This chapter explores citizen engagement. It focuses on efforts across OECD countries to develop a two-way dialogue with citizens on budgets. While these initiatives have several aims – finding solutions, testing policies, managing expectations – at their core is a common thread. They reinforce people’s understanding of fiscal challenges, enable better understanding of citizens needs and preferences, and help build the much-needed consensus and public ownership for difficult fiscal decisions. This understanding will be pivotal for countries as they seek to overcome major fiscal challenges.
The People and the Budget
Empowering Public Understanding of Public Finances
Abstract
Engaging citizens helps build stronger fiscal choices: Involving citizens in restoring public finances fosters realistic expectations and helps better align reforms with public expectations and needs. This strengthens institutional legitimacy, fosters public ownership, and mitigates the risk of backlash around reforms.
Beyond the ballot: With trust in decline and fiscal pressures mounting, voting in elections is no longer sufficient engagement (OECD, forthcoming[1]). Governments and parliaments are now exploring how they can instigate greater engagement with citizens.
Distinct but complementary roles: Governments and parliaments play different roles in this ecosystem. Governments can use engagement, such as national dialogues, to build consensus and manage expectations before budgets are set. Parliaments can use committees to move beyond standard hearings, actively gathering evidence from the ground to drive more effective scrutiny and find solutions.
From consultation to deliberation: To be effective, citizens must be engaged in a way that moves beyond tokenistic “listening” exercises. Meaningful engagement – where citizens are informed, given time to discuss trade-offs, and see their input impact decisions – helps unearth policy solutions, test reforms, and safeguard fiscal sustainability.
Citizen engagement with budgets should be understood within a wider shift in how people expect to participate in public life.
Traditionally, citizen engagement with government begins and ends with the vote they cast in elections every few years. However, the past two decades have witnessed a shift in how citizens interact with public life (OECD, 2022[2]). The rise of social media and citizen-driven content creation platforms has empowered individuals to express opinions and engage on issues that matter to them. Easy access to information fuels this trend, allowing people to form informed opinions on a wide range of topics, from local community initiatives to national policy decisions. This engagement goes beyond formal channels such as voting and consultations. Engagement through online polls and social media conversations represent new forms of public dialogue.1
There is a growing expectation that public institutions listen, respond and demonstrate accountability for citizens’ input. This shift reflects a deeper recognition that participation strengthens both the effectiveness and legitimacy of public decisions (OECD, 2025[3]).
Governments’ efforts to engage citizens in budgeting are part of this broader movement to embed meaningful citizen participation across the policy cycle. In areas like budgeting, this involves fostering a two-way dialogue around budgets to develop sound, legitimate, and lasting fiscal decisions (OECD, 2025[3]).
4.1.1. How do governments engage with their citizens on the budget?
There are already some examples of governments initiating citizen engagement in relation to the budget. These initiatives are often designed to support their role as the executive branch responsible for proposing the budget and implementing policy.
Government-led engagement can be mapped across different timelines and objectives. A common approach is a pre-budget dialogue. This is typically designed to “manage expectations”. These initiatives bring key social partners and stakeholders together to build a shared understanding of the macroeconomic and fiscal constraints before formal budget demands are locked in. At other times, engagement is more specific. It can be used to find a socially acceptable path for a single, sensitive reform area, such as pensions policy. Finally, for deep structural challenges, such as healthcare or long-term care, governments may initiate in-depth, long-term processes. These might sit entirely outside the annual budget cycle with one aim being to depoliticise an issue and build a durable consensus for reform.
The methods that governments use to engage citizens are as varied as their goals. Pre-budget consensus-building can take the form of a high-level national dialogue, as seen in Ireland. This sees stakeholders grounded in a common set of economic facts. In contrast, testing the viability of a new policy might rely on a deliberative process like a citizens’ convention, like used in France. The idea is to gather and inform public judgment from a representative sample of the public. For long-term structural issues, governments may turn to independent Commissions (for example, the United Kingdom’s Royal Commissions) or permanent advisory bodies (Scandinavia). These options blend insights from experts, stakeholders, and citizens.
When designing initiatives for citizen engagement, it is important to bear in mind that engaging stakeholders and engaging citizens are two different things. Stakeholders are consulted on budgetary matters related to the specific interests they represent and bring a particular perspective to the discussion. By contrast, engaging representative samples of citizens goes beyond consultation. Such approaches, by design, may tie the hands of governments and parliaments. This does not imply that citizen participation should not be pursued. Experience with citizen participation has shown, rather, the importance of clearly distinguishing between different types of participatory exercises and their respective purposes.
