The State Of Participative And Deliberative Democracy In The EU
Nomcebo Serrah Mhlanga
Nosech Advisory, Pretoria-South Africa, June 7, 2024
Participatory democracy, as Williams, Calabese and Harju (2018:3) note is synonymous with deliberative democracy. Just like deliberative democracy, participatory democracy is a model of a political system in which ordinary citizens are empowered and offered authorities to make political decisions. As reflected in Euractiv’s YouTube Video above, participatory democracy emphasises significant level of ordinary citizens’ participation in political decision-making and more direct representation as contrasted with the traditional representative democracy.
Instead of electing representatives to governing entities, participatory democracy advocates for the use of sortition to enable ordinary citizens to access and hold decision-making positions in the governance structures. Just like deliberative democracy, Williams et al. (2018:3) state that the notion of participatory democracy emerged from Solons’ governance approach adopted in response to the oppression of the ordinary people by oligarchs in Athens in Greece during 7th and 8th Centuries BC. Events leading to Solon’s introduction of participatory democracy arose from most oligarchs’ activities that followed the transition of Greek villages and small towns into cities during the 7th and 8th centuries.
During that period, different groups of powerful Greek oligarchs disrupted the informal distributed power structures that had hitherto existed in most villages and small towns as they sought to gain more power in the new cities. According to Williams et al. (2018:3), this tormented and caused more suffering of the local communities in such villages and towns as they lost their land and were subjected to slavery.
In response, Solon, the Athenian leader at the time introduced new political reforms that sought to curb the increasingly powerful oligarchs’ power and initiate some form of participatory democracy. Such participatory democratic approach required certain decisions to be executed by a popular assembly constituting of all free male citizens. Though such participatory democracy excluded female citizens, it still offered opportunities for ordinary citizens to take political decisions that would control oligarchs’ destructive activities.
As O’Hagan, O’Connor, MacRae and Teedon (2018:295) note, Solon’s notion of participatory democracy was a century later further entrenched by Cleisthenes, another Athenian leader. During Cleisthenes’ reign, participatory democracy was further entrenched by using popular assembly system and sortition to allocate magisterial and high level government positions to ordinary citizens.
This enhanced redistribution of power and resources from the previously powerful political figures to ordinary citizens. Unfortunately, just like deliberative democracy, O’Hagan et al. (2018:295) reveal that Solon’s participatory democracy that also became known as Athenian democracy also ended in 322BC.
Even though the notion of participatory democracy disappeared with the demise of Athenian democracy, O’Hagan et al. (2018:295) highlight that it later re-emerged in the 1980s and 1990s upto the present day to influence the contemporary thinking in public administration and management. One of such incidents is reflected in the 1996 situation where Texas State government in the United States introduced deliberative opinion poll and invited participants from the public to participate in its renewable energy decisions.
Due to significant inputs from the public suggesting investments in renewal energy such as wind power, Texas moved from forty-ninth largest producer of renewable energy in the United States in 1996 to the leading producer of renewable energy. As Williams et al. (2018:3) note, the other incident of participatory democracy is echoed in Ireland’s recent introduction of participatory democracy in 2012.
Following the emergence of distrust between ordinary citizens and government as a result of the 2008 economic crisis, Ireland government introduced Citizens’ Convention. Citizens’ Convention was modeled along a hybrid model to constitute of sixty-six individuals from ordinary citizens and thirty-three legislators to discuss and make decisions on the Constitutional amendment areas that must be subjected to a referendum. As depicted in the Democracy Next video below, this influenced the emergence the Citizens’ Assembly that brings various citizens together to discuss and make legal and policy decisions that are passed to the Irish Parliament in forms for recommendations for considerations during the final policy formulation.
Irish Citizens’ Assembly
Likewise, in France, Haris and Shah (2020) point out that the government established the “National Grand Debate” in 2019 to enable 100 randomly selected ordinary citizens to deliberate on issues valued most by ordinary citizens to inform government actions. Such approach is synonymous with the practice in participatory-budgeting. Thus, it explains the extent to which the contemporary idea of participatory-budgeting is drawn from the core reasoning in ancient participatory democracy.
Such ideologies are further echoed in later theories and literature that emerged to entrench the notion of participatory democracy. One of such theories is Smith’s (2010) “Democratic Innovations Theory” that elucidates extensively on a combination of certain participatory democracy mechanisms that must be embraced by the modern political systems.
