Is Participatory Budgeting Coming to a Local Government Near You?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Elizabeth Daigneau:”.. It’s far from a new idea, and you’ve probably been reading about it for years, but participatory budgeting has slowly been growing since it was first introduced in the U.S. in Chicago in 2009. Many anticipate it is about to see a boom as billions of federal dollars continue to pour into local communities…

But with the influx to local communities of billions in federal dollars through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, many experts think the time is ripe to adopt the tool.

“The stakes are high in restoring and rebuilding our nation’s crumbling civic, political and economic infrastructures,” wrote Hollie Russon Gilman and Lizbeth Lucero of New America’s Political Reform Program in a recent op-ed. “The long overdue improvements needed in America’s cities and countries call for remodeling how we govern and allocate federal funds across the country.”

ARPA dollars prompted the city of Cleveland to push for a participatory budgeting pilot. 

“Cleveland is a city that has one of the higher poverty rates for a city of their size in the United States. They have over 30 percent of their population living below the poverty line,” Kristania De Leon, co-executive director at the Participatory Budgeting Project, said on The Laura Flanders Show’s podcast last July. “So when they found out that they were getting American Rescue Plan Act funds allocated to their municipal government, they said, ‘Wait a minute, this is a huge influx of relatively flexible spending, where’s it going to go and who gets to have a say?’”

A community-led push culminated in a proposal by Cleveland Mayor Justin M. Bibb to the city council last year that $5 million in ARPA funds be allocated to pilot the first citywide participatory budgeting process in its history.

ARPA dollars also elicited Nashville’s city council to allocate $10 million this year to its participatory budgeting program, which is in its third year.

In general, there have been several high-profile participatory budgeting projects in the last year. 

Seattle’s project claims to be the biggest participatory budgeting process ever in the United States. The city council earmarked approximately $30 million in the 2021 budget to run a participatory budgeting process. The goal is to spend the money on initiatives that reduce police violence, reduce crime, and “creating true community safety through community-led safety programs and new investments.”

And in September, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced the launch of the first-ever citywide participatory budgeting process. The program builds on a 2021 project that engaged residents of the 33 neighborhoods hardest hit by Covid-19 in a $1.3 million participatory budgeting process. The new program invites all New Yorkers, ages 11 and up, to decide how to spend $5 million of mayoral expense funding to address local community needs citywide…(More)”.

Lisbon’s Citizens’ Council: Embedding Deliberation into Local Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Mauricio Mejia: “Lisbon is joining cities like Paris, Bogota, and Milan in establishing new democratic institutions by convening Portugal’s first permanent Citizen Council. In April 2023, a new group of randomly selected citizens will deliberate on how to create a 15-minute city — one where citizens can easily access essential services such as education, health, commerce, culture, or green and leisure spaces.

Lisbon has taken the objective of reinforcing democracy seriously. Citizen participation is the first pillar of its Municipal Plan, intending to build “alternative mechanisms for democratic participation, capable of mobilising people’s knowledge.” To translate this into action, the City established its first Citizens’ Council, a decision-making body that is “representative of Lisbon’s population, while being impartial and independent from political parties.”

Lisbon’s Citizens’ Council is a microcosm of the city’s population

Anyone over 16 years of age who lives, studies, or works in Lisbon is eligible to become a member of the Citizens’ Council. For the first edition, the recruitment process consisted of two stages:

1. Voluntary enrolment to participate in the lottery. This process could be done online or at an in-person kiosk (Lojas Lisboa).

2. Random selection and stratification, using the following criteria: gender, age, academic qualifications, profession, area of residence, work or study, and level of political engagement.

Among the 2351 citizens enrolled, 50 citizens were randomly selected to form a microcosm of Lisbon’s population[i]:

Visual representation of the Council’s members by the gender, age and activity status criteria

Members were accompanied by an ecosystem of public servants, civil society stakeholders, academics, scientists, and experts to ensure deliberation was informed, facilitated, and objective. Participation in the Citizens’ Council was not remunerated, nor involved any financial incentives. However, members could request support to cover meals and transportation. The OECD suggests in its good practice principles for deliberative processes that participation should be encouraged through remuneration, coverage of expenses, and provision of childcare and eldercare…(More)”.