4.1.2. How do parliaments engage with stakeholders and citizens on the budget?
While governments engage to build support for policy, parliaments are different. They engage to scrutinise it.
Effective citizen and stakeholder engagement helps parliaments enhance their core functions – oversight, legislation, and representation. This moves their work beyond debating government proposals to actively shaping and challenging them with direct citizen and expert input.
Parliaments’ formal powers around the budget process vary significantly. Across the OECD, three-in-five parliaments have extensive powers to amend the budget (Figure 4.1). Some can make changes within budget totals, and others are largely limited to debating and approving the executive's proposal.
Sources: 2025 OECD Survey on Parliamentary Budget Oversight.
This variation in power matters. A parliament with a strong, formal role in the budget offers a natural and powerful platform for citizen and stakeholder engagement. Its recommendations carry significant weight. However, even in systems where the executive dominates the budget (as in most Westminster systems), parliaments can leverage citizen and stakeholder engagement as a powerful tool of influence. In this way, citizen and stakeholder engagement strengthens oversight where it might be traditionally weak. Proactive scrutiny, informed by direct citizen and expert input, can build political pressure and influence the design of policy, even without formal amendment powers.
A good example is the Canadian House of Commons and its Standing Committee on Finance. The Committee conducts annual “Pre-Budget Consultations.” This sees the committee travel across the country as well as inviting online submissions to gather public and expert views on priorities (House of Commons of Canada, 2024[4]; Department of Finance Canada, 2025[5]). The goal being, as stated, to:
“…hear from Canadians about their most pressing priorities – including making life more affordable, promoting economic growth across the country, building one united Canadian economy, and reducing day-to-day government spending.”
These engagements directly inform a report to the government ahead of budget drafting. The view is that “good planning starts with listening”. While the executive retains the power to formulate the budget, this does not mean parliament has no role in shaping it. By setting the agenda with a highly-publicised report, the government is politically pressured to respond to and potentially adapt its budget.
This proactive engagement contrasts with purely after-the-fact scrutiny. It provides a formal way for the public to inform a budget’s initial design rather than reacting to final proposals.
Another model is seen in Lithuania, where the Seimas (Parliament) Budget and Finance Committee holds a dual-track process to scrutinise the draft budget. First, it holds public hearings – broadcast live for transparency – where ministries, NGOs, social partners, and the public can present views. Crucially, citizens can also submit written comments or proposals before and after the hearings. Second, it organises targeted, in-depth consultations with experts from the Bank of Lithuania, the National Audit Office, and the IFI, alongside key stakeholders from business and academia. This approach combines broad public access with deep technical scrutiny.
These hearings function as a two-way dialogue: government representatives or the committee chair often set the scene by discussing fiscal realities. This helps to ground the subsequent proposals in a shared understanding of the constraints. This is complemented by the separate, targeted meetings with technical experts that scrutinise the draft budget in detail.
While some governments and parliaments are finding constructive ways to involve citizens in budget processes, the fiscal pressures facing countries today mean that efforts to engage citizens will need to broaden and deepen. Restoring public finances will require major reforms. Navigating this depends on securing public ownership, not just technical solutions.
If OECD countries are to set the public finances on more sustainable paths, governments and parliaments need to increase their efforts to bring citizens on board. They need to raise citizens awareness around the scale of the challenge. They need to empower them to express their preferences and engineer better outcomes. Most of all, they need to make sure that expectations are grounded in reality – balancing needs with resources. This will help ensure that public services and supports are financed, not just for today, but well into the future.
Meaningful citizen engagement offers the potential to reinforce the legitimacy of difficult fiscal choices and build public trust. As well as reinforcing the legitimacy of fiscal choices, engaging citizens can help with finding solutions for restoring public finances, allow testing the water for different options, help manage expectations and foster ownership for the choices made. These motivations are linked by a common thread — building understanding of fiscal challenges and consensus around the need for difficult decisions.
4.2.1. Reinforcing legitimacy
Legitimacy is the currency that underpins major policy decisions and a common thread to engaging citizens.2 As the OECD’s (2024[6]; 2022[7]) work on trust in public institutions shows, people’s ability to have a say is highly correlated with their trust in governments (Figure 4.2).
