After analysing the conditions that supported a successful process in Tolosa, this chapter provides a set of recommendations to move from ad-hoc deliberative processes, like the Tolosa Citizens’ Assembly, to permanent and systemic deliberation in the Basque Country. These recommendations cover different factors including legal, institutional, and cultural aspects that would enable the institutionalisation of deliberation in Tolosa, Gipuzkoa, and broadly the Basque Country. Learnings from this chapter may be of inspiration to other Autonomous Communities and Municipalities in Spain, as well as to public authorities in other OECD countries.
Promoting Deliberative Democracy in the Basque Country in Spain
Lessons from the Tolosa Citizens’ Assembly
OECD Public Governance Reviews
Abstract
Moving from experimentation to the institutionalisation of public deliberation requires certain actions in the short, medium, and long term.
In the short term, consideration could be given to reflecting and integrating the learnings from the Tolosa and Gipuzkoa processes into future deliberative processes, both at a regional and national level. The suggested areas of improvement provided by this report (see Recommendations) could be disseminated among public and non-governmental stakeholders interested in implementing a deliberative process. In addition, peer learning sessions could be beneficial for Arantzazulab and Tolosa representatives to share their journey and learnings.
In the medium and long term, public authorities in the Basque Country and Spain could build an enabling environment that promotes deliberation, which can include legal and institutional changes as well as resource allocation that eases the organisation of deliberative processes. In addition, a reflection could be undertaken at the level of the Basque Country on how to better embed deliberation in the democratic decision-making system.
This section reflects on the learnings of the Tolosa and Gipuzkoa processes, as well as on evidence collected by the OECD across its membership and suggests areas of action to make public deliberation more systemic and integrated in the existing legal, institutional, and cultural structures of the Basque Country. Although an in-depth analysis of other regional and municipal contexts in Spain is beyond the scope of this report, this chapter could serve as inspiration for public authorities across Spain, and more widely for OECD countries, with an interest in building an enabling environment for public deliberation.
The OECD identified seven elements that made the citizens’ assembly in Tolosa a successful deliberative process. This recipe for success in complement with the OECD Good Practice Principles could be used as a blueprint for future deliberative processes in Tolosa, in Gipuzkoa or largely in the Basque Country, as well as more broadly in other regions of Spain, and in other OECD countries.
Source: Author’s own elaboration
1. Enabling environment for sortition and deliberation
The Tolosa Citizen Assembly benefited from a friendly national and regional level enabling environment based on both a long-lasting tradition of collaboration and dialogue and favourable legal and institutional frameworks. As described Chapter 2, the Basque Country, in alignment with the broader national context, has a strong culture of collaboration between public entities and non-governmental actors. This friendly environment made it easier to convince a broad range of stakeholders from public and non-public organisations of the value of experimenting with a representative deliberative process.
This process also benefited from a strong legal and regulatory basis. The Tolosa City Council adopted in 2022 the Ordinance on Governance, Participation and Transparency which enabled the organisation of deliberative processes (see Figure 4.1 and Chapter 2 for more information). This legal text defines the basis for sortition (local census) and stratification (people will be chosen based on criteria like gender, age, and place of residence, among other factors depending on the subject matter). It also describes the roles of experts during the information phase, as well as the mandatory presence of facilitators to ensure good and inclusive deliberation. The Ordinance establishes the synergies – and the relation - between ad-hoc deliberative processes such as the Tolosa Citizen Assembly, and the Tolosa City Council: “[deliberative processes] shall not be given decision-making powers, they are merely consultative. Final decisions will always go back to Tolosa Council” (Tolosa City Council, 2022[1]).
2. Experimentation and innovation: the role of Arantzazulab, and the innovation ecosystem
Stakeholders interviewed by the OECD described Arantzazulab as a “conveyer of multidisciplinary actors and a catalyser of democratic innovation”, both ingredients being beneficial to testing new participatory approaches. Indeed, Arantzazulab played a crucial role throughout the process, in particular to secure political commitment and allocate resources for the design and implementation of the process. Its role as an innovation lab independent from the government, with practical expertise on collaborative governance, and with support from key stakeholders in the Basque Country, including the Basque Government, the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council, as well as private actors like Mondragon and the Kutxa Bank Foundation, strengthened the credibility of the deliberative process.
This case shows the potential role of innovation labs in creating safe spaces for experimentation, key element to promote new approaches to collaborative governance, including deliberative processes. This element could be further explored, not only in the context of the Basque Country but the OECD community at large. The OECD's Observatory of Public Sector Innovation reached a similar conclusion in its analysis of 137 innovations labs across 37 countries: innovation labs play a key role in creating the spaces to experiment with innovative democratic methods (OECD, 2023[2]).
