This chapter explores trends of declining public trust, challenges to information integrity and limits to civic space. It shows that as citizens have become more educated, connected, and engaged over time, their expectations for participation in policy making have also grown. Policymakers are increasingly faced with complex policy issues that require trade-offs between the long and short term, across different groups in society today and future generations to come. The chapter makes the case that meaningful citizen participation is now an imperative for rebuilding trust, tackling complex policy issues and strengthening democratic resilience.
Exploring New Frontiers in Citizen Participation in the Policy Cycle
Abstract
Trust underpins democratic resilience. A strong democracy also generates trust; that is, trust is an input to democratic resilience. A strong democracy generates trust; that is, trust is an output. And democratic resilience can be measured in terms of trust; that is, trust is a metric.
(Department of Home Affairs, Commonwealth of Australia, 2024[1])
Policymaking processes must adapt to a fast paced, digitally connected global context. The landscape for policymaking has evolved dramatically over the past decades. Digitalisation, globalisation and demographic trends – as well as the expectations of citizens themselves – have all had an impact on countries’ ability to design and implement effective policies.
Trust is a critical asset for policymaking in a democracy. Yet the latest data from the 2024 OECD Trust Survey from 30 countries show that 44% of people say that they have low or no trust in their national government. People also express limited trust in governments’ capacity to deal with the complex, long-term challenges now facing their countries. The largest ‘trust gap’ is between people who think they have a say in what government does, and those who don’t.
Participation builds trust. Over half (53%) of the respondents to the 2024 OECD Trust Survey do not think the political system allows people to have a say in what government does. Confidence in one’s ability to participate in politics is associated with higher trust levels. More opportunities for meaningful citizen participation can strengthen people’s self-confidence and ‘participation skills’, as well as their trust in government. Ensuring that citizen participation processes are designed to be inclusive and meet people's higher order needs of belonging, respect and fulfilment is essential.
A renewed commitment to meaningful citizen participation. The 2024 OECD Trust Survey data show that no country can afford to be complacent. Taking citizen participation in policymaking to the next level will be critical to building trust in public institutions and resilient democracies. In today’s challenging context, there is triple dividend to be won by investing in meaningful citizen participation in terms of greater policy effectiveness, boosting citizens’ “participation skills” and strengthening trust in government.
This section:
Describes the evolving and challenging context for policymaking in democracy.
Describes how citizens’ expectations of, and trust in, public institutions in a democracy point to a desire for greater ’voice’.
Underscores the importance of taking citizen participation to the next level, in particular ensuring that it is meaningful in practice.
Democracy is an eternal ‘work in progress’. Models of democratic governance are naturally very diverse, reflecting the unique historical trajectories, current priorities and challenges of each country’s context. Yet they all face a number of common challenges and are all founded on the basic tenant that their governance depends on the will of the people.
Like all countries around the world, democracies are grappling with nested and interrelated policy problems under conditions of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Deep and accelerating trends of globalisation, digitalisation, changing demographics and ecological interdependence have led to the prevalence of ‘wicked problems’ that are characterised by ambiguous or contested formulations of the problem to be addressed, multiple potential solutions and no clear stopping rule (Rittel and Webber, 1973[2]).
In this difficult context, democracies also face a set of common challenges that are damaging the democratic model of governance itself. Recent OECD data and analysis sheds a stark light on their extent and nature including: the pernicious effects of mis- and disinformation; increased polarisation and the rise of social conflict; growing pressures on civic space; the corrosive effects of corruption and lack of integrity; as well as the realities of foreign interference. Faced with a deluge of digital information and constant solicitations to react and share, citizens today are apparently awash in opportunities to contribute to, and shape, public debate. Yet they increasingly express concerns about the ‘pollution’ of the public sphere with mis- and disinformation and have the feeling they are not being heard by those elected to represent them.
