Grundtvig Workshop Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks ActIn

1. Grundtvig Workshop Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks ActIn Module 1 Introduction Comune di Santa Elisabetta Grundtvig Workshop - Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks – www.actineurope.eu

2. Democracy: • Representative Democracy • Participatory Democracy • Deliberative Democracy • Direct Democracy … Grundtvig Workshop - Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks – www.actineurope.eu

3. Participation and Participatory Democracy: Since 196o the concept of Participation was enclosed with the political parties and their role inside the general scheme of the Representative Democracy (rd). • Participatory Democracy (pd) and Deliberative Democracy (dd) were instead born outside the general scheme of the Representative Democracy (rd) since 80’s thanks to all the theoretical studies about democracy of 60’s and 70’s. • Participatory Democracy will be normally used as a praxis in South America, the pathbreaking experience of Porto Alegre, and will shortly extend its horizons to Central-North America and Europe during the last years of the XX century. Grundtvig Workshop - Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks – www.actineurope.eu

4. …what is Participation?: • Participation can be understood as these social interactions:  • involving citizens or representatives of social groups and the administrations  responsible for the subject discussed; • which are based on the use of the word (and not of physical confrontation); • which are addressed in some way to resolving a situation perceived as problematic or taking a decision of collective interest. Grundtvig Workshop - Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks – www.actineurope.eu

5. …what is Deliberation?: • Deliberation is a communication process that aims to generate a general consensus formed by a dialogic approach which can lead to a:  • Significant interpersonal comprehension (dialogic approach); • Progressive comprehension of other points of view; • Balanced, shared and change-oriented assessment. • Communication is not seen here as an informal transmission of meanings between “sender and receiver” but as construction of social meanings and relationships structured in order to promote the respect of different opinion. Grundtvig Workshop - Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks – www.actineurope.eu

6. Participative Democracy and Deliberative Democracy The Participatory Democracy comes up by the real experience of Porto Alegre and the First World Social Forum held in 1992. Otherwise, the Deliberative Democracy is closer to the theoretical approach of the anglosaxon cultural background. By the way, they focus the same topic: How to open decisional processes, at all governmental levels, to all people interested in participate to their definition. Finally, we can affirm that the two concepts led in one common definition with a specific theoretical approach for the Participatory Democracy and a more specific practical approach for the Deliberative Democracy. Grundtvig Workshop - Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks – www.actineurope.eu

7. Deliberative Democracy and Participative Democracy • The Deliberative Democracy is a normative ideal of democracy, characterized by two requirements common to several models: • the specific character of deliberative decision-making; • Under this first point, decision-making must be the result of deliberations, because they derive from the "exchange of information and arguments based on reasonable reasons.” Unlike the decision-making based on the voting mechanism or negotiating processes, in the deliberative system the final decision should share a rational consensus.  • inclusiveness of the processes themselves. • Under this second point, decision-making processes should be able to attend all those who are potentially interested in participating to the resolution of the subject/matter. • Finally we could affirm that the theoretical approach of the Deliberative Democracy represents the historical background of the practical manifestation of the Participatory Democracy. Grundtvig Workshop - Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks – www.actineurope.eu

8. Participative Democracy and Deliberative Democracy • Compared to the highly abstract nature of the model of Deliberative Democracy, then, the Participatory Democracy is defined as a: • Concrete and practical nature; • very open concept. • Although it is impossible to draw a straight line of separation, it seems to say that the Participatory Democracy is responsible for more of the concrete historical forms which tried to directly involve the individuals/citizens in exercising public decision-making power.  • The extreme conceptual opening of Participatory Democracy is proved since the objective is extremely wide and, in theory, can cover all public functions. Grundtvig Workshop - Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks – www.actineurope.eu

9. Participative Democracy • We can define the Participatory Democracy as a society's relationship with institutions, but we don’t have to forget that the forms of this relationship can be very different: this relationship can affect not only the decision-making process but also the time before and after the decision itself.   • With the incisive words of F. Robbe, "par la démocratie partecipative, le citoyen est invité à s’impliquer non seulement dans la préparation e l’adoption de la norme, mais également dans son application voire dans l’évaluation de son efficacité pratique…Il s’agit en quelque sorte d’une démocratie post-decisionnelle“ • The majority of studies agree to identify the following two distinctive features:  • all forms of Participatory Democracy create techniques designed to allow all those who are affected by a Public Decision to be consulted and express his own position; • the final effect of Participation is not to transfer power to the final decision participants. Grundtvig Workshop - Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks – www.actineurope.eu

10. Deliberative Democracy • Possible benefits of Deliberative Democracy: • Increases civic culture, making the participants more aware citizens and active in the collective sphere. • It produces better decisions, or more "wise" than other rational types of decision-making processes. • It allows to reach shared decisions, incorporating preferences of the communities concerned. • Increase the legitimacy of the decisions achieved with the direct involvement of the community rather than through the imposition from above or, worst, from the outside. • It increases the legitimacy of the authorities who are using this type of pathways. • Thanks to the contribution of stakeholders, increases the chances of success during the implementation of policies. • It allows to manage conflicts constructively, reducing the intensity and turning them into opportunities for shared production choices. Grundtvig Workshop - Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks – www.actineurope.eu

11. Perhaps not everyone knows that the conformation of Ground Zero was taken directly involving the citizens of New York. Residents, relatives of victims, economic interests, citizens' associations had very different ideas about what to do. The answer was found in a technique called Town Meeting of the 21st century (TM21), which was attended by 4,500 people, on 20 July 2002. This technique has its origins in New England since 1600, when the first colons decided to regularly address issues of common interest in town meetings. Imagine a large room, full of tables, each table with a dozen people, each table is equipped with a computer connected to a central computer. A group of members of the organization receives the information of the tables, aggregating related topics which are then projected onto large screens, compared to which participants are asked to discuss and vote with a remote control. At the end of the day is filled in a "flash report" which is distributed to all participants, who actually see the outcome of their commitment. Techniques: an example … the TM21 Grundtvig Workshop - Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks – www.actineurope.eu

12. Participatory Democracy approach is strongly critical of Representative Democracy, which, as is known, is based on other forms of social communication: negotiating and voting. In the negotiation, consensus is achieved through the use of promises, threats or anything else, but never on basis of an open exchange of views and all the parties are motivated even only by self-interest. The vote, however, is merely a aggregation of existing preferences, different from the rational transformation of the same preferences, as provided in the deliberative processes. Nowadays, the Occidental Democracies represent the policies of 'apathy', credited as a solution for the survival of the old liberal democracy and finally failing once the crack of its role of social integration, performed by the parties before the advent of the welfare state. Participative Democracy vsRepresentative Democracy Grundtvig Workshop - Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks – www.actineurope.eu

13. “Democracyis the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried” • Winston Churchill Grundtvig Workshop - Active Citizen Toolkits for Internet Networks – www.actineurope.eu