3. Political buy-in and commitment: support from across the political spectrum
Commitment from the public authority that is commissioning the process is part of the OECD Good Practice Principles (see Chapter 1). In the cases of Tolosa and Gipuzkoa, both processes benefited from buy-in and commitment across the political parties represented in the elected Councils, and public support from Tolosa’s Mayor. Proof of the high-level commitment, political support remained unchanged after a change of Tolosa’s ruling political party following the 2023 local elections. This was key to secure the necessary resources for the process, and to adopt the legal changes that enabled the civic lottery and the remuneration of participants. Political commitment also helped embark the administration and convince other non-governmental stakeholders to support the process.
4. Financial and human resources
As for any participatory process, deliberative processes require the necessary resources to be properly implemented. Such resources can be human, financial, and technical. In the case of Tolosa’s Citizen Assembly, financial resources were secured through Arantzazulab and Tolosa’s Council for a total amount of 217 330 EUR. This total is for an assembly of 32 members and 5 days of deliberation, including capacity building costs but does not include project team staff costs. This is slightly above the OECD average cost for a small-medium size deliberative process (OECD, 2023[3]).
Nevertheless, the high costs associated with deliberative processes and the limited availability of resources remains a barrier for the multiplication of these type of processes. Public authorities across Spain facing such barriers can decrease the costs by internalising certain functions (economies of scale), for example, by training civil servants on facilitation methodologies. Moreover, there is a need to build a narrative that supports the importance and value of deliberative processes to convince public and non-public organisations to invest in innovative forms of democracy. This can start by acknowledging and demonstrating the economic and collective benefits of deliberation. For example, by showcasing cases where public services are improved or where costly infrastructure investments gain public support through deliberation. Investing in deliberation can also include other positive spill overs such as securing public support for difficult decisions (e.g., abortion), or increasing trust in the government and reducing polarisation in society. Such investments could be embedded in broader public spending on democracy, including elections (national and sub-national), civic education, and other forms of citizen voice.
5. Deliberative ecosystem: A committed group of local and international actors
Besides Arantzazulab and the Tolosa Council, the process benefitted from a committed ecosystem of public and non-public actors that played an active role in designing, delivering, and evaluating the process. This ecosystem consisted of civil servants, researchers, facilitators, and experts that believed in the potential of a deliberative process and that remained committed until the end of the process. Among them, the following organisations participated in the design and implementation of the process: Aktiba research group, Aztiker, Deliberativa and Prometea. In addition, a network of international experts, including members of the OECD Innovative Citizen Participation Network such as DemocracyNext, Ideemos, Democracy R&D, and Delibera provided valuable guidance.
6. Thinking about long term: building knowledge for future processes
While the main objective of the pilot was to experiment, both Arantzazulab and public authorities from Tolosa and Gipuzkoa had the intention to learn from it, iterate, and use deliberative processes more regularly in the years to come. This long-term thinking gave another dimension to the pilot, creating the space to organise a deliberative process following high-quality standards and putting the learning aspect front and centre.
Evaluation was included in the design of the process from the outset, and the results of the independent evaluation have been communicated broadly to both public authorities and the public. Arantzazulab has invested time and resources in building knowledge for the future by organising peer learning sessions with international and local ecosystem, participating at conferences, and publishing content sharing the Tolosa case in academic publications, local newspapers, online blogs, and social media. Finally, the publication of this report and the request to include recommendations for the future show Arantzazulab willingness to think and plan for the long term.
Beyond implementing a deliberative process to try and demonstrate its potential to improve public decision making, the objective of both Arantzazulab and public authorities in Tolosa and Gipuzkoa was to build the case to institutionalise deliberation as to become a regular and mainstream tool in the collaborative governance toolkit of the Basque Country. The following analysis could be relevant to other regions aiming to transform public deliberation from an ad-hoc to a permanent and systemic process, as well as to ongoing national-level reforms on Open Government in Spain.
Institutionalising a deliberative process refers to establishing a legal or cultural form of recurrence to go beyond one-off processes and embed such mechanisms into existing decision-making structures such as local councils, governments, or Parliaments (OECD, 2021[4]). This helps ensure their continuity regardless of political change, builds a culture of deliberation in and out of government, and increases the opportunities for citizens to participate in public decision and policymaking. There are different ways to embed representative deliberation into public decision-making, as shown by the OECD’s eight models and examples (OECD, 2021[5]). For example, it can take the form of connecting deliberative mechanisms to parliamentary committees, like in Belgium, or by giving people the right to demand a deliberative process, as is the case in Austria.
