Engagement Integrity: Ensuring Legitimacy at a time of AI-Augmented Participation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Stefaan G. Verhulst: “As participatory practices are increasingly tech-enabled, ensuring engagement integrity is becoming more urgent. While considerable scholarly and policy attention has been paid to information integrity (OECD, 2024; Gillwald et al., 2024; Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017; Ghosh & Scott, 2018), including concerns about disinformation, misinformation, and computational propaganda, the integrity of engagement itself — how to ensure collective decision-making is not tech manipulated — remains comparatively under-theorized and under-protected. I define engagement integrity as the procedural fairness and resistance to manipulation of tech-enabled deliberative and participatory processes.

My definition is different from prior discussions of engagement integrity, which mainly emphasized ethical standards when scientists engage with the public (e.g., in advisory roles, communication, or co-research). The concept is particularly salient in light of recent innovations that aim to lower the transaction costs of engagement using artificial intelligence (AI) (Verhulst, 2018). From AI-facilitated citizen assemblies (Simon et al., 2023) to natural language processing (NLP) -enhanced policy proposal platforms (Grobbink & Peach, 2020) to automated analysis of unstructured direct democracy proposals (Grobbink & Peach, 2020) to large-scale deliberative polls augmented with agentic AI (Mulgan, 2022), these developments promise to enhance inclusion, scalability, and sense-making. However, they also create new attack surfaces and vectors of influence that could undermine legitimacy.

This concern is not speculative…(More)”.

Government ‘With’ The People 

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Nathan Gardels: “The rigid polarization that has gripped our societies and eroded trust in each other and in governing institutions feeds the appeal of authoritarian strongmen. Poised as tribunes of the people, they promise to lay down the law (rather than be constrained by it) and put the house in order not by bridging divides, but by targeting scapegoats and persecuting political adversaries who don’t conform to their ideological and cultural worldview.

The alternative to this course of illiberal democracy is the exact opposite: engaging citizens directly in governance through non-partisan platforms that encourage and enable deliberation, negotiation and compromise, to reach consensus across divides. Even as politics is tilting the other way at the national level, this approach of participation without populism is gaining traction from the bottom up.

The embryonic forms of this next step in democratic innovation, such as citizens’ assemblies or virtual platforms for bringing the public together and listening at scale, have so far been mostly advisory to the powers-that-be, with no guarantee that citizen input will have a binding impact on legislation or policy formation. That is beginning to change….

Claudia Chwalisz, who heads DemocracyNext, has spelled out the key elements of this innovative process that make it a model for others elsewhere:

  • “Implementation should be considered from the start, not as an afterthought. The format of the final recommendations, the process for final approval, and the time needed to ensure this part of the process does not get neglected need to be considered in the early design stages of the assembly.
  • Dedicated time and resources for transforming recommendations into legislation are also crucial for successful implementation. Bringing citizens, politicians, and civil servants together in the final stages can help bridge the gap between recommendations and action. While it has been more typical for citizens’ assemblies to draft recommendations that they then hand onward to elected officials and civil servants, who review them and then respond to the citizens’ assembly, the Parisian model demonstrates another way.
  • Collaborative workshops where consensus amongst the triad of actors is needed adds more time to the process, but ensures that there is a high level of consensus for the final output, and reduces the time that would have been needed for officials to review and respond to the citizens’ assembly’s recommendations.
  • Formal institutional integration of citizens’ assemblies through legal measures can help ensure their recommendations are taken seriously and ensures the assembly’s continuity regardless of shifts in government. The citizens’ assembly has become a part of Paris’s democratic architecture, as have other permanent citizens’ assemblies elsewhere. While one-off assemblies typically depend on political will at a moment in time and risk becoming politicized — i.e. in being associated with the party that initially launched the first one — an institutionalized citizens’ assembly anchored in policy and political decision-making helps to set the foundation for a new institution that can endure.
  • It is also important that there is regular engagement with all political parties and stakeholders throughout the process. This helps build cross-partisan support for final recommendations, as well as more sustainable support for the enduring nature of the permanent citizens assembly.”…(More)”.

Global Citizens’ Assemblies: Pathways for the UN – Principles, Design, and Implementation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Democracy International & Democracy Without Borders: “This report encourages the use of GCAs by different actors and in different settings without making recommendations or expressing preferences on how this should be done. We envision that ultimately there will be a dynamic ecosystem making use of this deliberative format. However, the report particularly discusses the potential for GCAs to be set up by and benefit the UN. As a tool to be used by the UN, this paper recommends that the UN General Assembly (UNGA) applies Article 22 of the UN Charter to establish a dedicated permanent framework to codify procedures and operations, increase efficiency and create synergies. The report recommends that this UN framework should enable UN bodies and entities to set up and operate different ad hoc GCAs as needed.