At the same time, the citizens that are at the heart of modern democracies have evolved. Citizens in OECD Member countries today are better educated, live longer, travel further afield and are more globally connected than any previous generation. In OECD countries, on average, life expectancy at birth is now 80 years, a gain of more than 11 years since 1960. Increasing longevity and declining fertility rates have flipped the demographic age pyramid on its head in many countries – with major implications for labour markets, health systems and household incomes. In OECD countries, the proportion of the population aged 65 years or over increased from less than 9% in 1960 to more than 17% in 2017 and is projected to rise to 27% by 2050. While GDP per capita has grown during the same period, levels of inequality have too. On average, households in the top 10% of the wealth distribution now own more than half (52%) of all total household wealth (OECD, 2024[3]). In 1960, higher education was the privilege of the few, and even upper secondary education was out of reach for most young people. Today, the reverse is true. On average across OECD countries, 80% of students complete upper secondary school and 40% of adults (25–64 -year-olds) have completed tertiary education (OECD, 2023[4]).
In an interconnected world, international migration has made many OECD societies far more diverse. In 2022, the foreign-born represented about 10.6% of the total population of OECD countries, compared with 8.9% in 2012, and the number of new permanent immigrants reached an all-time high of 6.1 million (OECD, 2023[5]).
Finally, the advent of the Information Age and the emergence of the Internet have had profound implications for citizens’ voice, agency and their ability to pursue collective action. In the 1960s, most households in OECD countries relied on newspapers, radio and television for their information and entertainment and were passive recipients of one-way communications. By 2023 approximately 67% of the world’s population were online, with 280 million new Internet users added within the space of a year. Furthermore, citizens are no longer passive consumers of information, once they get online. The proliferation of social media platforms has meant that individual citizens are now active content creators, curators and disseminators at a scale unheard of before with over 5 billion social media accounts estimated to exist globally (Datareportal, 2024[6])
The combination of such broad, deep and rapid transformations has, naturally enough, given rise to a new set of expectations among citizens. While voting in elections remains the ultimate form of citizen participation – and is central to a vibrant democracy – it is no longer sufficient. Built for another age, it is hardly surprising that our public institutions often appear to be struggling just to keep up. These changing citizen expectations are reflected in the results of the OECD Survey of Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions.
Today citizens want their voice to be heard and have an impact on decisions that affect their lives, but successive editions of the OECD Trust Survey show that governments are falling short. The latest data from the 2024 OECD Trust Survey (OECD, 2024[7]) reveal that across the 30 OECD countries that were surveyed, 44% of respondents have low or no trust in their national government, outweighing the 39% who express high or moderately high trust. Only 37% believe the government will be fair in balancing the interests of different generations. Over half (53%) believe that the political system does not allow people like them to have a say, which means that out of the approximately 600 million adults across the 30 participating OECD countries, nearly 320 million people feel that they lack political agency. While overall trust levels have fallen slightly since the 2021 OECD Trust Survey, it is notable that the most significant decline in trust in the last two years in the 18 countries who participated in both rounds, is registered among women and people with lower levels of education.
The OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions examines how people’s expectations of and experiences with public everyday government interactions and complex decision-making influence their trust in public institutions. The survey, developed over the course of a decade, was first implemented in 22 OECD countries in 2021 and in 30 OECD countries in 2023 (OECD, 2024a). To respond to Member countries’ expectations expressed in the 2022 Luxembourg Declaration, the Trust Survey will be carried out every two years.
According to the OECD Trust Survey, in late 2023, a higher share of people (44%) across OECD countries had low or no trust in the national government than high or moderately high trust (39%) (Figure 1.1), but with significant variations across countries and groups.
Note: The figure presents the within-country distributions of responses to the question “On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is not at all and 10 is completely, how much do you trust the national government?”. A 0-4 response corresponds to “low or no trust“, a 5 to “neutral“ and a 6-10 to “ high or moderately high trust“. “OECD” presents the unweighted average across countries.
Source: Figure 1.2. OECD Trust Survey 2023.
Sources: (OECD, 2024[7]), (OECD, 2024[8])
The good news is that most recent users of public services (health, education and administrative services) report being satisfied with public services and almost half (45%) express trust in civil servants (OECD, 2024[7]). Public services are still today the foremost interface for citizens’ interaction with the state (whether online or in person) and satisfaction with administrative services is a significant driver for trust in government – so improving those service encounters and avoiding failures in service delivery rightly remains a central concern. This is reflected in the 2024 OECD Recommendation on Human-Centred Public Administrative Services that sets out a clear, common framework to support governments to develop and implement public services that prioritise human experience throughout their design and delivery (OECD, 2024[9])
The bad news is that the 2024 OECD Trust Survey’s data indicates that further improvements in administrative service delivery will lead to only marginal increases in people’s trust levels (even though failures in service delivery would likely see trust levels plummet). Today, a far greater positive impact on trust in government is to be had by empowering citizens and focussing on their voices, not only their choices.