Note: The figure shows the share of respondents a) reporting “likely” to the question: “How much would you say the political system in your country allows people like you to have a say in what the government does?” and b) answering “high or moderately high trust” 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?”. The “likely” or “high or moderately high trust” proportion is the aggregation of responses from 6-10 on the scale.
Source: OECD Trust Survey 2023.
Ensuring that decision making is citizen focused and based on data and analysis provides one of the strongest opportunities to build trust in complex, long term issues (OECD, 2024[6]). Recent OECD surveys show exactly why this focus on trust is so necessary today (Box 4.1).
To successfully reinforce legitimacy, engagement initiatives must be thoughtfully designed (Box 4.2). They must be inclusive, transparent, and provide clear feedback on how citizen inputs influenced the final decisions. Failing to communicate how inputs were used can easily cause these initiatives to backfire. Indeed, recent OECD (2025[8]) research underscores the importance of listening to and understanding people’s views.
Trust in national governments is relatively low across many OECD countries. This can present a major hurdle for restoring public finances: When public institutions are trusted, governments can draw on this confidence to enact difficult long-term reforms; while major policy changes can become more difficult to enact when trust is lacking.
Across the 30 surveyed OECD countries that participated in the 2023 OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions (Trust Survey), 44% of people have low or no trust in their national government, a larger share than the 39% who held high or moderately high trust.
A key issue affecting trust in public institutions is how governments are perceived to manage long-term and complex challenges. The OECD Trust Survey highlights that citizens are increasingly sceptical about the capacity of governments to manage complex policy matters, while their satisfaction with essential public services and their perceptions of other indicators related to day-to-day interactions are often more positive. Yet people’s perceptions of government competence on these difficult issues matter far more for their overall trust in the national government than their day-to-day interactions with public institution.
Balancing the needs of different generations is a core challenge of budgeting. It underpins everything from funding pensions and healthcare to managing national debt. However, the OECD Trust Survey finds that only 37% of people believe their government balances the needs of different generations fairly. This scepticism is a challenge for those seeking to drive reforms that put public finances on a more sustainable path. When citizens doubt the government's ability to make fair, values-based decisions on these complex issues, trust declines.
A further challenge for trust and the acceptability of reforms is how government is seen to communicate with and, above all, listen to citizens. Two-in-five people consider it unlikely that governments would clearly explain how a major policy reform would affect them. This contributes to weaker legitimacy and credibility, potentially undermining public acceptance of difficult but necessary reforms. At the same time, having a voice clearly matters: those who feel “people like them” have a say in government decisions report much higher levels of trust in national government than those who do not feel they have a say (69% compared to 22%). Across the OECD, only 30% of people across the OECD find it likely that the political system allows them to have such a say.
To build the public and political will for reforms that underpin sustainable public finances, governments must actively address declining trust. This means bringing citizens into government decisions; and clearly explaining how reforms were arrived at, how they balance the needs of today’s citizens with those of future generations and how they will affect people today. In this way, governments can demonstrate their ability to navigate long-term challenges and manage the budget in a way that balances competing demands.
Source: (OECD, 2024[6]).
The success of citizen engagement is not accidental. It relies on thoughtful design. OECD Guidelines for Citizen Participation Processes point to several core principles:
Have a clarity of purpose and outcome: Clearly define the problem being solved and the “ask” of citizens from the outset. There must be a transparent public commitment to how citizens’ input will be used and how decision makers will respond.
Be inclusive and accessible: The process must actively identify and lower barriers to participation. This ensures that a range of voices – not just the “usual suspects” – can contribute.
Inform: Participants must be given access to a wide range of accurate, relevant, and accessible information. Good engagement relies on informed rather than surface opinions.
Transparent and reliable: The process must be run with integrity, with clear rules and oversight to protect it from policy capture by special interests. All materials, relevant data, and results should be made public.
Source: (OECD, 2022[2]).
4.2.2. Finding solutions
Citizens possess ground-level knowledge that policymakers often lack. Engaging them can uncover inefficiencies, service delivery gaps, and innovative solutions that better allocate resources. This broad input acts as a radar, surfacing alternative perspectives and identifying blind spots that implicit biases might otherwise obscure.
Beyond specific policy ideas, solution-oriented initiatives significantly boost civic literacy. For example, Iceland’s “Public Sector Efficiency” consultation generated modest financial savings, but its true value lay in engaging the public directly in scrutinising state operations. Grounding public debate in real-world trade-offs builds ownership and helps secure buy-in for difficult decisions.