Smith outlines such mechanisms to encompass mini-publics, referendums, e-democracy, town-hall meetings, participatory-budgeting, liquid democracy and deliberative polling. These mechanisms seek to leverage ordinary citizens’ direct participation in political decisions of the country as contrasted to using representatives through elections.
For mini-publics which Smith also calls citizens’ assemblies, he emphasises the need for a sample representatives of the larger ordinary citizens to be drawn and used to advise relevant legislative institutions or even to make laws themselves. To accomplish this, Smith (2010) suggests the need for use of stratified sampling to ensure that the representatives in such mini-publics reflect the holistic socio-economic and cultural composition of the ordinary citizens in that geographical location.
This aids the extent to which the representatives in mini-publics are able to counter the often less representative formal elected legislatures that constitute of largely affluent, wealthy, educated male as well as in some societies largely whites. In otherwords, the notion of mini-publics introduces the ancient concept of sortition to permit ordinary citizens to participate directly in the agenda-setting and decision-making powers of the political system of the country. Deliberations in mini-publics are guided by certain experts and facilitators to facilitate fruitful discussions and deliberations of the participants.
However, once decisions of mini-publics are reached, Smith (2010) notes that reports are often availed to government to take actions or in certain cases proposals are sent to the ordinary citizens for their opinions. This leverages the overall level of ordinary citizens’ direct participation in the political decisions of the country. However, Touchton and Wampler (2013:39) argue that criticisms have often emerged about the overall legitimacy of mini-publics.
Some of the critics posit that whereas mini-publics’ legitimacy is higher in societies in which there is no direct citizens’ participation at all, it was not higher in any system that uses elected representatives. Some of the critics still perceive that using elected representatives is one of the best approaches for getting ordinary citizens to participate in political decision-making processes of the country. Despite such criticisms, Smith’s (2010) theory still highlights the other mechanism for participatory democracy to entail the use of referendums.
Through referendums, ordinary people are required to vote on certain laws or Constitutional amendments suggested by the elected legislative institution. It therefore offers ordinary people with the opportunities to directly decide on the kinds of laws that must be passed by parliament. Referendums may also permit ordinary citizens to participate in agenda-setting by developing proposals that are subjected to referenda by the ordinary people.
To ensure the wider participation of all the ordinary citizens, Smith (2010) suggests that voting in such referendums can be made mandatory for everyone in the country to participate. Practical application of the concept of referendum is reflected in Yoon, Seong and Lim’s (2014) highlights that indicate Switzerland to subject every law passed by the elected parliament to referendums by every citizen.
However, this notion of referendum is criticized in Helene-Landemore’s (2017) theory that referendums do not offer any meaningful deliberation opportunities for the ordinary population to thoroughly discuss and debate to bolster their political decision-making power and control. Such limitations could undermine the effectiveness of participatory democracy. Besides referendums, Smith’s (2010) theory also emphasises e-democracy as the other critical mechanism for leveraging ordinary citizens’ direct participation in political decision-making.
E-democracy entails the utilisation of the available information technologies to put a variety of proposals to online forums constituting of politicians, bureaucrats and ordinary citizens for discussions and decision-making. During the debates on such online forums, certain designated facilitators guide the discussions and debates to ensure that they are meaningful and effective for reaching meaning conclusions.
Considering the increasing embracement of different information technologies among the wider ordinary population, Mansuri and Rao (2012) reveal that e-democracy is increasingly being adopted by most of the contemporary governments. E-democracy has enhanced the minimisation of the costs as well as improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of participatory democracy. As compared to offline physical citizens’ participation, e-democracy especially using information systems such as zoom enables participation of the wider ordinary population irrespective of the geographical locations that they may be in a particular political system.
Yet, as e-democracy is being used, Smith (2010) elaborates that its main purpose is usually to set and decide on certain agendas that are adopted by the political system. Alternatively, e-democracy may just be aimed to suggest proposals from ordinary citizens that must be integrated in relevant legislative and policy decisions.
Quite often, Smith (2010) notes e-democracy may also entail the use of online deliberative polling to get different ordinary citizens to participate in virtual discussions and deliberations with each other prior to answering a poll question on such issues. Responses to such poll questions are considered as the actual views and opinions of the ordinary population that must be integrated in relevant policy decisions. In the wake of the emergence of Covid pandemic, e-democracy is certainly the way to go in as far as leveraging participatory democracy in the contemporary political systems is concerned.
