GaYA TRAINING ON PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY Martina Trettel Eurac Research

Alienation of citizens from political processes Need to develop innovative tools that can provide citizens alternative ways alongside elections… … such as the instruments of so-called “participatory democracy”

Participatory democracy: a definition Set of decision-making procedures that apply deliberation theories for mitigating the majority principle and for involving the civil society in policy-making, through the development of deliberative debates between citizens, organized civil society and policy-makers regarding political decisions at all levels of government. Participatory democracy instruments go in parallel with representative democracy procedures. They complement each other.

Elements of participatory democracy OBJECTIVES SUBJECTS METHODOLOGIES EFFECTS Elements of participatory democracy

What are we going to do now? Today’s training will be a mixture of a frontal lecture and an interactive activity; therefore, you will be divided into 4 groups. Each group will receive a table to fill during the whole training. The groups will brainstorm on objective/topic, subjects, methodology and effects related to a participatory process (after a brief explanation on each aspect). On each topic, the groups will have to fill the table with the key- elements of the reflection. After that, you will have to pass the table to the closest group (and so will do the other), and work on the other’s table, keeping in mind what they wrote before you.

Objectives and Topic Final goal? Examples: increase the level of political involvement of the population in decision-making processes political legitimation development of a culture of participation through civic education enhancement of more efficient, innovative, sustainable political decision-making processes. Final goal?

Subjects Willingness to initiate participation processes Who to involve (and how)? Does it make sense to involve only citizens or should it be admitted to include even residents? What about youngsters? Only people over 18 should participate or maybe even younger people? How would is it possible to reach different subject categories? Stratified random sampling? Or all those that want to participate can?

Methodologies Examples: Participatory budgeting Citizens’ jury 21st century town meeting Public debate Deliberative citizens’ assembly Etc.

Effects The success of a participatory process is mainly linked to the consequences a participatory experience triggers with regard to the final decision  thus to what extent and how the citizens’ will expressed during the deliberative process is ultimately taken into consideration. HOW TO MAKE IT WORK?

Conclusion What to consider: Inclusion Engagement of institutional representatives Continuity throughout all the phases of the decision-making process Influence on the decision.  The good outcome of a participatory experience relies on many factors: political culture, information, engagement of all actors involved, institutional setting  Participation through deliberation of citizens and civil society will become key-elements of traditional decision-making, therefore a lot of research is needed in order to help building new learning paths and expertise on participatory democracy.