Many engagement initiatives are framed around finding solutions. It might be a case of engaging citizens to find savings in times of resource constraints or tasking them with recommendations on sensitive policy areas. Yet their most significant value often lies in building public understanding and a sense of ownership over the public finances.
More about the road than the destination: The very process of engaging citizens can foster public support and increase understanding of fiscal realities. For example, Iceland's “Public Sector Efficiency” consultation rapidly generated thousands of proposals. Direct savings were modest (estimated to be 0.7% of total annual expenditure). Yet the true value was in engaging the public directly in scrutinising state operations. This helped to build a sense of understanding and ownership during a period of fiscal consolidation. The town of Zeist in the Netherlands had a similar approach engaging “citizen experts” to reorganise spending and achieve savings.
The Value of Literacy: The Icelandic experience highlights a key benefit. While translating local ideas into large-scale national savings is challenging given the complexity of major budgets (e.g. health, defence), the engagement process itself enhances understanding of the public finances. It grounds the public debate in real-world trade-offs and builds buy-in for difficult decisions. These benefits are often a more durable and valuable outcome than the modest savings themselves. In Catalunya, a similar initiative targeted at youth groups was called the “Parlem de Pressupostos” (OECD, 2025[9]). This initiative engaged diverse groups, including children and adolescents, in deliberating on complex fiscal priorities such as the use of European cohesion funds. Through tailored workshops and sessions, young participants demonstrated they could meaningfully engage with technical budget trade-offs. Post-session evaluations highlighted a strong sense of empowerment, illustrating how direct involvement in fiscal decisions can significantly enhance civic literacy and trust in public institutions.
4.2.3. Testing the water
Citizen engagement can also act as a way to test the viability for potentially sensitive policy changes. Before committing significant political capital, governments can use focus groups, citizens’ assemblies, or targeted consultations to gauge public sentiment and anticipate opposition. This helps policymakers better calibrate and communicate difficult reforms (OECD, 2025[10]).
By transforming public opinion from a passive constraint into an active policy input, engagement helps overcome political deadlock (OECD, 2020[11]). Research in the European Union (Bunea and Nørbech, 2025[12]) and Korea (Kim, Shim and Park, 2021[13]) shows that transparent engagement boosts support and enhances governmental trustworthiness.
Structured engagement can also help decide the broader fiscal stance. Participatory budgeting, such as Portugal’s dedicated national envelope for citizen-proposed projects (OECD, 2017[14]), gives the public a direct role in weighing tax and spending trade-offs.
4.2.4. Managing expectations
National plans and budgets reflect an innate desire to improve society. But, often, if all the desires of key interest groups and the public were taken into account, the sum of their costs would be far greater than the taxes people wish to pay.
Pre-budget dialogues bring stakeholders together to understand the sheer scale of demands and hear independent expert advice on the economic backdrop. Fostering a consensus on financial constraints focuses minds on priorities rather than unachievable wish lists. This process moderates the overall fiscal impact and directly enhances public understanding of the public finances at the exact moment when these issues are most prominent.
4.2.5. Fostering ownership
Engaging citizens can help build a sense of co-ownership. This is vital when difficult trade-offs cannot be avoided. It is particularly crucial for long-term challenges (OECD, 2025[10]). If citizens feel their concerns are ignored, policies face resistance. International experience with representative deliberation shows that, when implemented well, these processes allow citizens to contribute solutions they can buy into, resulting in balanced proposals with long-term perspectives (OECD, 2025[15]).
Whom to engage and why it matters
The OECD distinguishes citizens (individuals participating in their own right) from stakeholders (organised interest groups such as businesses, trade unions, associations, or advocacy groups representing constituencies). Both add value, but they play different roles in the policy cycle. Well‑designed processes should be clear about who is being engaged, why, and with what expectations.
Citizens can be more open to compromise and to society‑wide trade‑offs once informed, whereas stakeholders/interest groups may legitimately defend narrower interests. This ability to change positions and potentially to reach a compromise is a vital difference. Engaging citizens goes beyond consulting with stakeholders. It can help governments and parliaments understand where there might be more consensus and how to make difficult fiscal trade-offs more socially acceptable.