GCAs are positioned as complementary to other initiatives in the field, such as creating a UN Parliamentary Assembly or a UN World Citizens’ Initiative. They offer a specific pathway for global public deliberation and participation and bridging the gap between citizens and global decision-makers.

While GCAs face practical limitations due to the world’s diversity and scale, they offer a valuable opportunity to foster trust in multilateral institutions and empower citizens to have a voice in global policy-making. By enhancing inclusive deliberation and putting forward actionable outcomes, GCAs have the potential to improve the democratic character of global governance and promote more responsive, citizen-centered approaches to solving planetary challenges…(More)”.

Bus Stops Here: Shanghai Lets Riders Design Their Own Routes

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Chen Yiru: From early-morning school drop-offs to seniors booking rides to the hospital, from suburban commuters seeking a faster link to the metro to families visiting ancestral graves, Shanghai is rolling out a new kind of public bus — one that’s designed by commuters, and launched only when enough riders request it.

Branded “DZ” for dingzhi, or “customized,” the system invites residents to submit proposed routes through a city-run platform. Others with similar travel needs can opt in or vote, and if demand meets the threshold — typically 15 to 20 passengers per trip — the route goes live.

More than 220 DZ routes have already launched across all 16 city districts. Through an online platform opened May 8, users enter start and end points, preferred times, and trip frequency. If approved, routes can begin running in as little as three days…(More)”.

Activating citizens: the contribution of the Capability Approach to critical citizenship studies and to understanding the enablers of engaged citizenship

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Anna Colom and Agnes Czajka: “The paper argues that the Capability Approach can make a significant contribution to understanding the enablers of engaged citizenship. Using insights from critical citizenship studies and original empirical research on young people’s civic and political involvement in western Kenya, we argue that it is useful to think of the process of engaged citizenship as comprised of two distinct yet interrelated parts: activation and performance. We suggest that the Capability Approach (CA) can help us understand what resources and processes are needed for people to not only become activated but to also effectively perform their citizenship. Although the CA is rarely brought into conversation with critical citizenship studies literatures, we argue that it can be useful in both operationalising the insights of critical citizenship studies on citizenship engagement and illustrating how activation and performance can be effectively supported or catalysed….(More)”

Mini-Publics and Party Ideology: Who Commissioned the Deliberative Wave in Europe?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Rodrigo Ramis-Moyano et al: “The increasing implementation of deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) such as Citizens’ Assemblies and Citizens’ Juries led the OECD to identify a ‘deliberative wave’. The burgeoning scholarship on DMPs has increased understanding of how they operate and their impact, but less attention has been paid to the drivers behind this diffusion. Existing research on democratic innovations has underlined the role of the governing party’s ideology as a relevant variable in the study of the adoption of other procedures such as participatory budgeting, placing left-wing parties as a prominent actor in this process. Unlike this previous literature, we have little understanding of whether mini-publics appeal equally across the ideological spectrum. This paper draws on the large-N OECD database to analyse the impact of governing party affiliation on the commissioning of DMPs in Europe across the last four decades. Our analysis finds the ideological pattern of adoption is less clear cut compared to other democratic innovations such as participatory budgeting. But stronger ideological differentiation emerges when we pay close attention to the design features of DMPs implemented…(More)”.

Spaces for Deliberation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Gustav Kjær Vad Nielsen & James MacDonald-Nelson: “As citizens’ assemblies and other forms of citizen deliberation are increasingly implemented in many parts of the world, it is becoming more relevant to explore and question the role of the physical spaces in which these processes take place.

This paper builds on existing literature that considers the relationships between space and democracy. In the literature, this relationship has been studied with a focus on the architecture of parliament buildings, and on the role of urban public spaces and architecture for political culture, both largely within the context of representative democracy and with little or no attention given to spaces for facilitated citizen deliberation. With very limited considerations of the spaces for deliberative assemblies in the literature, in this paper, we argue that the spatial qualities for citizen deliberation demand more critical attention.

