Book by Hennen, Leonhard (et al.): “This open access book explores how digital tools and social media technologies can contribute to better participation and involvement of EU citizens in European politics. By analyzing selected representative e-participation projects at the local, national and European governmental levels, it identifies the preconditions, best practices and shortcomings of e-participation practices in connection with EU decision-making procedures and institutions. The book features case studies on parliamentary monitoring, e-voting practices, and e-publics, and offers recommendations for improving the integration of e-democracy in European politics and governance. Accordingly, it will appeal to scholars as well as practitioners interested in identifying suitable e-participation tools for European institutions and thus helps to reduce the EU’s current democratic deficit….(More)”.
Belgian experiment that Aristotle would have approved of
The Economist: “In a sleepy corner of Belgium, a democratic experiment is under way. On September 16th, 24 randomly chosen Germanophones from the country’s eastern fringe took their seats in a Citizens’ Council. They will have the power to tell elected officials which issues matter, and for each such issue to task a Citizens’ Assembly (also chosen at random) with brainstorming ideas on how to solve them. It’s an engaged citizen’s dream come true.
Belgium’s German-speakers are an often-overlooked minority next to their Francophone and Flemish countrymen. They are few in number—just 76,000 people out of a population of 11m—yet have a distinct identity, shaped by their proximity to Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Thanks to Belgium’s federal system the community is thought to be the smallest region of the EU with its own legislative powers: a parliament of 25 representatives and a government of four decides on policies related to issues including education, sport, training and child benefits.
This new system takes democracy one step further. Based on selection by lottery—which Aristotle regarded as real democracy, in contrast to election, which he described as “oligarchy”—it was trialled in 2017 and won enthusiastic reviews from participants, officials and locals.
Under the “Ostbelgien Model”, the Citizens’ Council and the assemblies it convenes will run in parallel to the existing parliament and will set its legislative agenda. Parliamentarians must consider every proposal that wins support from 80% of the council, and must publicly defend any decision to take a different path.
Some see the project as a tool that could counter political discontent by involving ordinary folk in decision-making. But for Alexander Miesen, a Belgian senator who initiated the project, the motivation is cosier. “People would like to share their ideas, and they also have a lot of experience in their lives which you can import into parliament. It’s a win-win,” he says.
Selecting decision-makers by lottery is unusual these days, but not unknown: Ireland randomly selected the members of the Citizens’ Assembly that succeeded in breaking the deadlock on abortion laws. Referendums are a common way of settling important matters in several countries. But in Eupen, the largest town in the German-speaking region, citizens themselves will come up with the topics and policies which parliamentarians then review, rather than expressing consent to ideas proposed by politicians. Traditional decision-makers still have the final say, but “citizens can be sure that their ideas are part of the process,” says Mr Miesen….(More)”.
Meaningfully Engaging Youth in the Governance of the Global Refugee System
Bushra Ebadi at the World Refugee Council Research Paper Series: “Young people aged 15 to 35 comprise one-third of the world’s population, yet they are largely absent from decision-making fora and, as such, unaccounted for in policy making, programming and laws. The disenfranchisement of displaced youth is a particular problem, because it further marginalizes young people who have already experienced persecution and been forcibly displaced.
This paper aims to demonstrate the importance of including displaced youth in governance and decision making, to identify key barriers to engagement that displaced youth face, and to highlight effective strategies for engaging youth. Comprehensive financial, legal, social and governance reforms are needed in order to facilitate and support the meaningful engagement of youth in the refugee and IDP systems. Without these reforms and partnerships between youth and other diverse stakeholders, it will be difficult to achieve sustainable solutions for forcibly displaced populations and the communities that host them….(More)”.