Levels of participation
Participation spans information (one‑way), consultation (two‑way feedback) and engagement (collaboration throughout the policy cycle). Clear communication about the level offered, and accountability for how inputs are used, are essential quality standards
Design principles
Effective processes are inclusive, informed, transparent and accountable, with feedback on how inputs shape decisions. Aligning the “front office” of participation with the “back office” of budgeting, rulemaking and procurement helps ensure that citizen input has a path to influence.
Source: (OECD, 2022[2]).
4.3.1. Citizen engagement by governments
Well‑designed engagement that will help restore public finances must focus on the aggregate fiscal stance and distributional priorities, not just individual budget programmes.
The following examples illustrate how citizen engagement can be used in this way:
Building consensus (pre-budget): Many governments convene dialogues before the budget is finalised. This helps to align key stakeholders in terms of key priorities and what the hard fiscal and economic realities are. Ireland’s National Economic Dialogue is a good archetype (see Box 4.5).
Established in 2012, the NED is a key forum for public consultation and discussion on the annual Irish budget. While government-led, it provides a platform for diverse voices ahead of key decisions. It aims to facilitate an open and inclusive exchange between the government and stakeholders on the competing economic and social priorities facing the country.
The NED brings together a diverse range of stakeholders, including:
Representatives from business associations, trade unions, and civil society organisations
Social partners (employer and employee representatives)
Economic and social policy experts
Public interest groups
Individual citizens (through online submissions)
The forum is held annually, typically in June, in the lead-up to October’s national budget for the following year. This is a key period when discussions about the budget begin to heat up and there is a risk of runaway expectations in terms of what can be achieved with one budget.
The NED usually starts with a scene setter on the economic and fiscal landscape. Experts are asked to give a broad macroeconomic and fiscal outlook. This gives an opportunity to promote a shared understanding of the fiscal backdrop Ireland's budgetary decisions. In effect, this is a chance to raise understanding of public finances at a key juncture in the budgetary calendar.
The second part of the annual forum is designed to foster a broad-based discussion on the annual budget itself. All attendees are invited to contribute, with break-out sessions used to drill down into key themes or policy areas. These engagements help inform the government's budgetary priorities. The approach helps ensure the budget reflects the needs and priorities of Irish society, while also promoting a shared understanding of the context and raising understanding of the public finances.
Testing viability and gathering input for specific policies: Governments may use consultations or other methods to gauge public reactions to specific, potentially sensitive reforms. The French Citizens’ Convention on Climate (Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat, 2020[16]) offers a good example in the context of major fiscal challenges. It was commissioned by the President specifically to find socially acceptable ways to address environmental challenges after earlier carbon tax proposals failed. While the legislation that followed (Légifrance, 2021[17]) ultimately diluted some proposals, the Convention nevertheless achieved things that might have proved far more difficult without the convention. It served as a large-scale testbed for policy options. It informed the government on public preferences and red lines regarding climate measures. This provides a useful template for governments to navigate other difficult large-scale fiscal challenges. It can be the use of targeted surveys or consultations. And it can be for changes to tax systems, subsidies, or other major public service reforms.
Building consensus on long-term structural reform: Some governments use deeper approaches to “manage expectations” and build a durable consensus. This is vital for complex and politically sensitive issues.
The United Kingdom’s Royal Commissions are a prime example. These independent, in-depth inquiries cover areas such as major pensions reforms or long-term care solutions. They are mandated by government to gather extensive evidence from stakeholders, experts, and the public over a long period of time. They help to take the politics out of the initial evidence-gathering phase. This is good for testing the viability of profound changes and building legitimacy for subsequent, often difficult, government action.
A different model is common in Scandinavian countries. This involves permanent advisory commissions. These bodies are typically made up of representatives from political parties, industry, labour, and academia to develop long-term strategies for areas like taxation or healthcare. Their role is partly to institutionalise compromise. They pre-negotiate major reforms and bind key actors to a politically sustainable outcome before a crisis hits. This pre-empts the large-scale opposition that often derails major reforms when handled more abruptly.
Another compelling example of building consensus for long-term structural change is Brazil’s approach to defining its National Climate Plan through 2035 (OECD, 2025[10]). The government used a large online consultation, Brasil Participativo. The platform let citizens access information and submit ideas, but it also let users comment on others’ suggestions, allowing them to vote for the most impactful proposals. The most-voted initiatives were then reviewed by the government for potential integration into the Climate Plan, so as to help shape Brazil’s climate policy until 2035. It garnered substantial engagement: 8 000 proposals and 1.5 million votes.