Making representative public deliberation a regular part of democratic governance can yield important benefits, such as:
Allowing public decision makers to take harder decisions better, as well as more decisions with long-term impacts (such as on climate change, biodiversity, emerging technology, urban planning, infrastructure investment, and other issues of this nature).
Enhancing public trust. Public trust has been declining for decades. A one-off deliberative process can make a difference, but it is the regular practice of public deliberation that gives people and decision makers the opportunity to build mutual trust.
Making representative deliberative processes easier and less expensive. Costs and resources are saved by not starting from scratch every time.
Strengthening society’s democratic fitness. Adding public deliberation and civic lotteries to democracy extends the privilege of representation to a much larger group of people. It also exponentially increases the positive democratic dividend of participation. These processes strengthen people’s agency (Knobloch et al., 2019[6])harness collective capacity (Landemore, 2012[7]), and awaken a collective consciousness that connects people to one another and to something bigger than themselves (Mercier and Sperber, 2019[8]). There is ample evidence on how participation in a deliberative process has a transformative effect on those involved. It often leads to increased levels of political efficacy not only amongst members of deliberative bodies, but also the broader public. People strengthen their “democratic muscles” through participation. Seeing ‘people like me’ participating in complex public decision making can have a similar effect on those not directly involved but aware of the process. Institutionalisation creates more opportunities for more people to be able to have such a transformative experience.
Source: Based on OECD (2023), Eight ways to institutionalise deliberative democracy, https://www.oecd.org/gov/open-government/eight-ways-to-institutionalise-deliberative-democracy.htm
Most of the deliberative processes organised nowadays are ad-hoc processes, meant to respond to specific contexts and policy issues. Nevertheless, the institutionalised or permanent cases collected by the OECD multiplied from 2020 to 2023, going from 22 to 41 — the majority of which are implemented by subnational governments at the local or regional levels. For example:
The Paris Citizen Assembly (100 members) is currently deliberating on how to support individuals experiencing homelessness as well as on the barriers currently faced by the city to increase green spaces.
The Lisbon’s Citizen Council (50 members) deliberated in 2022 on how to enable the city to face the climate crisis and, in 2023, on how to make Lisbon a 15-minute city.
Moving to a more systemic approach beyond one-off processes requires overcoming some of the immediate challenges to organise deliberative processes that were observed by the OECD and which are summarised in Table 4.2:
Source: Authors’ own elaboration
Recommendations to embed public deliberation into decision making process in the Basque Country
This section builds on the challenges described before to suggest concrete actions public authorities in the Basque Country could pursue to make public deliberation permanent and systematic. Based on the observation of the Tolosa process, the learnings from the evaluation reports, as well as interviews conducted with key stakeholders in the region, the OECD identified three main clusters of action for the Basque Country:
Institutionalising deliberative practices
Embedding deliberation in public administration
Mainstreaming deliberation within and outside government
These clusters should be implemented in synergy as they are complementary to each other. The recommendations listed below suggest concrete actions that contribute to promoting and systematising deliberation across levels of government in the Basque Country (regional, provincial, and municipal).
Source: Author’s own elaboration
Institutionalising deliberative practices
Institutionalising deliberation means establishing formal structures and mechanisms to incorporate deliberative practices in decision or policymaking (OECD, 2021[5]). It is about building permanent structures for deliberation and/or adopting legal obligations for public authorities to organise deliberative processes or empower citizens to request them. As is the case for most deliberative processes observed by the OECD, the Tolosa Citizen Assembly, selected citizens randomly to join a specific process, the assembly had a one-off mandate and the design and outcomes of the assembly had little to no formal connection with existing representative institution (although a governmental body usually sponsors the assembly). In a permanent, and therefore institutionalised process, citizens are randomly selected on a regular and rotation basis (e.g., every year), the body has a clear and defined mandate, and is aimed at being synergic with existing representative institutions. The OECD mapped eight different models to institutionalise public deliberation (OECD, 2021[4]), which can include:
Creating permanent structures or institutions: the Paris Citizen’s Assembly was created by a regulation voted in the Local Council that created it as a permanent body. The regulation established it as a formal connection to the local elected council and required the latter to provide a written response to citizens’ recommendations at the time of submission.
Creating legal obligations for public authorities to organise a deliberative process: in July 2011, an article of the French Law on Bioethics was introduced to institutionalise the obligation to organise public debates and deliberations for any change in the law.
Empowering citizens to initiate a deliberative process: in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, citizens’ councils can be initiated if 1,000 or more citizens sign a petition asking for one. This petition system was introduced after the state amended its 2013 Land Constitution to include direct democracy practices as well as citizens’ councils. This right was used for the first time in 2017 to deliberate on land use rights.