Reclaiming Participatory Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Adrian Bua and Sonia Bussu: “…offers empirical and theoretical perspectives on how the relationship between social movements and state institutions is emerging and developing through new modes of participatory governance.

One of the most interesting political developments of the past decade has been the adoption by social movements of strategies seeking to change political institutions through participatory governance. These strategies have flourished in a variety of contexts, from anti-austerity and pro-social justice protests in Spain, to movements demanding climate transition and race equality in the UK and the USA, to constitutional reforms in Belgium and Iceland. The chief ambition and challenge of these new forms of participatory governance is to institutionalise the prefigurative politics and social justice values that inspired them in the first place, by mobilising the bureaucracy to respond to their claims for reforms and rights. The authors of this volume assess how participatory governance is being transformed and explore the impact of such changes, providing timely critical reflections on: the constraints imposed by cultural, economic and political power relations on these new empowered participatory spaces; the potential of this new “wave” of participatory democracy to reimagine the relationship between citizens and traditional institutions towards more radical democratic renewal; where and how these new democratisation efforts sit within the representative state; and how tensions between the different demands of lay citizens, organised civil society and public officials are being managed….(More)”.

The Role of Community Engagement in Urban Innovation Towards the Co-Creation of Smart Sustainable Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Bokolo Anthony Jr.: “One of the most recent topics in smart cities is community engagement which has been generally deliberated in both industrial and academic literature around the approaches and tools employed in urban environment. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to advocate for community engagement as a key driver that supports the acquisition of knowledge and requirements needed for innovation and creativity towards achieving an equitable community for social sustainability. A semi-systematic review method is adopted to analyze 71 sources from Web of Science and Scopus databases. Secondary data from the literature is extracted and synthesized to provide narrative and descriptive analysis. Findings from this study presents a developed model that can support community engagement for urban innovation by specifying factors that influences community engagement for smart sustainable city development. The model enables citizens, policy makers, government, urban planners, academics, and enterprises in urban environment to connect, interact, engage, and co-create innovative services. More importantly findings from this research provides theoretical evidence on administrative and non-administrative stakeholder’s involvement towards co-creation of urban services towards smart sustainable cities. Furthermore, this study provides recommendation on how community engagement perspective involving different stakeholders can help to achieve resilient technological driven city by supporting sustainable development and ultimately actualizing a socially inclusive urban space…(More)”

Democracy, Agony, and Rupture: A Critique of Climate Citizens’ Assemblies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Amanda Machin: “Stymied by preoccupation with short-term interests of individualist consumers, democratic institutions seem unable to generate sustained political commitment for tackling climate change. The citizens’ assembly (CA) is promoted as an important tool in combatting this “democratic myopia.” The aim of a CA is to bring together a representative group of citizens and experts from diverse backgrounds to exchange their different insights and perspectives on a complex issue. By providing the opportunity for inclusive democratic deliberation, the CA is expected to educate citizens, stimulate awareness of complex issues, and produce enlightened and legitimate policy recommendations. However, critical voices warn about the simplified and celebratory commentary surrounding the CA. Informed by agonistic and radical democratic theory, this paper elaborates on a particular concern, which is the orientation toward consensus in the CA. The paper points to the importance of disagreement in the form of both agony (from inside) and rupture (from outside) that, it is argued, is crucial for a democratic, engaging, passionate, creative, and representative sustainability politics…(More)”.

The Keys to Democracy: Sortition as a New Model for Citizen Power

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Maurice Pope: “Sortition — also known as random selection — puts ordinary people in control of decision-making in government. This may seem novel, but it is how the original Athenian democracy worked. In fact, what is new is our belief that electoral systems are democratic. It was self-evident to thinkers from Aristotle to the Renaissance that elections always resulted in oligarchies, or rule by elites.