The Trust Survey data reveals some important insights into feelings of political voice and confidence to participate in politics. These are explored through two survey questions: “How much would you say the political system in [country] allows people like you to have a say in what the government does?” for feelings of “voice”; and “How confident are you in your own ability to participate in politics?” for people's perceptions about their own capacity to participate (see Figure 1.2):
1. Voice: the 2024 OECD Trust Survey shows that 69% of those who believe they have a say in government action report high or moderately high levels of trust in the national government, in contrast to only 22% among those who feel they do not have a say. This represents a staggering 47-percentage point gap in trust in national government between those who feel they have a say in government action, and those who do not. This gap is bigger than any other gap observed between people from different socioeconomic and demographic groups. This is clear evidence that ensuring citizens are heard and treated with dignity has a major impact on their trust in government – no matter what their gender1, age or background.
2. Feeling confident to participate in politics: on average across countries, 53% of respondents who are confident in their ability to participate in politics express high or moderately high levels of trust in national government, compared to only 28% of those who are not confident in their ability to participate in government. This represents a significant 25-percentage point trust gap between those who are confident in their ability to participate in politics and those who are not. This indicates that investing in measures that build people’s participation skills and self-confidence will offer important returns on investment also in terms of their trust in government (Prats and Meunier, 2021[10]).
Note: The figure shows the share of the population with high or moderately high trust in the national government by feeling they have a say in what the government does (blue) and confident to participate in politics (yellow), 2023. The figure presents the within-country distributions of responses to the question “On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is not at all and 10 is completely, how much do you trust the national government?” by respondents’ feeling of having a say (blue) and confidence to participate in politics (yellow). Shown here is the proportion of respondents that have “high or moderately high trust’’ based on the aggregation of responses from 6-10 on the 0-10 response scale, grouped by whether people feel they have a say (blue): ’How much would you say the political system in [COUNTRY] allows people like you to have a say in what the government does?’’ and feel confident to be able to participate in politics (yellow): ‘’How confident are you in your own ability to participate in politics?’’. “OECD” presents the unweighted average across countries.
Source: Figure 2.2 OECD Trust Survey 2023
Providing evidence that higher levels of reported political agency by citizens are correlated with higher levels of their trust in government is an important first step. This finding indicates that governments who embed and enlarge the scope for meaningful citizen participation will not only boost the instrumental value of democracy as a system of government (in generating better quality policy design and more effective implementation) but also its intrinsic value (by demonstrating adherence to democratic norms, boosting trust, participation skills and political efficacy).
Nonetheless, the 2024 OECD Trust Survey data also offer a stark warning for governments. It finds that only a third (32%) of respondents find it likely that governments would adopt opinions expressed in a public consultation. This means that many citizens are deeply skeptical about the real impact of current consultation practices.
This data point alone should sound the death knell of ‘tick the box’ consultations which are rolled out only to be forgotten. As underscored in the OECD 2023 report on “Open Government for Stronger Democracies” (OECD, 2023[11]), citizens in OECD countries are not simply looking for ‘more’ opportunities to participate in policymaking – they want meaningful participation. They want their precious contributions of time and first-hand ‘experiential knowledge’ to be treated as a valuable asset and for governments to be accountable for how they use it (OECD, 2022[12]).
The need for governments to improve their capacity for “active listening” to citizens’ “voice” is borne out by the 2024 OECD Trust Survey. One of the top three drivers of trust in national government for decision making on complex, long-term and global policy issues is “political voice” – just after “balancing intergenerational interests” and “evidence-based decision making” (see Figure 1.3). It concludes that:
“Today, actions to improve people’s perceptions that decision making is based on evidence, is fair towards different generations, listens to the people, and ensures institutions are accountable would yield the largest potential gains for trust in the national government”.