Recommendations
Promoting the use of deliberative processes by updating existing legislations or adopting new frameworks that enable civic lottery and remuneration.
The Basque Autonomous Community has been building an enabling environment for citizen and stakeholder participation, including by adopting legislations, policies, and by establishing institutional offices to support the inclusion of citizens in public decision making. For example, Law 2/2016 on Local Institutions of the Basque Autonomous Community mentions citizen participation and exhorts municipalities to guarantee citizens’ rights to participate in public affairs by implementing participatory processes (BOE, 2016[9]). This Law could be updated to include representative deliberative processes, and lifting the barriers to civic lottery and remuneration, as part of the mechanisms to involve citizens.
At the Provincial level, the Gipuzkoa Provincial Law 5/2018 on Citizen Participation regulates the instruments and procedures via which people can exercise their right to participate in public affairs (The Gipuzkoa Provincial Council, 2018[10]). It defines citizen participation, describes various participatory mechanisms, and seeks to promote citizen participation in the province. One of the methods described in the law is called “participatory deliberation processes” and is described as giving stakeholders and citizens the chance to deliberate about possible policy solutions for public problems. The Law could be reviewed to mention sortition as a recruitment method.
At the municipal level, Tolosa’s Governance, Participation and Transparency Ordinance of 2022 is an important step towards institutionalising deliberation and could incentivise other municipalities to implement a similar law, regulating the “means, procedures and channels for citizen participation in municipal life and management” (Tolosa City Council, 2022[1]). The Ordinance states that deliberative bodies do not have any decision-making power, making them merely consultative. An updated version could detail, for instance, the procedure by which recommendations coming out of public deliberation practices could effectively be integrated in decision and policy-making cycles; or even in which cases assembly members recommendations can be binding and implement them as they are suggested by citizens participating in specific deliberation processes.
This could also be the opportunity to discuss the role of national and supranational frameworks as catalysers and enablers of public deliberation. For instance, laws, regulations, and guiding principles at the Spanish or European levels providing access to data for civic lottery or establishing the legal framework for public authorities to provide remuneration to Assemblies’ participants could lower barriers to representative deliberative processes. At a national level, for instance Law 19/2013, of December 9, on Transparency, Access to Public Information, and Good Governance, for instance, lays the foundations for fostering transparency and access to information. Ongoing reforms to align this law with OECD standards and establishing a legislative basis for public consultations could go further by including deliberative processes and providing guidance for Autonomous Communities to mainstream deliberation across public administration. At the European level, the recently adopted Recommendation on the participation of citizens and civil society organisations in public policymaking invites Member States to “have in place a clearly defined policy or regulatory framework for both citizens and civil society organisations participation, including the objectives, the procedures and the relevant actors involved” (European Commission, 2023[11]). Mapping and assessing these legal frameworks for deliberation is a necessary step to envision and facilitate the process of institutionalising deliberative processes.
Building permanent deliberative institutions that provide citizens with a regular opportunity to participate and reinforce synergies with representative institutions.
The Basque Autonomous Community could consider setting up permanent deliberative institutions at different levels of government to address different policy problems. Representative deliberative institutions have a clear mandate that usually is described in a regulation or a legislation, where citizens are randomly selected on a regular and rotative basis, for example, once a year (OECD, 2021[5]). Regarding the Basque Country, the Law 3/2022 on the Basque Public Sector, particularly Article 19, calls for the establishment of permanent spaces for citizen and associative participation that allow for a deliberation of quality, socio-economic diversity and ideological plurality (Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, 2022[12]).
At the regional level, the Basque Autonomous Community could get inspiration from the Ostbelgien Model and design a permanent body synergic to the Basque Parliament. The Ostbelgien Model is composed of three democratic institutions: a permanent citizens’ council, a citizens’ panel, and a secretariat of public officials. The citizens’ council, comprised of 24 rotating members, selects issues that are then deliberated in the citizens’ panels. The panels’ recommendations are then presented to the Regional Parliament, which is required to dedicate at least 2 parliamentary debates to the recommendations. The citizens’ council is then tasked with monitoring the Parliament’s response and the implementation of the recommendations. The Basque Autonomous Community has already started a reflection to design a permanent body to involve randomly selected citizens in addressing the climate crisis, being inspired by the Ostbelgien and the Brussels models.