In this distillation of a lifetime’s thinking about the history and principles of democracy, Maurice Pope presents a new model of governance that replaces elected politicians with assemblies selected by lot. The re-introduction of sortition, he believes, offers a way out of gridlock, apathy, alienation and polarisation by giving citizens back their voice.

Pope’s work — published posthumously — grew from his unique perspective as a widely travelled English classicist who also experienced the injustice of apartheid rule in South Africa. His great mind was as much at home with the history of philosophy as the mathematics of probability.

Governments and even the EU have tried out sortition in recent years; the UK, France and several countries have attempted to tackle climate change through randomly selected citizens’ assemblies. The city of Paris and the German-speaking community of Belgium have set up permanent upper houses chosen by lot. Several hundred such experiments around the world are challenging the assumption that elections are the only or ideal route to credible, effective government.

Writing before these mostly advisory bodies took shape, Pope lays out a vision for a government entirely based on random selection and citizen deliberation. In arguing for this more radical goal, he draws on the glories of ancient Athens, centuries of use in Venice, the success of randomly selected juries and the philosophical advantages of randomness. Sortition-based democracy, he believed, is the only plausible way to achieve each element of Abraham Lincoln’s call for a democratic government “of the people, by the people, for the people”…(More)”.

The region that’s experimenting with government by lottery

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Hugh Pope: “If we are trying to fix our “broken politics”, is the solution really just another set of politicians? If the electoral system is at fault, might the process of government work better if it were run by a group of randomly selected citizens?

Liesa Scholzen is a politician whose constituents are the 70,000 German speakers on Belgium’s eastern border. People with an interest in new political systems are paying close attention to Scholzen’s hilltop parliament in Eupen, Ostbelgien. That’s because in 2021, as part of its Citizens’ Dialogue initiative, Ostbelgien inaugurated the world’s first official, permanent legislative body chosen not by votes, but by lottery. 

Scholzen’s visitors come from round the world to learn about this new process of sortition, but Scholzen herself mostly looked bemused by their enthusiasm. “I’m just a part-time politician. And I’m a citizen too!” she reminded her audience of around 50, who had come to hear her talk about the strange new politics.

Ostbelgien’s new system takes some getting used to. It’s named “The Citizens’ Dialogue” and is led by a standing council of citizens, drawn by lot. The 24-member council serves for 18 months, and they choose the topics which are then debated by separate Citizens’ Assemblies. These assemblies have 25-50 members, also chosen by lot, who make their recommendations following two to three days of deliberation. Members meet in the evening or at weekends, and receive expenses plus €50 to €95 (£44-£84) per session. All participants are chosen from the German-speaking community. 

So has it caught on? Ostbelgien’s Citizens’ Dialogue may be “well known internationally, but here some people don’t know it exists,” Scholzen explained to her visitors. “They haven’t had a real impact… When the first Citizens’ Assembly report came in, we told them: ‘You just can’t do it that way. It won’t work.’ So we just changed [some parts of] it… The Citizens’ Dialogue is still in its kinderschuhen, its ‘children’s shoes’.”

Indeed, it is only in the past decade that the worldwide movement for democracy by sortition began gaining momentum. Most of the 50 enthusiasts who gathered for an “autumn school” in Eupen, including myself, believe that it has the potential to break the logjam in governance caused by dysfunctional electoral systems. But progress has been slow…(More)”.

How four countries practise direct democracy today

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Bruno Kaufmann: “We are the people,” protesters on the streets of East Germany shouted back in 1989 as a challenge to the then-communist one-party state. One year later, they had succeeded in overcoming half a century of dictatorship and establishing a united democratic country with West Germany.

Since then, hundreds of millions of people around the world have demanded the fulfilment of a fundamental human right, set out in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 21.1): “Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.” 

“The idea of having ordinary people capable of governing themselves is much older than the UN Human Rights Declaration”, says John Matusaka, a finance professor at the University of Southern California and the author of several books on the role of modern direct democracy in representative government systems. “Popular self-government is an experiment that continues to shape the modern world.” 

