Designing democratic participation - participatory budgeting in Antwerp
For a number of years, the municipality of Antwerp has run a successful process of Participatory Budgeting. This case study is about how this process was designed. Antwerp’s approach and design offer many helpful examples and insights for others designing democratic participation..
Starting with aims
The design process started with a core team, including the project lead, a councillor, and the director of the council with responsibility for engagement. This small team came together on a handful of occasions for day-long design workshops where they made basic choices about the design for the project. They started by agreeing what the objectives for the PB process should be, setting five key aims:
- Participants learn more about their different needs
- Increased public support for decisions about how funds are spent
- Giving participants real decision-making power
- Increased satisfaction with participation
- Bringing different neighbourhoods together
Responding to aims
From this starting point, the following workshops tackled basic design choices like:
- Whether to use online and/or offline channels
- Whether to focus on neighbourhoods or the whole city
- What role deliberation would have in decision-making
- What decision-making power citizens would have
- Allowing individual versus group participation.
- Who would be participating
Key decisions helped to set the shape for the process. That included deciding that it would be a three-stage, city-wide process that was based on deliberation. And that the process would start with an agreement of key priorities. These choices were closely linked to the aims of the process - such as bringing different neighbourhoods together. Different aims would have resulted in a very different process.
Seeking advice on minimising barriers
An advisory group was recruited to include different target groups. These target groups included older people, neighbourhood groups, young people, and ethnic minorities. Each month they were informed about how the design was developing and asked for their advice about potential barriers, including timing and location of events, and methods used for participation. They also helped tailor the communication plan towards different target audiences.
A group of academics and participation experts were also updated every month, so they could advise the programme. Keeping a wider group on board Once basic design choices had been made, the project lead worked out details, before coming together with the core team to make final decisions on the method.
Colleagues affected by the PB process were also kept in the loop through regular updates, as well as feeding into particular aspects of the process. And councillors were provided with a regular update.
Testing, evaluating and iterating
Testing was used at an early stage. Materials were first created for the project lead and core team to test out, then with members of the advisory group and wider project team. These were then redesigned based on feedback received. Friends and family were used as a fresh pair of eyes, testing out parts of the process in bars or online - with tweaks again being made from their feedback.
This process of test and iteration hasn’t stopped since the process has gone live. In fact, the PB process is repeated each year, with adjustments made based on evaluation of how well it’s worked. For instance, the involvement of different sectors of the population is carefully monitored so that promotion can then be targeted towards under-represented groups - an approach that has helped to reach a broad swathe of the local population.
Not everything has been successful. Online deliberation was trialed to open the process up to a wider audience but it was much harder to get rich discussion going compared to offline meetings. In response, the role of online channels was changed to focus on pushing people towards richer offline discussions. An online voting option is used to give people an easy way into the process compared to attending offline events, but this vote is weighted less than votes cast by reaching consensus in offline meetings. The idea being that citizens have an easy way in, but are then pushed towards offline meetings. And, following its introduction, more people started taking part in these events.