The fuzzy concept of collaborative governance: A systematic review of the state of the art
Paper by Agnes Batory and Sara Svensson: “Collaborative approaches to policy-making are high on the agenda for most European governments and are key to European Commission activities with respect to the transformation of public administration in the European Union (EU) (Hammerschmid et al., 2016; European Commission, 2016). A long line of politicians has stated the need for government units to overcome organizational cleavages and reach out to citizens and stakeholders in order to address difficult policy problems and deliver public services more efficiently. Collaborative approaches to policy-making have also been advocated as a way to close the seemingly growing gap between government and citizens and thus to alleviate normative problems commonly besetting Western democracies in the last decades. Collaborative governance has received considerable attention from public administration scholars and is the subject of a burgeoning body of academic literature in policy studies, public management and democratic theory. However, the rapid uptake of collaborative governance and related concepts, such as coordination, cooperation, joined-up governance, network governance (e.g., Robinson 2006) and interactive governance (Michels, 2011), led to a rather amorphous, diffused discussion, rather than a coherent narrative. Attempts to structure the debate have so far exclusively focused on the academic literature in English. This article aims to facilitate the synthesis and consolidation of work undertaken so far in a way that is more culturally sensitive and more open to developments taking place in the world of practice.
More specifically, this article first seeks to map the current state of the art. It pinpoints key dimensions of variation in how collaborative governance is defined in the academic literature through a qualitative analysis of influential scholarly work and provides a systematic literature review of a corpus of over 700 article abstracts. The analysis shows that scholarly articles differ in their conceptualisation of collaborative governance along at least five dimensions, which concern the public-private (governmental-non-governmental) divide; agency; organisational aspects; scope and locus within the policy process; and normative assumptions. Second, the paper extends this analysis to incorporate some preliminary findings on relevant ‘grey’ literature on collaborative governance in Europe – which seems to be in closer touch with developments of high relevance for practice – in order to indicate whether and to what extent the scholarly and the practitioner-oriented literature overlap or differ in orientation and subjects covered. Finally, the paper takes stock of the national connotations of the term in different European languages, which aims to mitigate the Anglo-Saxon bias in the literature. For the second and third objectives, the paper relies on responses from teams of academic public administration experts in ten EU and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries. The methodological approach for each of these steps is described in the respective sections of the paper. The penultimate section provides a synthesis of the results, including recommendations for reconceptualization and future research….(More)”.
76 things you can do to boost civic engagement
Rebecca Winthrop and Meg Heubeck at Brookings: “It isn’t too complicated. Civic engagement is the glue that holds self-government together. Yet civic participation and engagement has been on the decline for several decades. Therefore, each and every one of us must be as active and involved in our community and country as possible. Self-government is hard work and requires effort. Action is essential to maintaining the foundations of our democracy, no matter which political party happens to be in power.
To be a truly involved citizen, we must reconnect with our founding documents. We must learn and practice the skills of civic participation beginning with voting and moving onto legislating, speaking out, and building coalitions to solve problems on the local, state, and federal levels.
While by no means comprehensive, the “Democracy 76” list below provides specific and practical actions that we all can take to be an involved citizen. The list is broken into five actions that are essential components for engagement. It is expressly free from politics and partisanship and should be undertaken by all Americans—regardless of political perspectives or affiliation….this list has contributed to the call to action of the newly launched Purple Project for Democracy, which has as its central mission to create a more active, engaged American citizenry, ultimately strengthening the very foundations of our democratic form of government. This is certainly something the founding fathers would support….(Full List)”.
Our Futures: By the people, for the people
Guide by Laurie Smith and Kathy Peach: “This is a guide to how mass involvement with shaping the future can solve complex problems.
Moving beyond citizen assemblies and traditional public engagement, participatory futures techniques help people to develop a collective image of the future they want, so that we can make better, more informed decisions.
Governments, city leaders, public institutions, funders, and civil society must be at the forefront of this approach, supporting it through funding, strategy and practice.
Our guide contains practical suggestions for how to do this. Examples include:
- Carrying out publicly-funded, mission-orientated research that is informed by participatory futures exercises.
- Creating new legislation that requires UK Government departments to use these approaches to inform decision-making and strategies.
- Embedding these approaches in the Civil Service Competency Framework and equivalent frameworks for local government and charities…(More)”.