Public governance drivers linked to day-to-day interactions and decision making on long-term and global issues with an impact on trust in the respective institution (national government and the civil service), 2023
How to read: The figure shows the combined information from the regression analysis of trust in the respective institutions on the public governance drivers and control variables and the distance of the average perception of the respective driver to an 80% threshold. Drivers that are more positively associated with trust in the respective institution and for which only a low average share across the OECD have a positive perception can potentially have a higher impact on trust, as there is important scope for improvement and the improvement would likely be associated with increased levels of trust. On the other hand, drivers with a low positive association with trust and for which perceptions are already quite positive across OECD countries have a lower potential for contributing to positive improvements on trust. Nevertheless, all drivers listed in this figure are statistically significant and improvements in the respective areas can therefore all contribute to improving trust.
Note: The figure shows the statistically significant determinants of trust in the national government and civil service, obtained through logistic regressions that of trust in the respective institutions on the public governance drivers. The analyses control for individual characteristics, including whether they voted or would have voted for one of the current parties in power, self-reported levels of interpersonal trust, and country fixed effects. All variables depicted are statistically significant at the 1% significance level.
Source: Figure 1.12. OECD Trust Survey 2023.
Importantly, the 2024 OECD Trust Survey also confirms that certain groups in society such as young people, women and the disadvantaged are particularly disaffected with the public institutions (see Box 2). These findings indicate that greater efforts and innovative approaches will be needed to engage hard-to-reach groups in policymaking in ways that ensure their civic freedoms and access to the practical enabling conditions needed to engage meaningfully. Success in doing so will be key to building their trust in public institutions. Navigating diverse groups of citizens’ demands for voice, equity and dignity poses new challenges for the design of meaningful citizen participation.
Looking beyond the national averages, for countries that participated in the previous round, the 2024 OECD Trust Survey highlights important variations in trust levels among different groups of individuals and recognises the importance of intersectionality. Designing meaningful citizen participation starts by acknowledging differences in the ‘baseline’ level of trust in government that different groups in society express:
Gender: in almost all the OECD countries surveyed, women have lower trust in government than men. Today, on average, only 36% of women have high or moderately high trust in the government, compared to 43% of men (Figure 2.9). And this trust gap shows no sign of narrowing given that the share of women reporting no or low levels of trust in government has increased from 39% in 2021 to 45% in the countries that participated in both the 2021 and 2024 OECD Trust Survey.
Age: On average just over a third (36%) of people aged 18 to 29 tend to trust the government, while 43% of those aged 50 and over do so (Figure 2.11).
Education: On average across countries, having a university degree is associated with 13 percentage points higher trust in government compared to those who did not complete studies beyond lower secondary education. In the past two years, this gap has grown in countries who participated in the 2021 OECD Trust Survey.
Economic security: On average across OECD countries, among the respondents who were concerned about their economic and financial future only 35% reported having a high or moderately high level of trust in their national government – compared with 52% of those with fewer economic worries (Figure 2.6).
Inclusion or exclusion: On average across the 30 OECD countries surveyed, the interpersonal trust gap between those who self-identify as belonging to a discriminated group and those who do not is 12 percentage points, while the government trust gap is even wider at 14 percentage points (Figure 2.8).
What are the policy implications of the OECD Trust Survey findings? It is clear that in today’s challenging context, there could be a triple dividend to be won by investing in policies and mechanisms to promote the effectiveness and inclusivity of citizen participation in terms of greater policy effectiveness, boosting citizens’ “participation skills” and strengthening trust in government.
It is important to recognise that many governments have invested significant efforts in ensuring transparency, consultation and participation in policymaking. The accumulated experience of OECD Member countries has also been the subject of comparative analysis through the OECD’s longstanding work programme on open government which has paved the way for international consensus on key principles underpinning good practice in this field – notably the 2017 Council Recommendation on Open Government.
And yet, in light of the complex challenges facing democracies today, OECD Member countries are making a renewed commitment to the strategic importance of expanding and deepening avenues for citizen participation in the policy cycle, while protecting civic space and responding to the challenges of mis and disinformation – and this is also reflected in the OECD’s leading-edge work in this area.
