Developing Approaches for Closing the Feedback Loop for Meaningful Public Participation

For public participation to have an impact on people, change perceptions and reinstate trust in institutions and electoral democracy, we should not only develop tools and avenues but also ensure that people feel heard, and input is perceived to be acted upon, i.e the feedback loop is closed. This is paramount for trust building and entails developing participation avenues and digital tools as well as pathways to inform people on what happened to their input. People will only remain engaged if there is some kind of feedback, ranging from the perception that parliament is taking note of their input and accumulating it into a case for questioning government, building it in or proposing modifications to a law, to name a few options.

With the rapid technological development bringing about an entire social change, demand by citizens to participate in decision-making is growing. Seeking institutional solutions integrating digital platforms may prove to be the most effective in adjusting to the new society we are living in – a society of digital interconnectedness, multiple communication channels with high expectations from the still slow paced institutional set up (Leston-Bandeira, Caluwaerts, & Vermassen, 2024).

A three-pronged approach is proposed:

1. Designing inclusive parliamentary mechanisms for a more strategic approach to participation including participatory tools

Meaningful participation requires adequate avenues for citizens to take part. Designing parliamentary mechanisms should entail inclusivity, taking parliament to the communities rather than having the sole option for people to come to parliament for public hearings. A range of participatory tools from public hearings, mobile committee sessions, mobile parliament as well as online participation tools via the parliamentary website such as citizen engagements tools (example: the Brazilian Congress) may be used to allow for citizens’ input.  Where engagement is facilitated through participatory tools, it requires developing communications with participants on how a potential proposal is processed and by whom.

As a starting point, this activity should include assessing public opinion and collecting feedback on what may lead to perceptions of meaningful participation. Parliaments may organize an evaluation and impact assessment for public engagement to understand what may encourage participation and what may be the preferred way for citizens to participate. Parliament should consider and may require support to be able to transparently communicate the findings, enhance and adjust engagement mechanisms to generate incentives for engaging[1].  Finally, inviting citizens to take part in pre-legislative scrutiny of laws for example, where their input is collected during public hearings on a draft law, or inviting citizens to post-legislative scrutiny committee meetings, hearings or mobile sessions are potent tools for engagement and directly enable scrutiny and participation, with in some cases even direct feedback.

2. Raising awareness and strengthening education (training Staff, peer-to-peer exchange with MPs and education activities an/or outreach with the public at large)

As one of the pillars of meaningful public participation, education is the key to representative democracy. Citizens need to understand how parliamentary democracy works to get engaged. Education on parliament is usually studied in schools but as the polls and focus groups of the SELECT research show, it is not sufficient. Parliamentary education centres play an important role along with parliamentary outreach and communications. Regardless of how developed a parliamentary democracy, parliamentary education is indispensable. Education on how to participate in particular parliamentary activities and what they are all about as well as how will they know what happened to their input once the modalities for dissemination of feedback are developed are prerequisites for effective engagement. Parliamentary staff may also benefit from learning how to educate and prepare different material for citizens, students and teachers for that matter.

3. Closing the feedback loop by designing methods to inform citizens on where their input/proposal is in the parliament, communicating the outcome to citizens, conducting public opinion polls to measure the feedback reach and re-adjust where necessary.

Closing the feedback loop is aimed at incentivizing the participation but also allowing for accountability of parliament and its responsiveness to the public demand to be engaged. Disseminating the impact of engagement to the participants/contributors is the most impactful manner of participation as it shows the respect and appreciation of citizens input and work by the parliament. Dissemination may be provided in the form of reports published on the website of parliament as the Parliament of South Africa does for example. Another example of closing the feedback loop is the Parliament of Estonia, where the parliamentary petitions system is set up in such a manner that the relevant parliamentary committee is obliged to inform the person who submitted the petition within 30 days as to whether it will be followed up on, and if not, why. This gives the petitioner the chance to amend the petition based on the feedback and resubmit it[2]. The Parliament of Scotland, for example, collects questions through crowdsourcing and sends it to committees, thereby ensuring that questions are put forward and published publicly through committee reports. However, more work needs to be done to see what closing the feedback loop really means in the context of scrutiny but also how to create mechanisms that are more innovative and engaging for citizens to follow.

[1] Sheldon, C. (2023). Closing the gap: establishing a ‘feedback loop’ for effective parliamentary public engagement. The Journal of Legislative Studies, 29(3), 425–441. https://doi.org/10.1080/13572334.2023.2195711

[2] IPU and UNDP Global Parliamentary Report 2022