Citizen Engagement in Energy Efficiency Retrofit of Public Housing Buildings: A Lisbon Case Study
Paper by Catarina Rolim and Ricardo Gomes: “In Portugal, there are about 120 thousand social housing and a large share of them are in need of some kind of rehabilitation. Alongside the technical challenge associated with the retrofit measures implementation, there is the challenge of involving the citizens in adopting more energy conscious behaviors. Within the Sharing Cities project and, specifically in the case of social housing retrofit, engagement activities with the tenants are being promoted, along with participation from city representatives, decision makers, stakeholders, and among others. This paper will present a methodology outlined to evaluate the impact of retrofit measures considering the citizen as a crucial retrofit stakeholder. The approach ranges from technical analysis and data monitoring but also conveys activities such as educational and training sessions, interviews, surveys, workshops, public events, and focus groups. These will be conducted during the different stages of project implementation; the definition process, during deployment and beyond deployment of solutions….(More)”.
Type, tweet, tap, and pass: How smart city technology is creating a transactional citizen
Paper by Peter A.Johnson, Pamela J.Robinson, andSimonePhilpot: “In the current push for smart city programs around the world, there is a significant focus on enabling transactions between citizen and government. Though traditionally there have always been transactional elements between government and citizen, for example payment of taxes in exchange for services, or voting in exchange for representation, the rise of modern smartphone and smart city technologies have further enabled micro-transactions between citizen, government, and information broker. We conceptualize how the modern smart city, as both envisaged and enacted, incorporates the citizen not necessarily as a whole actor, but as a series of micro-transactions encoded on the real-time landscape of the city. This transactional citizen becomes counted by smart city sensors and integrated into smart city decision-making through the use of certain preferred platforms.
To approach this shift from traditional forms of citizen/city interaction towards micro-transactions, we conceptualize four broad modes of transaction; type (intentional contribution), tweet (intermediated by third party), tap (convened or requested transaction), and pass (ambient transaction based on movement). These four modes are used to frame critical questions of how citizens interact with government in the emerging age of the smart city, and how these interactions impact the relationship between citizen and government, introducing new avenues for private sector influence….(More)”
Democratising decisions about technology: a toolkit
The RSA: “As decisions are increasingly automated or made with the help of artificial intelligence, machines are becoming more influential in our lives. These machines are generating a range of predictions, such as the likelihood of a defendant reoffending or the job performance of a candidate based on video interview. In some cases, these predictions could lead to positive outcomes, such as less biased decisions or greater political engagement, but there are also risks that come with ceding power or outsourcing human judgment to a machine.
The RSA’s Forum for Ethical AI ran a citizens’ jury to explore the use of AI in decision-making. We convened participants to grapple with the ethical issues raised by this application of AI under different circumstances and enter into a deliberative dialogue about how companies, organisations, and public institutions should respond.
This report presents a toolkit for organisations seeking to deploy their own ethical processes around the proliferation of AI….(More)”.
Comparative Constitution Making
Book edited by Hanna Lerner and David Landau: “In a seminal article more than two decades ago, Jon Elster lamented that despite the large volume of scholarship in related fields, such as comparative constitutional law and constitutional design, there was a severe dearth of work on the process and context of constitution making. Happily, his point no longer holds. Recent years have witnessed a near-explosion of high-quality work on constitution-making processes, across a range of fields including law, political science, and history. This volume attempts to synthesize and expand upon this literature. It offers a number of different perspectives and methodologies aimed at understanding the contexts in which constitution making takes place, its motivations, the theories and processes that guide it, and its effects. The goal of the contributors is not simply to explain the existing state of the field, but also to provide new research on these key questions.
Our aims in this introduction are relatively modest. First, we seek to set up some of the major questions treated by recent research in order to explain how the chapters in this volume contribute to them. We do not aim to give a complete state of the field, but we do lay out what we see as several of the biggest challenges and questions posed by recent scholarship. …(More)”.