In February 2024, the Basque Parliament approved the Law on Energy Transition and Climate Change, stating in its Article 12, that the Citizens' Assembly on Energy Transition and Climate Change is a space for citizens to learn, deliberate and reach consensus on the great transformations that are necessary to reach climate neutrality (Basque Parliament, 2024[13]). The article also declares that Basque Office of Energy Transition and Climate Change will act as a permanent, independent, supporting body for the Citizens' Assembly with the objective of establishing and guaranteeing the application of deliberative standards. Arantzazulab, Telesforo Monzon and Deliberativa, in collaboration with the teams of Ihobe and EVE, have carried out a first conceptualisation of the Citizens' Assembly, taking as inspiration the Ostbelgien and Brussels models, mentioned above.
At the Provincial level, the Provinces of Gipuzkoa, Araba and Bizkaia could follow other sub-national authorities in OECD countries such as Vorarlberg (Austria), Brussels Region (Belgium), or Ontario (Canada) to connect representative institutions such as provincial councils with deliberative bodies. For example, following the example of the Brussels’ Region Parliament, the juntas generales (provincial parliaments) could bring together a combination of citizens and elected representatives to work jointly on a policy issue and form a deliberative committee. In the Brussels case, the deliberative committees are comprised of 15 elected representatives and 45 citizens selected via civic lottery.
At the Municipal level, Basque municipalities could also be inspired by the 19 local authorities1 that have designed permanent deliberative instances, for example the Lisbon’s Citizen Council (Portugal) or the Bayside Local Council (Australia) where an institutionalised panel of 28 members deliberate on the future of the local community and integrate the recommendations in the City’s strategic planning.
An additional option could be to establish permanent deliberative mechanisms to address specific policy areas. For example, in Toronto (Canada), a Regional Reference Panel met eleven times over two years, and advised Metrolinx, the government’s road and transportation agency, on transportation projects and policies including the management of congestion and demand during rush hour, the expansion of access to rapid transit and cycling infrastructure, and the planification of new services such as car sharing and ride sharing. Similarly, France set up deliberative processes to address bioethics issues (OECD, 2021[5])
Setting up independent oversight bodies for enhanced evaluation and continuous learning
As suggested by the OECD Good Practice Principles for Deliberative Processes, an independent evaluation is recommended for all deliberative processes, particularly those that last a significant time. To provide common guidelines for the evaluation of deliberative processes across Autonomous Communities, the Government of Spain could consider amending Law 39/2015, of October 1, on the Common Administrative Procedure of Public Administrations. In particular, amendments could be made to Article 133 to set guidance to institutionalise the evaluation and learning from deliberative processes.
To institutionalise and systematise public deliberation, the Basque Autonomous Community could envision the creation of an independent oversight body. This body could be based on the external Evaluation Committee already set up for the Tolosa Citizens’ Assembly and the independent evaluation report commissioned by Arantzazulab and developed by Aktiba research group in the Basque Country University (UPV-EHU). Alternatively, it could be based in the Evaluation Committee set up for the Gipuzkoa Citizens’ Assembly and the independent evaluation commissioned by Arantzazulab and developed by Parte Hartuz research group in the Basque Country University (UPV-EHU). This body could be responsible for ensuring adherence to international standards, impartiality of the information provided to the Assembly, neutrality and integrity of the process as well as become a disseminator of good practices. In addition, this body could be responsible for reporting back to the public. In sum, this body could shield public deliberation from undue influence, collusions, or manipulation in and out of the government and contribute to building trust on deliberative processes and their outcome.
Embedding deliberation in public administration
Embedding deliberation refers to moving from the overarching layer of institutional and legal frameworks to anchor deliberative practices across the public administration. The aim is to create the necessary enabling conditions to implement these processes across the government and better connecting them to the normal workings of the public administration. Rooting deliberation requires raising awareness and building the infrastructures that will support the organisation of deliberative processes. These infrastructures can include resources (e.g. financial and human), skills (e.g. internal facilitators and evaluators or legal, communication and IT departments), tools (e.g. sortition algorithms), digital platforms and spaces.
Recommendations
Building a compelling narrative for public investment in deliberation to secure resources for future processes and enable economies of scale
Deliberative processes tend to be more expensive than other participatory processes, namely due to the remuneration of participants and external experts involved, as well as the costs associated with the civic lottery. Deliberative processes can vary in terms of costs. Out of 133 cases where the budget is disclosed, the average cost of a deliberative process was 210,737 euros according to the 2023 update of the OECD Deliberative Democracy Database (OECD, 2023[3]). Public administrations are often reluctant to invest in democratic experimentations due to an unfamiliarity with the method or because of limited financial resources available.
