Developing Approaches for Closing the Feedback Loop for Meaningful Public Participation

For public participation to impact 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 that they perceive that their input is acted upon, i.e. closing the feedback loop. 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 assembling it into a case for questioning government or building it into a law or proposing modifications to a law, to name a few options.

With rapid technological developments bringing about an entire social change, citizen demand 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 and 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 people come to parliament for public hearings as the sole option. 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 engagement tools (e.g. 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 of public engagement to understand what may encourage participation and how citizens may prefer to participate. Parliament should consider and may require support to be able to communicate findings transparently and to enhance and adjust engagement mechanisms to generate incentives for involvement.[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 citizen scrutiny and participation, even with direct feedback in some cases.

2. Raising awareness and strengthening education (training staff, peer-to-peer exchange with MPs and education activities and/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 communication. Regardless of how developed a parliamentary democracy is, parliamentary education is indispensable. Education on how to participate, particularly through parliamentary activities, and what these activities are all about as well as how they will 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 materials for citizens, students and teachers for that matter.

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

Closing the feedback loop is aimed at incentivizing 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 way parliaments can participate as it demonstrates parliaments’ respect and appreciation of citizens’ input and work. Dissemination may be provided in the form of reports published on the parliament’s website 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 collects questions through crowdsourcing and sends them 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 to determine 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