Although this experiment has sometimes ended in a populist or even autocratic backlash, a growing number of political communities – cities, regions, nation-states and even continents – have been able to establish and implement a large variety of people-led initiatives and referendums in recent years. Some countries, like Switzerland and the United States, have been practising citizen-lawmaking for more than a century. Others, like Taiwan, are relative newcomers to the field and showcase the breadth of participatory democracy tools being applied today…

The island of Taiwan (36,000 km2, population 23 million) has moved from a democracy on paper to a functioning democracy run by the Taiwanese people, through a process that has accelerated since the 1980s. Today it is a vibrant multiethnic society with 18 official languages.

In 2003 Taiwan introduced its first law on initiatives and referendums. In the last 20 years, the text has undergone improvements and amendments that include a relatively low threshold for forcing a popular vote on proposed legislation. These changes mean that today the people of Taiwan are able to have a genuine say in politics – both at the local and national levels. 

In November 2018 alone, more than ten citizen-led proposals, on issues ranging from environmental protection and marriage equality to the international status of the island, were put to a general vote. In 2021 the Taiwanese decided to amend their direct democracy law in a way that voting on candidates in elections and on issues by referendum were separated. 

One weakness in the process, however, is the legal requirement for a minimum 25% approval rate among the whole electorate for a proposition to pass. This  allows opponents of a proposal to influence the outcome of the vote by simply not participating. In 2021 four referendums were invalidated as they did not reach the approval of 25% among all voters…(More)”.

One Year Since the Invasion of Ukraine, Let Citizens Lead

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Ieva Česnulaitytė: “One year ago, Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, suddenly throwing into jeopardy decades toward democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. But as Ukraine fought back, its neighbours have rallied to its defence. 

The war still rages and it is easy to feel despair. But as a Lithuanian democracy expert, I feel confident that our region’s future is bright. It is possible, if we take the right steps, for Ukraine and its neighbours to emerge as more resilient democracies than before.

First, we must recognise the extraordinary outpouring of support for Ukraine from everyday people. Polls show that as of January 2023, two out of three Lithuanians had donated to the Ukrainian defense effort. People in the region welcomed millions of fleeing civilians, crowd-funded millions of euros, and mobilised to penetrate the propaganda wall by sending text messages to Russian citizens.

This is remarkable because, paradoxically, these same countries have abysmal voter turnout and low levels of trust in government. People are still learning to trust one another, to hold their governments accountable, and to embrace their own agency. Thirty years of democratisation has yielded varying levels of success. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania score at the top 20 per cent on V-DEM’S Liberal Democracy Index, while Bulgaria and Moldova are still classified as electoral autocracies. 

It turns out that a transition to party politics and elections is fairly easy to undermine through corruption and foreign influence. This has led to “hybrid regimes,” with democratic and nondemocratic features. 

At the same time, the region has undergone a paradigm shift from communist regimes, successfully implementing reforms and building democratic institutions. Grounded in values of liberty and self determination, there is a palpable openness to innovate and ambition to make up for the years lost under Soviet oppression.

How can we tap into our innate capacity to collaborate and care for others—so apparent over the past year—to build resilience and accelerate our democratic renaissance? When the war ends, how can we help Ukraine do the same?..(More)”.

European Citizens’ Virtual Worlds Panel

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “Many people believe that virtual worlds, also referred to as metaverses, might be a change comparable to the appearance of the internet and will transform the way we work and engage with each other in the future. In the last couple of years – and particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic – numerous public and private actors have been investing massively in these so-called “extended and augmented realities”, speeding up changes in our workplaces and habits.

Despite this increased attention, such a transformation will not happen suddenly. Virtual Worlds will take many years to develop into a high-quality, realistic digital environment, and there is no clear picture yet of what metaverses could and should become.

The EU and its Members States are committed to harness the potential of this transformation, understand its opportunities, but also the risks and challenges it poses, while safeguarding the rights of European citizens. The European Commission has therefore decided to convene a citizens’ panel to formulate recommendations for the development of virtual worlds.

Find out more in the information kit that is available in the document section below….(More)”.