When it comes to citizen engagement, government-led initiatives are best positioned before budgets are formally passed. This can help to identify potential policy roadblocks early on and foster consensus, paving the way for more successful policies.
4.3.2. Citizen engagement by parliaments
Citizen engagement by parliaments has immense potential (see Figure 4.3). However, it has been historically underused and requires proactive parliaments. The challenge is moving from tokenistic hearings to effective, evidence and data-driven engagement that genuinely informs financial scrutiny and policy outcomes.
% of all 38 OECD countries, budget/finance committee initiatives
Note: The figure shows the % of OECD countries that have initiatives used by committees to foster citizen engagement. Calculations are on the basis of "highest form of engagement" ranked in order of engagement as follows: citizen's panels or assemblies; meetings, seminars, workshops, focus groups; calls for submissions, or online consultations, questionnaires; engagements that are not specified; and, lastly, an explicit answer that they do not have any form of citizen engagement. Of course, this ranking does not imply that some forms of engagement are always better than others – ultimately, it depends on the quality of engagement. The figure focuses on budget or finance committee initiatives, but there are other sectoral committees that can often engage citizens, often in novel ways.
Sources: 2025 OECD Survey on Parliamentary Budget Oversight.
The potential for citizen engagement by parliaments varies depending on how committees are structured. An important distinction relates to the split between budget or finance committees and sectoral committees.
Budget or finance committees
Budget and Finance committees are traditionally focused on scrutinising the government's overall proposed budget. They tend to cover the overall fiscal framework, sustainability, and fiscal rules. This helps the public examine the broader fiscal picture. Ideally Budget and Finance committees would do this in advance of the budget being laid before parliament. This then allows them to examine whether the budget is consistent with pre-agreed fiscal limits once it is tabled. In practice, Budget and Finance committees are more often looking at fiscal aggregates after the budget is tabled, though some are adopting more proactive roles.
Roughly half of OECD countries have budget and finance committees that stipulate ways of engaging citizens in some form around budgets. That is, they involve the wider public through consultations or direct engagements (Figure 4.3).
In practice, public engagement usually means inviting outside experts to take part in budget committee hearings or events. Committees tend to prioritise structured dialogue with organised actors who have technical or sectoral expertise. This can include academics and researchers, think tanks, business and industry representatives, labour unions, and civil society groups such as NGOs or community leaders. These participants are often invited because they have already made public statements relating to the budget, or have provided written submissions to the committee. Inviting them to a hearing or event allows members to hear their views in more detail.
Committee hearings or events like this are usually open to the public. Engagement is usually in person, although hybrid engagement practices are becoming more common. In countries such as Canada and Chile, hearings are televised and available online, while in Austria public access to meetings is permitted only in person.
There are two more common stages of the budget where committees engage citizens. The first is in annual priority setting and budget preparation where interactions are used as an opportunity to reflect on priorities. The second is in scrutinising the budget once presented to the legislature.
The way in which Budget and Finance committees document and use citizen input is an important indicator or meaningful engagement. For example, in the United States contributors receive individual responses explaining how their input has influenced deliberations or decisions. In a number of other OECD legislatures, the Budget or Finance committee incorporates public input into decision making and documents this in a formal report. Other legislatures demonstrate transparency by publishing all submissions received, providing summaries of input, releasing meeting minutes, or using a combination of these approaches.
Sectoral committees
These committees have immense potential, given their focus on more specific areas, such as health, education, and transport. They can help find solutions and test these by connecting policy scrutiny with on-the-ground realities. Moreover, they can move beyond formal hearings to actively seek evidence from diverse citizens. This includes cohorts often unheard in traditional processes. The approach involves finding out what policymakers do not know, such as whether programmes are actually working or not.
Nordic countries, such as Sweden, have sectoral committees deeply integrated in the policy-making process. They routinely call on a wide range of experts, academics and civil society groups when considering the budget, as well as other legislative proposals with direct budgetary impacts. This deeper form of consultation, driven by expert input, is a standard part of scrutiny and is crucial for “Finding Solutions” and ensuring well-grounded policy.
