Innovative Citizen Participation explores the innovative ways that governments can effectively engage with citizens and stakeholders to source ideas, co-create solutions, and tackle complex policy problems. It focuses on new research in the area of deliberative, collaborative, and participatory decision making that are evolving across the globe.
The use of deliberative processes for public decision making is a key part of OECD’s work on open government, which examines the trends of declining trust in government, citizen demands for more openness, transparency, accountability, integrity, and stakeholder engagement.
Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave
Report gathers close to 300 representative deliberative practices to explore trends in such processes, identify different models, and analyse the trade-offs among different design choices as well as the benefits and limits of public deliberation.
As part of our work on Innovative Citizen Participation, the OECD partners with governments and organisations on projects and provides tailored policy advice and technical assistance.
OECD and DG REGIO pilot project
Citizen Engagement in Cohesion Policy (summer 2020-spring 2022)
DG REGIO and the OECD partnered to explore how five authorities across Europe could place citizens at the heart of their investment decisions.
OECD and DG REGIO project
Strengthening citizen participation through collaboration between public authorities and civil society organizations (spring 2022-winter 2023)
The OECD and DG REGIO are launching a second phase of collaboration to support cohesion policy actors, working together with civil society organisations, to implement the partnership principles in EU cohesion policy in an innovative way. Up to 10 proposals, co-signed by a public authority and a civil society organisation, will receive assistance to test new innovative solutions for engaging citizens in cohesion policy.
OECD and Arantzazulab project
Public deliberation in the Basque Country (autumn 2021-spring 2023)
The OECD is supporting the social innovation lab Arantzazulab to promote the use of public deliberation in the Gipuzkoa region in the Basque Country. The objective of this project is to implement a pilot representative deliberative process, which can provide the learnings and foundation to institutionalise the use of public deliberation.
The OECD’s Open Government Unit is engaging with a network of practitioners, academics, researchers, civil servants, and designers to support its work on Innovative Citizen Participation. This Network was established with the aim of collaborating with relevant stakeholders to:
Read about the OECD Innovative Citizen Participation Network
Participo is a digest for the OECD Open Government Unit’s area of work on innovative citizen participation. Articles are posted by OECD staff and by external contributors.