and improve their sense of collective democratic life.

• Representative deliberative processes signal civic respect and empower citizens. Engaging citizens in active deliberation can also strengthen their sense of political efficacy (the perception that one can understand and influence political affairs) by not treating them as objects of legislation and administration (Knobloch, 2019[6]).

• Representative deliberative processes open the door to a much more diverse group of people, making governance more inclusive. With their use of random selection and stratified sampling, they bring in typically excluded categories like young people, the disadvantaged, women, or minority groups into public policy and decision-making.

• Representative deliberative processes can strengthen integrity and prevent corruption by ensuring that groups and individuals with money and power cannot have undue influence on a public decision. Key principles of deliberative good practice are that the process is transparent, visible, and provides an opportunity for all stakeholders to present to the participants. Participants’ identities are often protected until after the process is over to safeguard them from being targeted by interest groups.

• Representative deliberative processes can help counteract polarisation and disinformation. Empirical research has shown that “communicative echo chambers that intensify cultural cognition, identity reaffirmation, and polarisation do not operate in deliberative conditions, even in groups of like-minded partisans” (Dryzek, 2019[7]; Grönlund, 2015[8]). There is also evidence to suggest that deliberation can be an effective way to overcome ethnic, religious, or ideological divisions between groups that have historically found their identity in rejecting that of the other (Ugarizza, 2014[9])

As to when to convene a deliberative process, evidence suggests that these processes are well suited to help public authorities solve certain types of public challenges. In particular:

• Values-driven dilemmas. Representative deliberative processes are designed in a way that encourages active listening, critical thinking, and respect between participants. They create an environment in which discussing difficult ethical questions that have no evident or ‘right’ solutions can happen in a constructive way and can enable participants to find common ground. For example, in 2023, the French Government convened a Citizen Assembly to deliberate and provide recommendations on assisted dying (OECD, 2023[10]).

• Complex problems that require weighing trade-offs. Representative deliberative processes are designed to provide participants with the time to learn, reflect, and deliberate, enabling access to a wide range of evidence and expertise from officials, academics, think tanks, advocacy groups, businesses, fellow citizens, and other stakeholders. These design characteristics enable citizens to grapple with the complexity of decision-making and to consider problems within their legal, regulatory and/or budgetary constraints. For instance, in 2022, the German Federal Foreign Office organised a citizens’ assembly to collect recommendations on the National Security Strategy (Government of Germany, 2022[11]). Citizens identified threats to national security, defined 121 security policy goals, and deliberated by weighing conflicting understandings and viewpoints on security.

• Long-term issues that go beyond the short-term incentives of electoral cycles. Many public policy issues require difficult decisions, as their benefits are often only reaped in the long term, while the costs are incurred in the short term. Deliberative processes can help to justify action and spending on such issues, as they are designed in a way that removes the motivated interests of political parties and elections, incentivising participants to act in the interest of the public good. For example, given the cross-sectoral and long-term nature of the climate crisis, involving citizens can help conciliate various interests and suggest solutions that go beyond short-term political cycles. Among the cases collected by the OECD (2023[12]), 125 processes dealt with environmental issues in Spain, the United Kingdom, Poland, France, and Denmark, among others.

Representative deliberative processes are not a silver bullet and require careful implementation, and evaluation to ensure they achieve the desired impact on both the decision-making process and the participants.

To reflect the growing interest on the use of representative deliberative processes, the OECD has been gathering evidence to analyse the “deliberative wave” (OECD, 2023[12]). To support policy makers from all levels of government, the OECD developed the Deliberative Democracy Toolbox3, which includes the first global report on the use of public deliberation for policy making, the OECD Good Practice Principles for Deliberative Processes for Public Decision Making (2020[5]), a blueprint to support evaluation (OECD, 2021[13]), a guide that outlines eight models for institutionalising representative public deliberation (OECD, 2021[14]), and the Database which contains almost 800 cases from around the world.

References

[7] Dryzek, J. (2019), “The Crisis of Democracy and the Science of Deliberation”, Science, pp. 1144-1146, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw2694.

[11] Government of Germany (2022), National Security Strategy, https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/de/aussenpolitik/sicherheitspolitik/nationale-sicherheitsstrategie.

[8] Grönlund, K. (2015), “Does Enclave Deliberation Polarize Opinions?”, Political Behaviour, pp. 995-1020, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-015-9304-x.

[6] Knobloch, K. (2019), “Emanating Effects: The Impact of the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review on Voters’ Political Efficacy”, Political Studies, pp. 1-20, https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321719852254.

[12] OECD (2023), OECD Deliberative Democracy Database, https://airtable.com/appP4czQlAU1My2M3/shrX048tmQLl8yzdc/tblrttW98WGpdnX3Y/viwX5ZutDDGdDMEep?blocks=hide.

[10] OECD (2023), The French Citizens’ Convention on the End of Life: Lessons learned, https://medium.com/participo/the-french-citizens-convention-on-the-end-of-life-lessons-learned-a2f2c86f2f2d.

[4] OECD (2022), OECD Guidelines for Citizen Participation Processes, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/f765caf6-en.

[14] 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.

[13] OECD (2021), Evaluation Guidelines for Representative Deliberative Processes, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/10ccbfcb-en.

[5] 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 (2020), OECD Public Integrity Handbook, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ac8ed8e8-en.

[1] OECD (2017), Recommendation of the Council on Open Government, https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0438.

[2] OECD (forthcoming), “Moving Transparency and Accountability Forward”, WPOG Working paper.

[9] Ugarizza, J. (2014), Democratic Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies: From Conflict to Common Ground, London: Palgrave Macmillan, https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137357816.

Notes

← 1.  Defined by the OECD (2022[4])as individuals, regardless of their age, gender, sexual orientation, religious, and political affiliations. The term is meant in the larger sense of ‘an inhabitant of a particular place’, which can be in reference to a village, town, city, region, state, or country depending on the context. It is not meant in the more restrictive sense of ‘a legally recognised national of a state’. In this larger sense, it is equivalent of people.

← 2.  The Open Government Recommendation (OECD, 2017[1]) defines “stakeholders” as “any interested and/or affected party, including: individuals, regardless of their age, gender, sexual orientation, religious and political affiliations; and institutions and organisations, whether governmental or non-governmental, from civil society, academia, the media or the private sector”.

← 3.  The Toolbox is accessible here: https://www.oecd.org/governance/innovative-citizen-participation/