Whereas participation at the local level is fairly common, there are very few examples of participatory processes across borders. Our workshop at the Rencontres Européennes de la Participation set out to explore the unique challenges that international participation brings with it. To do this, we began with presentations on three recent international participation events. The group then discussed the challenges these international formats bring with them, and the potential solutions.
The first event discussed was the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE). It was launched by the EU institutions to consult citizens on Europe’s challenges and priorities. It consisted of an online consultation via a Decidim-based platform, panels on different topics and a plenary with representatives from the panels.
Second, EurHope, a joint initiative of make.org and the Young European Federalists to mobilise young Europeans and raise awareness ahead of the 2024 EU elections.
And finally, the jury process of the European Capital of Democracy. It allows citizens jurors from across Europe to vote on the next European Capital of Democracy, based on a shortlist that is decided by an expert jury.
Mobilisation for participation processes at an international level
Reaching a high number of participants
Challenge: As with any participatory process at the local or national level, participants do not magically appear simply because the process exists. They need to be made aware of it, and see the point in participating. International processes are even more challenging than usual. Ideally, a much larger number of people need to be reached, and many local channels are unavailable or at least difficult to use for the organisers.
Solutions:
- Using all available channels. There is no way around using many different channels when the aim is to reach a high number of participants. This includes institutional communication, traditional media, social networks, partner networks.
- Paid social media campaigns are one of the few mobilisation tools that work without local networks. They potentially allow for both wide reach and representativity, but can prove costly, especially when targeting less mobilised groups.
- Alliances with organisations that can mobilise their local networks. For the EurHope project, the Young European Federalists were a vital partner in mobilising young people. Universities, colleges, and regional and local governments can also be valuable partners for mobilisation. EU institutions on the other hand tend to not have sufficient local networks to mobilise.
- Leveraging online influencers and similar actors with a wide reach.
- Providing incentives (like the French “congé citoyen” – time off for public interest activities) or deploying gamification techniques can also help.
Achieving Diversity or Representativeness
Challenge: Reaching a lot of people via social media and online advertising is nowadays feasible and mostly a question of budget. However, reach the people who don’t usually participate is significantly more difficult.
Solutions:
- Partnering with the right organisations. This can be organisations that represent specific target groups such as migrant organisations. It might be necessary to put an unproportionally high effort into mobilising certain groups to achieve diverse participation.
- Polling organisations often already have representative panels.
- Multilevel regression with poststratification (MRP) is a method used to make survey results more accurate. It involves analysing data from different groups and then adjusting the results to match the real-world population, helping to get better estimates even when using small or unbalanced survey samples.
- Random selection of participants for one step of a larger process. For the CoFoE, four panels of 200 citizens from the 27 member states were chosen using random selection. The process employed stratified sampling, ensuring diversity across categories including gender, age, socioeconomic background and level of education.
- Locally-based events (to both inform and mobilise)
Accessibility of international participation processes
Multilingualism
Challenge: Participants of international participation processes should be able to express themselves in their mother tongue and have contributions of other participants translated for them. This is a challenge as soon as two languages are involved, for example in cross-border deliberations, and it takes on a new logistical dimension when the number of languages multiplies. Differences in culture and local regulations mean that linguistically correct translations can miss some of the context.
Solutions:
- AI Translation. Machine translation software has come a long way in recent years, enabling multilingual interaction online. One possible way is to have everything automatically translated into the language of the respective participant so they can seamlessly interact in their mother tongue (i.e. on the make.org platform). Another way is to display entries in the language they were made in initially, and then let people see the translation if they wish to. This was the approach chosen on the CoFoE platform. The aim was to show the linguistic diversity of the European Union, with 24 official languages available on the platform.
- Human translators still offer better quality if they know local contexts, but would be very costly for large-scale processes.
- Video Conferencing software now includes functions for simultaneous oral translation.
- Local, native-speaking communication relays (people or organisations) who can not only translate but also properly “adjust” the messaging and wording elements to the local context.
- Leveraging non-verbal communication (pictures, gestures) can also help with on-the-ground outreach activities.
Information on the subject matter
Challenge: Ideally, participant contributions to a participatory process are based on knowledge of the subject matter. This is easiest if it is based on their direct experience, which is what makes hyper-local participation such a popular tool. People know what is and what is not working well in the street where they live. In other cases, participants need to be introduced to the topics, and provided with enough information to make informed contributions.
Solutions:
- Offering information in different formats can help, as people have different preferences and needs when it comes to processing information. This can include simple language versions of texts, videos, VR or 3D models of proposals, and overview tables comparing different options.
- Evaluating the information needs can help to ensure that participants are not overburdened with information they do not require.
- Letting participants request and provide information.
Follow-up
Challenge: Decision-making in international settings tends to be slow. In cases like CoFoE and EurHope, where the recommendations were addressed to EU institutions, the chances for speedy implementation are slim, even if the political will is there.
Solutions:
- Expectation management is essential. As for any participatory process, participants should know from the beginning what they can expect in terms of follow-up. It should also be clear who is responsible for the process once the event itself has finished.
- Track progress. Especially if potential implementation is slow, it can be helpful to allow participants and others to check what has happened since the end of the participation. For the EurHope Campaign, the responses of EU parties were shared on the website. For the CoFoE, the Council published updated feedback on each of the proposals.
- Launching successive participation processes. Many outcomes of participation processes lack the depth to be directly implemented. Subjects that still need to be explored in greater depth to feed into public policy can be the starting point for further participatory processes suited for that purpose. Some of the topics from the CoFoE are now being tackled in Citizens’ Panels.
About the workshop:
The workshop ‘Scaling up participation to an international level: challenges, limits and solutions’ on Wednesday 3 July 2024 was part of the 8th annual Rencontres Européennes de la Participation event, organised by Décider Ensemble. The webinar was hosted by Laura Giesen, Editor in Chief of Democracy Technologies, who spoke about the Jury process of the European Capital of Democracy. Valentin Chaput, Co-founder and managing director of Open Source Politics, presented on the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) and Javier Morales, Participatory Projects Manager at make.org, spoke about the EurHope project. The article is based on the experiences of the three projects as well as the input of the workshop participants.