The United Kingdom offers another useful example. The Parliament's Business and Trade Committee actively engages with the “real economy” by touring the nation. This “on the road” approach involves meeting businesses of all sizes, trade unions, and consumer groups across the country – from university campuses to high streets. The goal is to hear first-hand about the challenges facing people and businesses as well as the opportunities or solutions they might propose. The committee combines these direct meetings with online surveys and formal calls for written evidence on specific pro-growth topics like business confidence, regulation, and costs. This proactive evidence-gathering directly shapes the Committees’ reports and recommendations to government. It helps to understand the realities of doing business and inform policies. Such evidence can drastically improve the quality of financial scrutiny by grounding it in lived experience, leading to more effectively allocating resources.
Broadening how parliaments engage
The work parliaments are doing to engage with the public in formal committee hearings can be built upon to further broaden citizen engagement.
The OECD’s principles around “Open Parliament” encourage legislatures to open up and improve transparency (OECD, 2023[18]; 2017[19]). This can be through initiatives related to improving channels for citizen input, such as online platforms, petitions and consultations.
While not always budget-specific, these broader initiatives create an environment where fiscal discussions can become more accessible and informed by diverse perspectives. It moves beyond inputs solely from stakeholders like lobby groups, businesses or trade unions.
Parliaments should be active in building a direct link to constituents. They have a unique mandate and must actively work to avoid being out of touch, using citizen engagement to bridge potential gaps.
There are also innovative ways to tease out people’s preferences. Two examples of these are “Deliberative Polling” and “Quadratic Voting” (Box 4.6).
There are innovative methods emerging that can help policymakers understand public preferences more deeply. These go beyond traditional hearings and consultations. These methods get behind surface opinions and try to capture more informed, considered public judgment.
Deliberative processes: Instead of relying on raw public opinion, these processes – such as Citizens’ Assemblies, Juries, and Panels – involve a randomly selected group of people broadly representative of the community. Participants spend time learning from experts, deliberating with peers, and developing collective recommendations. The OECD (2020[11]) identifies 12 distinct models of deliberation used across the globe to address complex policy issues. One key example is “Deliberative Polling”. This approach tests informed, rather than surface, preferences (Fishkin, 2011[20]). First, a representative sample of people is polled on a policy question. Then, they are given balanced briefing materials and the space to deliberate on the topic with peers and experts. Finally, they are polled again. Studies consistently reveal that this phased approach arrives at notable shifts in preferences (see (Stanford University, n.d.[21])). It shows that the conclusions citizens reach, having become better informed, can differ significantly from their initial opinions. This yields a crucial insight: public support for difficult but necessary budget decisions could be built if citizens are given a genuine opportunity to understand the trade-offs. Another example is Citizens’ Juries, where small groups deliberate over several days to produce specific recommendations.
Quadratic Voting: This method is designed to measure the intensity of preferences (Cavaillé, Chen and Van der Straeten, 2024[22]). It forces participants to make trade-offs. Instead of a simple “yes” or “no” vote, participants are given a budget of “voice credits”. They can allocate these credits across various issues. But the “cost” of each additional vote on a single issue rises such that it eats up successively larger amounts of credits. It does so in a quadratic manner (1 vote = 1 credit, 2 votes = 4 credits, 3 votes = 9 credits). This approach compels participants to decide what they truly care about. It mimics the real-world trade-offs inherent in a budget and helps policymakers distinguish between popular, low-stakes preferences and deeply-held minority priorities. While not yet widespread in national budgeting, it has been used by public sector bodies, such as in the Colorado state legislature, to tease out priorities and link public preferences to budget trade-offs.
Enhancing legitimacy and ownership through deliberation
Parliamentary committees can commission or host deliberative processes. This can take the form of citizens' panels or assemblies on specific budget-related issues or broader policy questions with fiscal implications. The OECD defines these processes as involving a randomly selected group of people who are broadly representative of a community spending significant time learning, deliberating, and developing collective recommendations for policymakers.
The United Kingdom’s Climate Assembly was commissioned by six parliamentary select committees. This allows legislatures to receive informed recommendations from a representative group of citizens on complex trade-offs (Climate Assembly UK, 2020[23]). In this example, it referred to pathways to decarbonisation. This serves multiple purposes: it provides valuable insights (“Testing the Water”), builds legitimacy for subsequent parliamentary action (as recommendations come from an informed citizen body), and fosters public understanding and ownership (“Learning Objective”), especially on long-term issues where buy-in is essential.