Through a series of interviews with leading practitioners of citizens’ assemblies from six different countries, we explore what spatial qualities are typically considered in the planning and implementation of these assemblies, what are the recurring challenges related to the physical spaces where they take place, and the opportunities and limitations for a more intentional spatial design. In this paper, we synthesise our findings and formulate a series of considerations for the spatial qualities of citizens’ assemblies aimed at informing future practice and further research…(More)”.

Engaging Youth on Responsible Data Reuse: 5 Lessons Learnt from a Multi-Country Experiment

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Elena Murray, Moiz Shaikh and Stefaan G. Verhulst: “Young people seeking essential services — like mental health care, education, or public benefits — are often asked to share personal data in order to access the service, without having any say in how it is being collected, shared or used, or why. If young people distrust how their data is being used, they may avoid services or withhold important information, fearing misuse. This can unintentionally widen the very gaps these services aim to close.

To build trust, service providers and policymakers must involve young people in co-designing how their data is collected and used. Understanding their concerns, values, and expectations is key to developing data practices that reflect their needs. Empowering young people to develop the conditions for data re-use and design solutions to their concerns enables digital self determination.

The question is then: what does meaningful engagement actually look like — and how can we get it right?

To answer that question, we engaged four partners in four different countries and conducted:

  • 1000 hours of youth participation, involving more than 70 young people.
  • 12 youth engagement events.
  • Six expert talks and mentorship sessions.

These activities were undertaken as part of the NextGenData project, a year-long global collaboration supported by the Botnar Foundation, that piloted a methodology for youth engagement on responsible data reuse in Moldova, Tanzania, India and Kyrgyzstan.

A key outcome of our work was a youth engagement methodology, which we recently launched. In the below, we reflect on what we learnt — and how we can apply these learnings to ensure that the future of data-driven services both serves the needs of, and is guided by, young people.

Lessons Learnt:…(More)”

A graph illustrating the engagement cycle on data literacy: Foster Data Literacy, Develop Real-World Use Cases, Align with Local Realities, Optimise Participation, Implement Scalable Methodologies
A Cycle for Youth Engagement on Data — NextGenData Project

Digital Technologies and Participatory Governance in Local Settings: Comparing Digital Civic Engagement Initiatives During the COVID-19 Outbreak

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Nathalie Colasanti, Chiara Fantauzzi, Rocco Frondizi & Noemi Rossi: “Governance paradigms have undergone a deep transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, necessitating agile, inclusive, and responsive mechanisms to address evolving challenges. Participatory governance has emerged as a guiding principle, emphasizing inclusive decision-making processes and collaboration among diverse stakeholders. In the outbreak context, digital technologies have played a crucial role in enabling participatory governance to flourish, democratizing participation, and facilitating the rapid dissemination of accurate information. These technologies have also empowered grassroots initiatives, such as civic hacking, to address societal challenges and mobilize communities for collective action. This study delves into the realm of bottom-up participatory initiatives at the local level, focusing on two emblematic cases of civic hacking experiences launched during the pandemic, the first in Wuhan, China, and the second in Italy. Through a comparative lens, drawing upon secondary sources, the aim is to analyze the dynamics, efficacy, and implications of these initiatives, shedding light on the evolving landscape of participatory governance in times of crisis. Findings underline the transformative potential of civic hacking and participatory governance in crisis response, highlighting the importance of collaboration, transparency, and inclusivity…(More)”.

Activated Citizenship: The Transformative Power of Citizens’ Assemblies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Marjan H. Ehsassi: “To counter pervasive levels of citizen disengagement from political institutions, this book examines democratic innovations that meaningfully engage with citizens to address some of the deficits of Western representative democracies.

Citizens’ assemblies provide one such innovation, offering opportunities for more consistent participation between elections, more meaningful input in government decision making, and more impactful platforms for participation. This cutting-edge book introduces a new definition for an Activated Citizen, along with a methodology to measure civic and political engagement. Relying on a mixed-methods approach and field research conducted in Paris, Brussels, Ottawa, and Petaluma (California), as well as participant observations, over 180 surveys, 61 in-depth interviews and storytelling, the book provides case studies and in-depth analysis of hotbutton topics including climate change, unhoused populations, democratic expression, assisted suicide and euthanasia. Each chapter weaves quantitative results with rich qualitative testimonies from participants, government representatives, and observers. Based on empirical evidence, the book explores the ways in which government-led citizens’ assemblies can promote a more Activated Citizen. To fully realize the transformative potential of deliberative platforms, a final chapter offers a blueprint for impact, outlining concrete measures along with recommendations for the design and implementation of future government-initiated deliberative platforms…(More)”.