Source: Budget distribution for deliberative assemblies (Source: OECD Deliberative Democracy Database)
The Basque Country could consider building a case for the continued or reinforced allocation of financial resources, by articulating how these investments directly contribute to informed, transparent, and collaborative decision-making. This narrative could be based on impact evidence from good practices including Tolosa and Gipuzkoa. Increased research on the socio-economic benefits of public deliberation such as inter-personal trust, social cohesion, and reduced polarisation could be instrumental for this shift. Institutionalising public deliberation can contribute to reducing costs by doing economies of scale. Institutionalisation requires some initial financial investments to establish sustainable infrastructures but when deliberative processes are institutionalised, they can be less costly than one-off experiences (OECD, 2020[14]). Lowering the costs could also be made possible by applying a circular dimension to these processes. This could mean reusing materials that have already been produced (e.g., templates of public procurement contracts or letters for civic lotteries) by Basque Country stakeholders or by other countries in the OECD community.
The Basque Country could reflect on the opportunity to set up dedicated funds for democratic innovations which can include deliberative process at the regional or provincial levels, to support smaller municipalities or public authorities with limited budgets. For example, in Gipuzkoa, the General Directorate for Citizen Participation already has a program to provide grants and subsidies for municipalities that organise participatory processes (Government of Gipuzkoa, n.d.[15]). This programme could be updated to take deliberative processes into account when making such decisions. In addition to the financial support, civil servants from the Provincial level could dedicate their time and proven expertise to helping smaller councils design the deliberative processes. For instance, this could translate into conducting part of the civic lottery, facilitating the deliberative sessions or more broadly, sharing best practices.
Creating a dedicated, interdisciplinary public service for deliberation
Administrative support is important for the success of deliberative processes. Interviews conducted by the OECD suggest that there were various administrative hurdles for the Municipality of Tolosa, most notably, the payments to participants, securing trained facilitation, and accessing data for civic lottery. Having a dedicated office or service to provide support in this area would prove beneficial and would further incentivise institutions to convene deliberative processes. Internalising certain functions could also be a way to reduce costs in the medium to long term and create a culture of deliberation inside the government.
The Basque Country could set up a Centre for Public Deliberation: an interdisciplinary public service comprising of civil servants trained in deliberative and participatory practices. It could be dedicated to designing, organising and implementing deliberative processes or supporting other institutions in doing so. A recent report by NESTA provides further guidance to create a Citizens’ Participation Service in Government (NESTA, 2023[16]). In addition, it could provide trainings or develop guidance to reinforce capacities and knowledge across the administration.
In the case of Gipuzkoa Province, an option could be to update the functions of the General Directorate of Participation to include support in the organisation of deliberative processes (see Recommendations for more information).
Source: OECD (Forthcoming)
Creating and adapting a digital infrastructure for deliberation
Technology offers new routes for public participation, with significant potential to increase their scale and scope. According to the OECD, in 2020 and 2021, amid a pandemic context, online deliberation was the most used medium for conducting a deliberative process, and one third of processes organised in 2022 and 2023 used a hybrid setting (online/offline). Although in-person assemblies have been credited for their ability to build trust and agency amongst assembly members, digital tools can support deliberative processes in different ways:
Closing the gap between the Assembly and the broader population by embedding other forms of participation that target a wider public, like online consultations or surveys. 55% of the cases that used a complementary form of participation, opted for a digital solution.
To increase transparency throughout the process and ensure the continuous communication of its stages and outcomes. For example, 40% of processes that communicated did it through online or digital channels including social media and dedicated websites.
To gain more insights and save resources during the learning, deliberative and decision-making phases of a process with live sensemaking, automating the preparation of learning resources or mapping opinions and conversation dynamics (e.g. MIT and Democracy Next's tech-enhanced citizens' assembly).
The existing digital platform for citizen participation in the Basque Country is Irekia, an online portal that serves as a central hub for news related to the Basque Government, which includes draft legislations, policies, and initiatives. Citizens can react on these pieces of legislation and governmental actions as well as suggest any issue of interest. The Basque Country could explore using digital tools to support in-person deliberative processes or enable hybrid settings. Similarly, at a national level, the Participation Platform, established in 2020 in the Government’s Transparency Portal could be adapted to support deliberative processes happening on national-level policy. Table 4.4 provides a list of possible functionalities a digital platform can incorporate to support deliberative processes.
