Closing the distance between the state and the public 

The recently published Cabinet Office paper Rewiring the State makes an important observation. It argues that too many decisions are made too far away from the people they affect. Those making decisions are often distant from the places and communities that live with the consequences. 

Our Life in the UK Index has continued to provide a measure of that distance. In 2025, 72% of the public said they could not influence decisions affecting the UK as a whole. 

At Carnegie UK, we describe this challenge through the concept of Democratic Wellbeing, which is about the extent to which people can meaningfully influence the decisions that affect their lives. Put simply, it is about closing the distance between decisions and people. 

A striking section of the paper for a policy wonk such as myself is its proposal to move beyond a “consultation by default” model and explore new and modern forms of public participation. 

I don’t take this as a ringing endorsement of deliberative democracy, as no specific democratic innovation is mentioned. But it does represent recognition that traditional consultation alone may be insufficient if government wants effective delivery of policies that are better connected to people’s lives and places. Traditional consultation processes can struggle to capture a broad range of perspectives, particularly when engagement takes place late in policy development or relies on participation from a relatively small group of established stakeholders. 

Carnegie UK’s polling of elected representatives found significant scepticism about deliberative and participatory approaches. Concerns included whether such processes duplicate the representative role of elected members and whether these approaches possess a sufficient democratic mandate. 

Yet the Cabinet Office paper makes an explicit case that stronger public participation may be part of the solution to better governance rather than a challenge to representative democracy.  

Identifying a problem is one thing. Identifying practical solutions is another. 

Through our Engaging Democracy programme, Carnegie UK worked with parliamentary officials, elected representatives and leading academics to develop practical proposals for embedding citizen deliberation within the UK’s democratic institutions. 

These approaches bring together a diverse group of people to learn about an issue, deliberate with one another and develop considered recommendations for decision-makers. 

The question raised by Rewiring the State is how government closes the distance between decisions and people. The question explored in Carnegie UK’s Blueprints for Democratic Wellbeing is what this could look like in practice. The Blueprints, written by Prof Oliver Escobar and Prof Stephen Elstub, set out practical ways of embedding public participation within democratic institutions while strengthening, rather than bypassing, representative democracy. 

The most interesting thing about Rewiring the State is not its constitutional proposals or plans for devolution. It is its diagnosis of the problem. A system that places too much distance between decisions and the people affected by them will struggle to deliver effective policy, strong public services or democratic legitimacy. Closing that distance is ultimately what Democratic Wellbeing is about. The challenge for government now is turning that insight into institutional practice. Closing the distance between decisions and people requires changes not only to where power sits, but also to how we govern.