Over 500 participants from government, business, civil society, media, and academia in 80 countries attended the 2024 OECD Global Forum on Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy hosted by the Government of Italy in Milan on 21-22 October 2024. Key highlights from panel discussions on reinforcing representative democracy through meaningful citizen participation include:
Transparency and accountability are core values underpinning citizen participation. Strong legal and institutional frameworks are needed to guarantee citizen participation – but these need to evolve.
The centre of government can play a key role in leading, convening and building capacity for citizen participation across the public administration.
Ensuring more inclusive, citizen-centered participation processes is now critical, with a particular focus on youth.
Enhancing citizen participation by using AI requires transparency of algorithms as well as designs that promote debate, identify new areas of consensus and solutions.
Recordings of the panel discussions and a set of background materials are available online (see: https://www.oecd-events.org/global-forum-on-democracy/en).
Many countries have adopted action plans and programmes to reinforce democracy which explicitly recognise the central and active role of citizens as the ultimate source of power and legitimacy. For example, Australia’s Strengthening Democracy Taskforce emphasises that, “Democratic resilience is about the ability of people, communities and institutions to respond to challenge democratically” (Department of Home Affairs, Commonwealth of Australia, 2024[2]). Other countries have embarked on similar initiatives such as: Canada’s Plan to Protect Democracy (Government of Canada, 2024 (Government of Canada, 2024[13]) and the European Commission’s European Democracy Shield, as well as the 2023 EC Recommendation on promoting the engagement and effective participation of citizens and civil society organisations in public policy-making processes (European Commission, 2023[14]). The OECD itself has made a significant contribution to these efforts by fostering peer-learning among countries and analysing innovative practices in public deliberation - characterising the widespread adoption of representative citizens’ assemblies and other mini-publics as the “deliberative wave” (OECD, 2020[15]).
Put simply, there is a recognition that democratic governments must now move beyond an instrumental approach to citizen participation, where citizens are consulted as service users or as one of many stakeholders for the purpose of improving policy design and delivery – to place greater emphasis on the intrinsic value of citizen participation. Only by recognising the need for a paradigm shift that places citizens at the centre of policymaking, and by expanding and deepening opportunities for meaningful citizen participation, will countries make progress in building trust and reinforcing their democracies.
The question is how? The remaining sections of Part I of this Discussion Paper explore some of the systemic challenges that are getting in the way of this paradigm shift and identify some potential areas for action. This is with a view to moving towards greater clarity on the most effective design of the institutional interface for meaningful citizen participation in the policy cycle for the future.
References
[6] Datareportal (2024), Global Social Media Statistics, https://datareportal.com/social-media-users (accessed on 2024).
[1] Department of Home Affairs, Commonwealth of Australia (2024), Strengthening Australian democracy: A practical agenda for democratic resilience.
[14] European Commission (2023), Commission Recommendation promoting the engagement and effective participation of citizens and civil society organisations in public policy-making processes.
[13] Government of Canada (2024), Canada’s plan to protect democracy, https://www.canada.ca/en/democratic-institutions/services/protecting-democracy.html#toc0.
[7] OECD (2024), OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions – 2024 Results: Building Trust in a Complex Policy Environment, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9a20554b-en.
[8] OECD (2024), OECD Trust Survey Design and Technical Documentation, https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/support-materials/2024/07/oecd-survey-on-drivers-of-trust-in-public-institutions-2024-results_eeb36452/2023%20Trust%20Survey%20-%20Technical%20annex.pdf.
[9] OECD (2024), Recommendation of the Council on Human-Centred Public Administrative Services [OECD/LEGAL/0503], https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0503.
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[11] OECD (2023), Open Government for Stronger Democracies: A Global Assessment, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/5478db5b-en.
[12] OECD (2022), OECD Guidelines for Citizen Participation Processes, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/f765caf6-en.
[15] OECD (2020), Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/339306da-en.
[10] Prats, M. and A. Meunier (2021), “Political efficacy and participation: An empirical analysis in European countries”, OECD Working Papers on Public Governance, No. 46, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/4548cad8-en.
[2] Rittel, H. and M. Webber (1973), “Dilemmas in a general theory of planning”, Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, pp. 155–169, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730.
← 1. The Republic of Türkiye interprets the term "gender", throughout the document, as identical with "sex" pursuant to the binary concept of biological female and male sex. The term "gender equality" shall be interpreted as "equality between women and men”.