Mainstreaming Public Participation: Three Examples from the Field

While there has been significant innovation in public participationGiving citizens opportunities to provide input into government decision-making leads to more effective governance, improved public service delivery, and more equitable outcomes. Technical specificatio... worldwide in recent years—particularly with the creation of citizens’ assemblies in Europe and beyond—many of these innovations are designed as one-off or temporary projects. Current government-led participation initiatives often fail due to this lack of institutional support—creating meaningful impact requires regular, high-quality participation.

Democracies are strengthened by providing members of the public regular opportunities to shape decisions, which they can only do if given the regular opportunities to participate in a manner that is taken seriously. This strategy, known as mainstreaming public participation in government, can ensure more legitimate governance by establishing close links with citizens, improved public service deliveryTo ensure that citizens of all groups are better supported by the government, OGP participating governments are working to improve the quality of and access to public services. Commitments in this are... by understanding citizen’s explicitly expressed needs, and greater social cohesion.

Mainstreaming participationInstitutionalizing opportunities for public participation in decision-making enhances government capacity for continuous and meaningful engagement with the public, ensuring that participatory processe... is characterized by making participatory innovations more commonplace, of a higher quality, and more impactful. It means moving towards sustained rights and opportunities for participation, connecting participants directly to decision-making, ensuring that there are skills and resources available to deliver fit-for-purpose participation, and changing the culture of institutions to be more receptive to public participation.

The following countries have implemented initiatives to better mainstream public participation in their governance practices.

In Brazil, there is a long and rich history of democratic innovation, stretching back to the 1980s when Brazil emerged from a military dictatorship. This history laid the foundation for the development of innovative participatory mechanisms, such as participatory budgeting and citizen councils and conferences, which have been successfully implemented at the local and national levels. Current efforts to mainstream participation include creating a body for citizen participation (the General Secretariat) that coordinates with focal points across all ministries to ensure that participation is included in all policy areas. Brazil is also using digital platforms, such as Brasil Participativo, which combines open-source software and the government digital identity system to allow the 144 million registered users to cast votes and set policy priorities at the federal level for the next four years.

In Romania, legislation has required participation in decision-making since 2003. However, implementation of the legislation has not been uniform and has incentivised policy makers to meet the minimum requirements, rather than encouraging genuine engagement. To fix this, Romania is taking action to mainstream meaningful public participation in the public sector. This includes annual monitoring and transparent reporting of implementation practices from both central and local level authorities, the development of secondary legislation on guidelines for institutional roles and processes, and the provision of permanent assistance and training to public servants and civil society on how to mainstream participation. Romania is also enlarging and empowering their OGP multi-stakeholder forum, which will have a new subcommittee on Mainstreaming Participation.

In Estonia, a new digital platform—the Co-Creation Workspace for Lawmaking—is currently under development. The platform would allow the public to provide input into the creation of new laws and track lobbyists seeking to influence legislative drafting. The platform will enable people to track new legislationCreating and passing legislation is one of the most effective ways of ensuring open government reforms have long-lasting effects on government practices. Technical specifications: Act of creating or r... from the analysis of the problem at hand, follow its passage via a transparent timeline, submit information, and even co-create draft legislation. The system will enable a more transparent law-making process, keeping information and events of potential public interest accessible and making public comments more visible.

While efforts to mainstream participation are increasing, there are many challenges to overcome, including hostile institutional cultures, insufficient resources, and a lack of political will. However, there are a number of global initiatives seeking to support mainstreaming efforts, with a few key projects outlined below.

• The Mainstreaming Participation Accelerator—led by People Powered, Institute for Public Finance and OGP and funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)—will provide hands-on support and a training program to help government reformers and civil society organizations turn existing participatory programs into sustained democratic practices. The program is based on People Powered’s accelerator model and OGP’s Open Government Leadership Collaborative. A call for applications to join the accelerator program will be launched in October, so sign up to the newsletter to keep up to date!
• The National Democratic Institute is currently running a similar program in Central and Eastern Europe,also funded by NED, to help democracy practitioners and partners better understand how to socialize and institutionalize participatory and deliberative approaches and processes in challenging political contexts.
• The Open Gov Challenge on public participation encourages governments and civil society to co-create reforms that mainstream or embed fit-for-purpose, high quality and inclusive public participation practices across key government sectors, processes, and institutions via their OGP processes. OGP members can submit their reform to the challenge for recognition, peer-support, and OGP mentorship throughout the implementation of the reform.

These insights were discussed by policy makers and practitioners from around the world in the final session in a webinar series on innovations in democracy—hosted by People Powered, TAI Collaborative, and the Open Government Partnership (OGP). To learn more about the above examples and about approaches to mainstreaming public participation as a whole, check out the webinar recording here.