Can we design participative processes to boost trust in democracy?

Our Life in the UK research found that 72% of people feel powerless to influence decisions affecting their lives. Furthermore, the latest British Social Attitudes survey revealed that “trust and confidence in government are as low as they have ever been”. 

While diagnosing a problem is important, at organisations like Carnegie UK we’re also in the business of finding solutions.  

We know there are low levels of trust in democracy and its institutions. However, we want to find out what can be done to improve the situation and to make people feel that they have voice and choice in the decisions that affect their lives; what we call Democratic Wellbeing. 

This was the starting point for our Engaging Democracy programme of work. And today we’ve published a new report examining an interesting aspect of this important issue.  

There is increased recognition that democracy and its institutions need to evolve and that voting every 4-5 years isn’t sufficient. And there’s a growing body of evidence that deliberative democracy (e.g. Citizen’s assemblies, panels, juries etc.) have the ability to alleviate the symptoms of low levels of trust in democracy and to deliver change.

So we decided to ask: 

Do you make the problem of trust in democracy worse, if people take part in a deliberative process and this leads to no discernible impact/change?

What did we do? 

Through a mixture of workshops, interviews and expert analysis, we brought people together that have taken part in citizens assemblies, panels and juries in Scotland to understand their views and experiences of these events. We also reached out to those that commissioned, designed and facilitated these same events to understand their perspectives and to ultimately find out more about how these events brought about change. 

This work was supported by a group of Democratic Wellbeing Champions, individuals from across the UK with diverse experiences of influencing policy across civic life via wellbeing, democracy, community organising and social change. 

What did we learn? 

What was clear from our work is that deliberative democracy processes, their design and facilitation are relatively well understood but their impact and ability to affect change are not so well known. 

We found that engagement in decision-making can improve positive perceptions of democracy. People took their involvement very seriously, found the processes to be largely rewarding and that they want their time, effort and input to mean something.  

However, people’s positivity can fade following their involvement in the deliberative processes. For example, a lack of information sharing with participants on the outcome of their involvement was a recurring concern. Concerningly, some people stated that they simply didn’t know if the process they were involved in had any influence on policy decisions or not. This led some of these people to have lower levels of trust than with which they started. 

The report also argues that it is important to expose those in power to the process. That is, the more that elected members and officials can experience these democratic processes first-hand, the more they see the practical benefits to engagement, debate and policymaking. 

I’d like to thank everyone involved in this work for their time, expertise, and insights that have led to our write-up of this work and recommendations of what can be done to increase trust and democratic wellbeing in the UK. Please explore these further in our report and do get in touch with me (Adam Milne) or the team if you’d like to explore our work further.