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Innovative Citizen Participation

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.

Deliberative Democracy Toolbox

DISCOVER

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.

IMPLEMENT

Good Practice Principles for Deliberative Processes for Public Decision Making

These principles provide policy makers with useful guidance as to the establishment of deliberative processes and the implementation of related provisions in the OECD Recommendation on Open Government. 

EVALUATE

Evaluation Guidelines for Representative Deliberative Processes

The purpose of this document is to help public authorities initiate and develop better representative deliberative processes by establishing a minimum standard for their evaluation.

EMBED

Eight ways to institutionalise deliberative democracy

This guide for public officials and policy makers outlines eight models for institutionalising representative public deliberation to improve collective decision making and strengthen democracy.

Projects

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.

Network

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:

  • Frame the topic and scope of the first phase of research;
  • Gather feedback and inputs to the research in an ongoing manner, and
  • Build bridges and strengthen ties between these important groups of actors.

Read about the OECD Innovative Citizen Participation Network

Participo blog

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.


Read Participo blog

Events and media

EVENTS MEDIA