Citizens’ involvement in democracy goes beyond voting. Participation in the design and delivery of policies and services promotes more democratic and effective policy making, enhances the transparency and accountability of government processes, and can increase public acceptance of government decisions (OECD, 2024a; OECD, 2022; OECD, 2017). As citizens’ trust in government remains consistently low, governments can complement established mechanisms of representative democracy with the judicious use of direct, participatory and deliberative democratic practices (OECD, 2024). The latter can include, for example, citizen assemblies, juries and dialogues.
Between 1979 and 2023, the OECD tracked 716 cases of such deliberative processes across 28 OECD countries, where public authorities involved more than 80 000 randomly selected citizens in total to learn, deliberate and issue policy recommendations. Since the mid-2000s, there has been a clear upward trend in the use of deliberative democracy, peaking in 2021 at 62 cases. In total, 148 new instances were recorded between 2021 and 2023 across OECD countries (Figure 6.5).
Deliberative processes are often used to address complex, value-based or long-term policy issues. For instance, of the 148 recent cases, 60 (41%) have focused on environmental issues (Figure 6.6). Balancing trade-offs between short-term costs and long-term gains involved in the effects of climate change, for example, can be a major dilemma for elected politicians. Deliberative processes, when implemented well and for democratic purposes, can help address polarisation and political deadlock by formulating balanced proposals with long-term perspectives, and generate wider public support for policies (OECD, 2024).
Traditionally, participation at the subnational level offers citizens the greatest “return on investment” due to its proximity and more immediate and tangible impact on their lives, and this remains the case today. So, it is not surprising that citizen participation processes by cities and regions often exhibit more innovation, more sustained participation over time, and generate higher trust levels than for national governments (see Chapter 2). Out of the 148 deliberative processes recorded between 2021 and 2023, 103 (70%) were local or regional, while the remaining 45 (30%) were at the national level (Table 6.1)
Subnational governments are also more likely to permanently embed deliberative processes into decision-making structures (e.g. ministry-specific citizens’ assemblies with a legal mandate). Out of the 19 permanent cases collected, 13 (68%) took place at the local level (Table 6.2). Institutionalising deliberative democracy can help ensure the continuity of such mechanisms beyond electoral cycles, enable economies of scale and foster a culture of deliberation for decision making (OECD, 2022).
