Case study: Participation and decision-making

So there are tentative signs that real-time feedback from the internet can have an impact on participation and involvement, not just on signing up to petitions but on actual, albeit small-scale, financial decisions too.

The next step is to consider in greater detail how this participation can be used to generate both policy decisions and legitimacy.

This is a particularly important point given the earlier polling evidence that around half of people do not wish to be actively involved in decision-making either locally or nationally.

Useful real-world experiments in this area can be found by looking at the area of participatory budgeting (PB) and electronic participatory budgeting (e-PB).

The Participatory Budgeting Unit , a project run in the UK by the charity Church Action on Poverty has highlighted the following definition of PB:

"Participatory budgeting directly involves local people in making decisions on the priorities and spending for a defined public budget. This means engaging residents and community groups representatives of all parts of the community to discuss and vote on them, as well as giving local people a role in the scrutiny and monitoring of the process." ^[i]

Some of the most substantial use of PB has taken place in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, a city of over 2.3 million people. It has been carefully studied by Tiago Peixoto, who wrote a paper on it for the E-Democracy Centre at Zurich University.

Increasing citizen participation has been seen as a key innovation to reinforce local and regional accountability. And PB, which the city has been using since 1993, has converged with e-democracy, with the aim of both being on strengthening democratic practices.

Peixoto wrote in 2008 that the experience of e-PB in the city attained a level of participation of nearly 10 per cent and is "by any standards, one of the most significant initiatives in the world in the domain of e-democracy to have been implemented so far" ^[ii].

In the traditional PB process, citizens take part in decision-making about budget allocations through a series of carefully structured meetings. Each round of budgeting lasts two years, with community leaders and neighbourhood representatives initially drawing up wishes for public works.

In a step which might be seen as similar to the vetting of policy frameworks before they are uploaded into the centralised repository outlined in Part II, each district's demands are then assessed for their technical feasibility. New demands can be made if the initial proposals cannot be delivered.

Subsequent steps see sub-districts choose up to 25 works for each district, and select delegates who study the work requests across the entire district. At the final stage, the city administration provides estimated costs for each of the 25 works, after which the delegates select up to 14 priorities, which are handed to the mayor to be executed by the city.

Peixoto notes that past participation in the PB process has averaged around 1.46 per cent of the city's electorate at the most-attended stage of the process.

Developing  an e-PB process was intended to raise participation rates and encourage a wider spread of participants, particularly younger citizens and the middle classes. Chiming with the polling evidence from the UK about factors which limit participation, Peixoto says the internet "was seen as a means to increase participation by reducing the costs incurred by citizens (e.g. time, transport) as a result of participating in the PB. In other words, if in the traditional PB citizens must attend meetings at a certain time and place, with the e-PB citizens were free to vote online within a period of 42 days." ^[iii]

Another factor behind the use of e-PB, Peixoto says, was the creation of a process where citizens decide on projects not just in their own district but on larger projects across the city which could cost up to US$1.2m. Under the scheme, the city authorities and community delegates select four projects per district for the online voting phase.

During the 42 days of voting, citizens over the age of 16 are able to vote nine times, once for each city district. Highlighting the work done to make the process convenient for citizens, they are able to log in, cast their vote in some of the districts, then log in again at another time to finish the voting in the rest of the city.

Information about each of the proposed works is available, and, interestingly given the evidence from the previous case study, real-time figures are available on the number of votes already cast for each proposal. Again, this sounds like the implementation of many of the tools suggested to enable the selection of microgovernment policy frameworks. Indeed, each development proposal in the e-PB process could be considered the equivalent of a microparty, seeking the support of voters.

Issues of accessibility were addressed through the use of 178 public voting points in city buildings and schools, which had staff on hand to provide help, and a mobile unit which targeted key areas such as the city center or the poorest suburbs.

The result was that 503,266 votes were cast by a total of 172,938 people, a participation rate of some 9.98 per cent. That rate was nearly seven times higher than seen with the traditional PB process. "This is, without a doubt, the highest level of participation ever seen if compared to the traditional Participatory Budgeting processes from around the world," ^[iv] wrote Peixoto.

What lessons can be learned from Belo Horizonte and other locations where PB in one form or another has been used?

e-PB blurs the line between e-democracy and e-government, involving the public directly in spending decisions that would normally be taken by the executive.

If in many places it only takes place on a small scale or in limited pilot schemes, this seems to be due to an apparent lack of trust in the process by public institutions, or the desire of politicians and officials to retain control.

As Peixoto has said: "People want to participate as long as its not politics as usual." ^[v] And e-PB shows that new links between the process of government and mass participation can be made.

While rates of participation may still be low compared to traditional elections, it is unclear that the comparison is a fair one. The PB process is not about electing people to make decisions but developing a new process to make legitimate decisions.

Interestingly, the PB decisions still generate at least as much legitimacy and acceptance as decisions taken by politicians elected with a turnout three or four times greater. In Belo Horizonte, over 80 per cent of the population supports the existence of PB. Similarly, 79 per cent ^[vi] of Brazilians who are not aware of whether or not their city has a PB scheme support the idea in principle.

This may highlight the 'us versus them' disconnection from, and dislike of, politicians and parties that voters in many countries now have. Voters may not trust politicians but they do trust decisions taken by 'people like me', even if they themselves did not participate in the decision.

This highlights another factor in the generation of legitimacy. The freedom to participate, the theoretical ability to express a meaningful opinion about the way in which government is conducted, is as important as participating itself. In most cases, even those who do not vote would accept that democratic governments are freely chosen and therefore legitimate.

Another point is that participation rates of 10 per cent may still be enough to test any policy and generate a variety of responses. But it is possible that turnout rates could be higher as the importance of the issues being decided rises from small community budgets to major national policies which could have greater salience with voters.

So a key lessons about just what proportion of citizens need to be prepared to engage to generate legitimate decisions is that the number may not be as high as expected. Paradoxically, it could well be lower than current turnout levels, even though that same low level creates questions over the legitimacy of decisions made through existing structures.

Footnotes:

[i] Participatory Budgeting Unit (2009), 'Unpacking the Values, Principles and Standards', p. 3. Available at http://www.participatorybudgeting.org.uk/documents/PB%20document%20two%20colour_lowres%20website%20version.pdf [January 19, 2009].

[ii] Peixoto, T. (2008), 'e-Participatory Budgeting: e-Democracy from theory to success?', e-Working Papers 2008, e-Democracy Centre, Universität Zürich, p. 4. Available at http://www.edemocracycentre.ch/files/Tiago.pdf [January 19, 2010].

[iii] Peixoto, T. (2008), p. 11.

[iv] Peixoto, T. (2008), p. 18.

[v] Peixoto, T. (2009), speaking at Personal Democracy Forum Europe 2009, MP3 audio file available at http://civicolive.com/pdfeu/files/2009/11/wegov-and-egov.mp3 [January 19, 2010].

[vi] Ipsos-Brazil polling, quoted by Luci Oliveira and Ben Page in 'Do community kitties work?', published by LocalGov.co.uk, November 4, 2008. Available at http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=72985 [January 21, 2010]