| Involving Civil Society in the Work of Parliaments |
| Part A: Civic Participation in Policy Decision-Making |
| Section 1: Introduction |
| This part of the report considers methods of enabling citizens, as individuals, to participate in the legislative and executive functions of government. It looks firstly at the possibility of involving citizens directly in the decision making process through the use of referendums and secondly at new innovations in democratic practice that have been tried in the UK and elsewhere. |
| Democracies need to draw more people into the process of defining political priorities and agendas, and since we can only participate where we found ourselves to be, this implies more opportunities within each locality for people to influence the policy process .5 |
| Efforts to involve citizens in a consultative, if not a decision-making, process have tended to occur at a local rather than at a national level. The referendum and citizen's initiative are the most widely used form of direct democratic control at a national level and the experience of these will be considered first. The innovations in citizen participation in the following section have largely been utilised by local governments or by specific interest groups but we have chosen to concentrate upon those mechanisms that would be most applicable to broader use. However effective local consultation and participation is an essential foundation for nation-wide citizen involvement These local networks tend to be the most meaningful for the citizen and national government should seek to encourage and draw upon these initiatives. |
| This section of the report concludes
with an evaluation of citizen participation methods in terms of the key
principles set out by the CSG:
i. power sharing ii. accountability iii. participation in the development, consideration and scrutiny of policy and legislation iv. the promotion of equality of opportunity. |