Source: Autor’s own elaboration
In April 2021, in the context of the Conference on the Future of Europe, the European Commission developed a digital platform to enrich the in-person panels. It helped collect contributions on the topics of the Conference (e.g., "Health", "EU in the World", "European democracy" or "Climate change and the environment') and acted as a centralised information hub for the Citizens’ Panels and events that occurred across Europe. In total, 19 000 ideas were submitted, 5 million people visited the platform, and more than 6600 events were organised. Although deliberation did not take place directly on the platform, this digital infrastructure was a one-stop-shop for information and initiatives related to digital democracy. More recently, the European Commission tested automatic translation functionalities to enable multilanguage deliberation. This platform is understood as a digital public infrastructure to support and enable future deliberative processes at the European level. Since the end of the Conference in 2022, a new platform has seen the day. It is branded as "Have your Say" and aims to centralise the European Commission's participatory processes.
Other emergent technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) could be considered for this digital infrastructure for deliberation. It can be used to make sense of citizens’ inputs, moderate content, assist stakeholders and citizens, scale communication efforts, translate inputs into other languages and/or create scenario simulations. In the context of these technological advancements, discussed in an OECD interview, Arantzazulab plans to identify advanced practices and opportunities, as well as risks that AI and other technologies can bring for citizens’ engagement. The lab is also exploring the role of AI in citizens’ engagement in collaboration with other actors connected to the emerging technology sector, including technology providers and academia. The final objective remains to contribute to implementing practical solutions to transform civic participation and strengthen democracy. Arantzazulab may therefore act as a radar to identify impactful technologies for citizen participation and governance reform and bring these innovations to the local context.
Mainstreaming deliberation within and outside government
Mainstreaming deliberation refers to going beyond the government and ensuring all of society knows about representative public deliberation and its potential to transform public decision making. Mainstreaming this participatory practice means incorporating in the culture as to make a habit and common practice. This cluster requires two parallel set of actions: 1) replicating deliberative processes and extending their reach to the wider public, and 2) raising awareness out of government. By replicating, the administration gives room to an iterative learning process – which contributes to building knowledge and improving on a regular basis. By raising awareness and creating a habit, public authorities invest in societal knowledge and capacities to empower citizens and civil society alike to be able to understand, participate, monitor and evaluate public deliberation. Raising awareness could be done through public communication campaigns, based on members sharing success stories and personal testimonies (see Chapter 3)
Recommendations
Replicating deliberation beyond Tolosa and Gipuzkoa
While deliberative processes are gaining recognition, there is room for greater efforts to not only promote these processes but also increase their reach. This report and other OECD resources2 provide guidance and learnings for any public authority in the Basque Autonomous Community, in Spain or across the OECD membership interested in experimenting with deliberative practices. Additional resources in Spanish and in Basque include:
In the cases of Gipuzkoa and Tolosa, Arantzazulab built an ecosystem of experts that collaborated throughout the design, implementation, and evaluation of the processes, including: Deliberativa, Aztiker, Artaziak, Prometea and Basque autonomous community (EHU-UPV) Aktiba and Parte Hartuz research groups. These collaborations are important to build capacities out of government and anchor the deliberative culture at the local level. Networks or communities of practice can contribute to building such ecosystems. Coordinating and identifying the roles amongst partners for the medium and long-run can be helpful to ensure a continuous ecosystem engagement. For example, the Iberian Network of Deliberation gathers more than 100 individuals and organisation working on deliberative processes from government, academia, and civil society.
To further promote deliberative processes across Spain, consideration could be given to leveraging existing communities of practice, such as the Sectoral Conference on Open Government , and other initiatives and networks including Red Delib, to expand the impact of experimentation learnings. Further, enhancing information sharing between policymakers on deliberative processes across regions could be supported through national-level efforts to promote Open Governance, including the V Plan on Open Government 2024-2028.
Promoting democratic education and training in schools
Fostering a culture of participation requires not only opportunities for citizens to participate, but also citizens who are ready to take on an active role in collaborating, co-creating, and making informed decisions together with public institutions. A citizenry that is democratically fit has the mandate, skills and competences needed to play an active part in a democratic system. Multiplying opportunities for citizens to exercise those “democratic muscles” through practice can help enhance their democratic fitness and strengthen their skills to express disagreement, find compromise with others, self-mobilise, engage in activism, feel and express empathy, practice active listening, effectively express their opinion, and strengthen verbal self-confidence.
As an example of action, the innovation and capacity building centres – the Berritzeguneak -, funded by the Basque Education department and established in the Basque Autonomous Country, could collaborate with innovation labs like Arantzazulab, schools and other academic partners to develop civic education programs.
Reinforcing the conditions for experimentation in the Basque Country
Arantzazulab consolidated as a space for experimentation and learning node for democratic innovation. Arantzazulab represents a new model of “democracy and governance innovation lab”, at the intersection between the government and the civil society, with a degree of autonomy that allows it to undertake societal transformations and be the connector of diverse networks, a convener of various sensibilities and types of knowledge.
