Participatory Democracy in Local Government: An Online Platform in the City of Madrid
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2020-06-30
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Institute for Public Administration, Zagreb
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Resumen
In 2015, the local government of the city of Madrid (Spain) introduced an electronic participation system. This initiative stemmed mainly from the social movements that had occupied the squares of many Spanish cities since 2011. As a result of the local elections in 2015, many of those same activists gained institutional power, took citizens’ participation very seriously, and decided to use the possibilities offered by the internet for political and administrative participation. In this article, we seek to assess the impacts of the Madrid city government with the e-democracy experiment – based mainly on establishing an online platform to facilitate citizen participation in political and administrative decision processes. Drawing on qualitative and documental data, our research indicates that whereas the overall aim of the project was to give citizens a say in local policy and decision making, our case study shows that participation was very low since most of the population does not feel concerned by these processes.
Indeed, one of our findings showed that citizens’ involvement offline surpassed in some cases their online participation. To identify who is politically active online and offline is a great challenge, to which the promoters of the project did not pay much attention. Although e-participation was meagre in relation to the electoral turnout, the case study also shows that many proposals from the public were incorporated into the local policies, indicating that from a qualitative point of view, e-participation influences decision-making processes. Perhaps local governments should use a more strategic and integrated approach towards the use of electronic technologies to foster and motivate citizens’ involvement in local politics and administration. This more integrated approach should be less dependent on ideological incentives, more institutionalized, and must incorporate citizens’ perceptions and inputs before the introduction of new technologies.
Descripción
This article is a study of participatory experiences in the field of local government in Spain, carried out to identify the participatory achievements (digital and non-digital) implemented by the new Spanish local governments following the political channelling of the 15-M movement after the 2015 municipal elections. Specifically, the article presents a new examination of the participatory experiences developed by the Madrid city government, the initial results of which led to another publication in 2016. The new approach extends the period under investigation and, with the analysis of new data, confronts previous conclusions, which are nuanced.
With information on the entire participatory process (just under four years of activity), the article presents the experience of the participatory e-democracy project implemented from 2015 to 2019 by the Madrid City Council. The project was intended to be an open and binding space for the formulation, debate and approval of proposals for the design and implementation of local public policies. The empirical analysis carried out here on this project is based mainly on data provided by the municipal government, as well as on the analysis of participatory websites, but triangulated with qualitative interviews with key political, bureaucratic and civic actors. The evaluation shows an open project, which adapted deeply to institutional rejection by the opposition and limited citizen participation. The data collected are also consistent with the initial hypothesis, according to which new technologies improve political participation to a relatively limited extent and may even erode the democratic process. Furthermore, the article concludes that participatory approaches, such as the one studied here, tend to overlook the fact that participation depends above all on non-technological variables and, therefore, that the use of new technologies must be accompanied by other innovative forms of political and administrative participation. It also suggests that the use of digital technologies applied to this participatory process shows an insufficient approach to democracy with regard to the possibilities that these technologies can provide to the democratic process.
The study from which this article is derived is part of the line of work undertaken by the authors in the context of the ISCH COST ACTION IS 1207 project, funded by the European Union under its Horizon 2017 Framework Programme, entitled Local Public Sector Reforms: an International Comparison, subproject WG4, on Democratic Renewal, in which Ángel Iglesias Alonso was the principal investigator for Spain and Roberto-Luciano Barbeito was a collaborating researcher.
The two authors have participated jointly and interchangeably in all previous research processes, as well as in the writing of the article.
CCPA is a quarterly journal, founded in 1999 by the Institute for Public Administration, Croatian and Comparative Public Administration, in co-edition with the Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb, Croatia. It publishes unrestricted open access articles related to public administration, public management, and governance, with a particular focus on theoretical development and comparative empirical research. The journal promotes the highest quality of published articles and aims to foster learning and policy transfer in Europe and worldwide. Submissions are accepted through a double-blind peer review process and the decision of an international editorial board. Articles are published in English. The journal encourages submissions from around the world, with particular emphasis on underrepresented groups, to whom the same article acceptance criteria are applied. it is indexed in Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) - Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) (Clarivate Analytics); HeinOnline – Law Journal Library (William S. Hein & Co. Inc., Getzville, New York, USA); Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP) by the Berkeley Law Library, University of California, Berkeley, for the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) (William S. Hein & Co. Inc., Getzville, New York, USA) – print edition; Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, Social Services Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts, Public Affairs Information Service – PAIS International (ProQuest); Political Science Complete, Public Administration Abstracts (EBSCO Publishing, Inc., Ipswich, Massachusetts, USA); Public Administration Database for Accessing Publications in European Languages – PA@BABEL (European Group for Public Administration – Groupe Européen pour l’Administration publique, Brussels, Belgium); International Political Science Abstracts – Documentation Politique Internationale (Paris, France); Hrčak – Portal of Scientific Papers of Croatia (MZO, Srce & HIDD, Zagreb, Croatia)."
Citación
Iglesias Alonso, Á.H. & Barbeito Iglesias, R.L. (2020). Participatory Democracy in Local Government: An Online Platform in the City of Madrid. Hrvatska i komparativna javna uprava, 20 (2), 246-268. https://doi.org/10.31297/hkju.20.2.3
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