In contrast to e-democracy, Smith’s (2010) “Democratic Innovations Theory” also highlights town-hall meetings as one of the other mechanism for enhancing participatory democracy. As reflected in the YouTube Video of Olelo Community Media below, Town-hall meetings which are commonly used in the United States entail the direct engagement of the local communities to participate in deliberations and decision-making on relevant local policies and laws.
Mayor Blangiardi’s Town Hall Meeting
As town-hall meetings eliminate the use of intermediaries, they enable local laws and policies to directly reflect the needs and preferences of the local communities in that area. However, Helene Landemore’s (2017) theory cautions that the limitations of town-hall meetings are often reflected in the fact that they only focus on local issues and policies that may not have any significant overriding impacts on national policies adopted by the political system.
She also points out that town-hall meetings are time constraining as only those with time or the unemployed, youths and elderly do attend such town meetings. These deprive town meetings’ decisions of the essence of having to reflect the general needs and preferences of the ordinary citizens in a particular location.
In addition to town-hall meetings and participatory-budgeting, Smith’s (2010) Democratic Innovations Theory also highlights that participatory democracy mechanisms may also entail the use of liquid democracy. He elaborates that liquid democracy connotes a hybrid model reflecting both direct and representative democracy that mainly deal with certain issue-specific policies. During such processes, liquid democracy requires ordinary citizens to either directly vote on such issues or nominate delegates who are competent in such issues to vote on their behalf.
This enhances the capabilities of the legislature or policy decision-makers to benefits from the unique expertise of the individuals across the communities to improve the quality of decisions made by the legislature. Blum and Zuber (2016:162) caution that policies resulting from issue-specific deliberations may face cohesiveness challenges if each group has separate and independent delegates.
Despite such a view, Smith (2010) still argues that liquid democracy may be accompanied with the use of deliberative polling as one of the other mechanisms for enhancing participatory democracy. Deliberative polling is elaborated by Smith to often commence with the random selection of the sample of the local communities and conducting a survey to discern their actual opinion about a particular set of issues.
Thereafter, the same sample of the local communities is required to deliberate on the issue with the elected politicians, competing experts and trained moderators. Following the decisions of such deliberations, Smith’s (2010) views echo Fishkin’s (2011) revelations that the same sample of the local communities is again surveyed and outcomes of such survey is treated as the final decisions and conclusions of the local communities about such issue.
Lafont (2020:29) highlights that the subsequent filtered decisions reached at the conclusion of deliberative poll do not often reflect the raw and actual opinions of the local communities. This is because after thorough initial deliberation decision, results of the subsequent poll may offer new insights that are not consonant with the initial unfiltered raw opinions of the local communities.
Despite certain limitations, it is evident that mechanisms like mini-publics, referendums, e-democracy, town-hall meetings, participatory-budgeting, liquid democracy and deliberative polling leverage the effectiveness of participatory democracy. In turn, improved participatory democracy seems to create the conducive political environment that enhances the successful implementation of participatory-budgeting measures.
Common views in both deliberative and participatory democracies is that direct participation of the local population in political decision-making not only improves decision-making quality, but also leverages the capabilities of the political system of the day to efficiently and effectively respond to the exact needs and preferences of the local communities. This contradicts the approach in representative democracy and thinking in elites’ theory that communities are incapable of governing themselves and therefore should be guided and directed by a few knowledgeable groups.
Though such thinking characterizes most of the contemporary governance systems, deliberative and participatory democracies are still increasingly emerging as critical for leveraging the effectiveness of governance systems.
Significant members from the local communities are increasingly becoming more knowledgeable and gaining command over enormous amount of resources in the midst of political systems that are less responsive to the needs of the local population. Thus, different influential members of the local communities as well as the increasingly oppressed local communities are increasingly pressurizing most governments to directly integrate them in all key decision-making processes.
These instigate questions that seek to probe the overall efficacy of the existing models of representative democracy as well as elitist model of governance. Combined with the pre-existing ideologies in deliberative and participatory democracies, it is the emergence of such situations that has also instigated the rise and use of the notion of participatory-budgeting.
Author
Nomcebo Serrah Mhlanga is a Consultant for Public Administration and Management at Nosech Advisory, Pretoria-South Africa. She specializes in Public Finance Management, Public Budget and Policy Analysis, Participatory Democracy and E-Democracy. E-mail: serrahv@gmail.com