Arantzazulab is a valuable player, well placed to activate democratic innovations and support public authorities in implementing the suggested recommendations of this roadmap. For example, by partnering with the suggested Centre for Public Deliberation on delivering trainings, building guidance and resources, supporting experimentation and pilots in other Municipalities building on the experience from Tolosa and Gipuzkoa. Arantzazulab could also, in collaboration with public institutions, design the new infrastructures and capabilities needed to institutionalise deliberative democracy as well as shape with the relevant stakeholders, the policies and laws required to foster deliberation. All in all, Arantzazulab and other similar organisations could be reinforced and sustained to connect and amplify the efforts taking place across the Basque Country.
Arantzazulab achieved its main objectives with these two experimentations: develop knowledge about deliberative democracy, build up local capacities, and create the conditions to institutionalise public deliberation in the Basque Country. The cases of Tolosa and Gipuzkoa showcase the potential of public deliberation, mainly to inform policymaking, promote social cohesion, and include underrepresented voices in decision-making. These processes showed that elected representatives and institutions in the Basque Country, from both municipal and provincial levels can benefit from the use of deliberation as an opportunity to broaden the representation of usually underrepresented groups in policymaking processes, and as a means to enrich policymaking with informed recommendations.
Both the evaluation report and the OECD point to a series of areas that Basque public authorities should improve in future processes, nevertheless, the OECD considers both the Tolosa and Gipuzkoa processes as a good practice and source of inspiration and learning for other public authorities in Spain and other OECD countries.
Building on a long-lasting culture of collaboration, existing participatory practices at all levels of governance, Arantzazulab and the innovation ecosystem experience, and the learnings of both processes, the OECD suggests a roadmap to move from experimentation to systemic deliberation in the Basque Country. Recognising that a successful path to institutionalising deliberative processes varies depending on the legislative, cultural, institutional, and administrative context in which they operate, this roadmap and its recommendations can serve as a valuable reference for policymakers in other regions and municipalities in Spain, as well as across OECD countries, to advance towards more permanent and systemic public deliberation.
References
[12] Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (2022), Law 3/2022 on the Basque Public Sector, https://www.boe.es/buscar/pdf/2022/BOE-A-2022-8833-consolidado.pdf.
[13] Basque Parliament (2024), the Law on Energy Transition and Climate Change, https://www.euskadi.eus/web01-bopv/es/bopv2/datos/2024/02/2400901a.pdf.
[9] BOE (2016), Ley 2/2016, de 7 de abril, de Instituciones Locales de Euskadi, https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2016/05/02/pdfs/BOE-A-2016-4171.pdf.
[11] European Commission (2023), Recommendation on promoting the engagement and effective participation of citizens and civil society organisations in public policy-making processes, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32023H2836.
[15] Government of Gipuzkoa (n.d.), Conoce la Dirección General de Participación Ciudadana, https://www.gipuzkoa.eus/es/web/partaidetza/conoce-la-direccion.
[6] Knobloch, K. et al. (2019), Emanating Effects: The Impact of the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review on Voters’ Political Efficacy.
[7] Landemore, H. (2012), Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many, Oxford: Princeton University Press.
[8] Mercier, H. and D. Sperber (2019), The Enigma of Reason.
[16] NESTA (2023), Creating a Citizen Participation Service and other ideas: reimagining government for better climate policy.
[2] OECD (2023), Innovation labs through the looking glass: Experiences across the globe, https://oecd-opsi.org/blog/innovation-labs-through-the-looking-glass/.
[3] OECD (2023), OECD Deliberative Democracy Database, https://airtable.com/appP4czQlAU1My2M3/shrX048tmQLl8yzdc/tblrttW98WGpdnX3Y/viwX5ZutDDGdDMEep?blocks=hide.
[4] 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.
[5] 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.
[14] OECD (2020), Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/339306da-en.
[10] The Gipuzkoa Provincial Council (2018), Provincial Law 5/2018, https://egoitza.gipuzkoa.eus/gao-bog/castell/bog/2018/11/23/c1807588.pdf.
[1] Tolosa City Council (2022), Governance, Participation, and Transparency Ordinance, https://udala.tolosa.eus/sites/default/files/BEHIN%20BETIKO%20ONARPENA%20PUBLIKAZIOA%20GAO_1.pdf.
← 1. Based on the existing cases collected by the OECD Deliberative Democracy Database in 2023.
← 2. See: See: OECD (2020), Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/339306da-en. And Participo, a digest for the OECD Open Government Unit’s area of work on innovative citizen participation: About Participo – Medium.