Timing and framing
Parliamentary engagement often occurs after the executive budget proposal is tabled, focusing on scrutiny and amendment. However, as the Canadian example shows, proactive pre-budget engagement is also possible and arguably more influential on the initial budget shape. The framing of engagement is also context-dependent; sometimes it is about seeking specific solutions, other times about understanding broad values, and sometimes about educating citizens on constraints. While this chapter focuses on pre-budget design, the Open Government Recommendation (OECD, 2023[18]) promotes participation across the entire policy cycle, including in monitoring and evaluating budget execution.
Governments may see budget policy as territory that is especially sensitive. It may seem prone to higher political risks. Parliamentary finance committees sometimes mirror this caution.
However, designing parliamentary engagement well has substantial benefits. It can provide a higher quality of scrutiny, better policy, enhanced legitimacy, and stronger democratic connection. This, in turn, provides crucial channels for adjusting policy based on wider input. It can make complex fiscal debates less cryptic and more accessible.
One template for citizen engagement is Sweden’s Almedalsveckan (Almedalen Week). This annual event began in 1968 with an improvised speech by politician Olof Palme, then Minister of Education. It has since evolved into an informal democratic meeting place. Rather than being a government-run event, it is a decentralised platform hosted by the Region of Gotland, where participants create the content. It functions as an informal meeting place to discuss democratic issues.
The event gives the wider public a chance to meet with party leaders, ministers, business executives, union chiefs, academics, and NGOs. The atmosphere is relaxed and promotes a sense that all voices are present and heard.
Budgetary issues: Major economic and fiscal trade-offs form a central part of the debate. It gives government and opposition parties a chance to “test the water” for budget proposals.
Fostering shared understanding: Its key strength is fostering an informal dialogue where all stakeholders can interact. This helps to “manage expectations” on a national scale, allowing diverse groups to understand each other’s positions and constraints.
A template for dialogue: Almedalsveckan offers a powerful template for a platform to engage citizens. It demonstrates how an open, informal dialogue can become a tradition that builds a shared understanding of national challenges. One that can create more of a consensus for formal, and often difficult, fiscal decisions.
Citizen engagement has huge potential. Governments and parliaments across the OECD can use it as a tool to move beyond the ballot and actively involve citizens more frequently in budgetary decisions.
While approaches vary across the OECD, the underlying motivations tend to be similar: to find better solutions, to test policy, to manage expectations.
Crucially, all of this helps to reinforce legitimacy. This legitimacy is essential for countries navigating complex fiscal challenges, such as high public debt and rising budgetary pressures.
Governments and parliaments can bring different strengths to this endeavor. Governments typically engage with citizens to build consensus around proposals and manage expectations pre-budget. Parliaments can delve deeper into ground-level realities. They can help stress-test policy and provide better ways for citizens to voice challenges and opportunities. If done proactively, it can help both before and after budget proposals are made. These roles are complementary.
Actions to restore public finances need to be acceptable to the public and subject to robust scrutiny. The need is clear: achieving fiscal sustainability needs more than technical expertise and an electoral mandate. It needs a lasting shift towards building public understanding and securing an ongoing social license for difficult, yet necessary, decisions.
Engaging citizens is no longer just a public relations exercise. It is at the core of sound fiscal decisions and essential for building more responsive, effective, and efficient public institutions that can deliver on citizens’ needs.
References
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← 1. Note that the formal OECD framework, the Recommendation on Open Government, specifies a ladder of “stakeholder participation” (OECD, 2023[18]). This broad umbrella term covers information, consultation, and engagement. It defines “Engagement” as the highest level of participation (“to collaborate during all phases”). This chapter uses “engagement” for the entire spectrum as it relates to citizen engagement around budgets. It can be seen as a continuum running from information (one-way) through consultation (two-way feedback), to engagement (active collaboration).
← 2. One can think of the legitimacy goal as one of participation’s “intrinsic benefits” (OECD, 2017[19]). In other words, the inherent values arising from engaging citizens in a democratic process. It extends to their sense of political influence, collective responsibility, and trust in government. Intrinsic benefits also include stronger political awareness and democratic values as well as making the processes behind democratic decisions more legitimate. By contrast, the other ways that citizen engagement can help, noted here, relate to better results. These “instrumental benefits” refer to the idea that participation can improve the quality of policies, laws and services, as they were elaborated, implemented and evaluated based on better analysis and on a more informed choice. They may also benefit from the innovative ideas of citizens and be more cost-effective.