Why open up participation?
/Why open up participation?
Graph produced by Dalia Research for the Global Perceptions of Democracy report.
Digital participation is relatively new, and can require significant work to actualize people's active involvement. And any strategy to involve more people in decision making often consumes significant time and creates a lot of uncertainties.
So why do it? The Democracy Perception Index found that a majority of people around the world, and especially those living in democratic nations, feel like "they have no voice in politics and that their governments are not acting in their interest."
Research suggests that governments and institutions that introduce more open decision-making see an abundance of interrelated benefits. Residents and participants are more likely to:
Gain civic skills they can use in other arenas, including leadership capacity.,
Have higher confidence in and satisfaction with local governance.
Report access to higher-quality public infrastructure.
Have a better understanding of their own rights and duties.
Enjoy stronger ties to their communities.
In addition, governments and institutions are more likely to:
Directly address the needs of under-served or hard-to-reach communities.,,
Include people's opinions in their problem-solving, and in doing so create more effective public services.,
Experience less corruption, thus allowing limited public resources to be stretched further.
Enjoy better dialogue between participants and government leaders.
Researchers have observed these benefits around the world, from rural Russia, to large American cities, to entire countries like Brazil. Open participation takes different shapes in different contexts. In Brazil, for example, participatory budgeting programs were launched in places as varied as its wealthy South and impoverished Northeast. This wide variety of contexts suggests that open participation is flexible enough to meet local needs in diverse places.