Participation between elections: referendums, consultation, and participatory budgeting

In plain words

Elections happen every few years. Public decisions happen all the time. People have long looked for ways to take part in between.

Some ways give people a real decision. In Switzerland, citizens can collect signatures to force a national vote on a new law or a change to the constitution. In participatory budgeting, residents choose how to spend part of a city budget.

Other ways only ask for advice. A government may run a consultation or a citizens' assembly and then decide for itself. That can still matter, but it is a different kind of power.

The key question for any method is simple: if people take part, what is the government required to do with the result? This chapter sorts the main methods by that question. The cases chapter looks at specific places in depth, including where they fell short.

Defined terms

• Referendum. A vote by the electorate on a specific question, law, or constitutional change. Its legal effect depends on the law that authorizes it ⁷.
• Mandatory referendum. A vote required by law before a certain kind of decision takes effect, such as a constitutional amendment in Switzerland ¹.
• Optional (facultative) referendum. A vote triggered when enough citizens sign a demand after a law is passed ¹.
• Popular initiative. A process in which citizens propose a measure and, with enough signatures, place it on the ballot ¹.
• Consultation. A request by an authority for public views, with the authority keeping the decision.
• Participatory budgeting (PB). "A democratic process in which community members decide how to spend part of a public budget," in the definition of the Participatory Budgeting Project ³.
• Citizens' assembly. A body of randomly selected residents who learn about an issue, deliberate, and make recommendations ⁶.
• Binding versus advisory. A binding result has legal effect by itself; an advisory one informs a decision made by someone else. See proposals and the glossary.

Evidence

Legal standard: participation is broader than voting

Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights gives every citizen the right "to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives," separately from the right to vote at periodic elections ⁸. The covenant recognizes both routes; it does not prescribe which mechanisms a country must use.

History: a framework for comparing power

In 1969 the planner Sherry Arnstein published "A Ladder of Citizen Participation" in the Journal of the American Institute of Planners. She defined citizen participation as "a categorical term for citizen power" and argued that "participation without redistribution of power is an empty and frustrating process for the powerless" ². Her eight rungs run from manipulation and therapy (nonparticipation), through informing, consultation and placation (tokenism), to partnership, delegated power and citizen control ². Of informing and consultation she wrote that citizens "may indeed hear and be heard," but "lack the power to insure that their views will be heeded" ². Arnstein called the eight rung ladder "a simplification" ². Its lasting use is the question it forces: who decides at the end?

Current law: binding direct democracy in Switzerland

Switzerland's federal government describes three national instruments ¹:

• a popular initiative, which needs 100,000 signatures collected within 18 months;
• an optional referendum on a federal act, which needs 50,000 valid signatures within 100 days of the act's publication;
• a mandatory referendum on all constitutional amendments approved by Parliament.

The same source states that Swiss voters are called on "approximately four times a year to vote on an average of fifteen such issues" ¹. Here participation carries direct legal force. Detailed strengths and failures of the Swiss case are covered in cases.

Law: a referendum's effect depends on its statute

The United Kingdom shows that the word "referendum" does not settle legal effect. In R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5, decided 24 January 2017, the UK Supreme Court said: "The effect of any particular referendum must depend on the terms of the statute which authorises it" (paragraph 118) ⁷. The Court noted that other referendum statutes set out what would follow each result, while neither the 1975 Act nor the 2015 Act, which authorized the European referendums, "made provision for any consequences of either possible outcome" (paragraph 119). Ministerial statements calling a vote advisory or decisive, the Court said, "are not law: they are statements of political intention" (paragraph 119). Where implementing a result required a change in the law, that change had to be made by Parliament (paragraph 121) ⁷. The vote had enormous political force, but its legal path ran through the legislature.

Current practice: advisory deliberation with a response duty

Ireland's Citizens' Assembly established in 2016 illustrates an advisory body with defined obligations. Its terms of reference, agreed by the Houses of the Oireachtas in July 2016, set a membership of a government appointed chair and "99 citizens entitled to vote at a referendum, randomly selected so as to be broadly representative of Irish society." The assembly was to "report and make recommendations to the Houses of the Oireachtas," and the Government committed to provide a response "to each recommendation," including a timeframe for any related referendum where a recommendation was accepted ⁶. The assembly's recommendations did not themselves change law; the response duty made the government's handling of them public. What happened to particular recommendations is covered in cases.

History and research: participatory budgeting

The Participatory Budgeting Project states that PB began in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1989, and reports that it has spread to "over 7,000 cities around the world" ³. That count is the organization's own figure and includes very different processes, from large binding allocations to small pilot funds.

Reykjavík is one example of a recurring, structured process. The city describes its "My Neighborhood" program as funded with 850 million krónur "each time divided between districts," every other year. Ideas are collected from residents, reviewed and selected for the ballot, and residents then vote; winning ideas become projects the following year ⁵. The city page does not state the program's legal status, so this chapter does not characterize it as binding or advisory.

On outcomes, Michael Touchton and Brian Wampler's study of Brazil's largest cities over 20 years, published in Comparative Political Studies in 2014, found that PB programs were associated with higher health care spending, more civil society organizations, and lower infant mortality, with stronger associations the longer programs stayed in place and under mayors from the Workers' Party ⁴. The abstract reports associations, not proven causal effects, and the party finding is a reminder that PB results depend on the political setting in which they operate.

Competing interpretations

Direct power as the measure of real participation. On Arnstein's reading, mechanisms that leave the final decision with the same officials are tokenism unless power shifts ². Swiss initiatives and referendums meet this test in law ¹.

Advice as a legitimate and useful role. Others hold that representative bodies should keep final authority and that the value of consultation and deliberation lies in better information and public reasoning. The Irish design, with a duty to respond to each recommendation, tries to make advice accountable without making it binding ⁶.

Binding votes have costs of their own. A binding vote settles questions by majority. That raises concerns about minority rights, agenda setting by whoever can gather signatures or draft the question, and the difficulty of revising a decision. The Miller case shows a different problem: when the legal effect of a vote is left unstated, the political dispute moves into courts and legislatures ⁷. See representation and tradeoffs.

Interpretation, this site's reading. No mechanism is simply better. Each answers the question "what must happen after people take part?" differently, and each answer creates its own risks. Naming that answer clearly, before people take part, is the minimum honest practice.

Application to this framework

My Vote Forward does not claim to have invented referendums, consultation, participatory budgeting, or citizens' assemblies. It draws on them, and it is educational. The websites do not conduct official votes.

1. State the legal power of every item. Each proposal should show whether it is a priority signal, an advisory consultation, a qualified ballot measure, or a decision already made, and who holds authority. A collected priority has no automatic policy mandate; see collective priorities.
2. Track follow-through. Because outcomes after participation vary, the participation over time model includes follow-through as a stage, with status changes recorded rather than assumed.
3. Do not promise a pending vote. Participation between elections does not mean a ballot measure always exists. Priorities and opinions can be gathered when no vote is scheduled, and that should be said plainly.
4. Separate the three parts. Priorities can be public in aggregate. Opinions are shared only voluntarily and specifically. A future official ballot would stay private. These rules come from the different powers and risks each part carries; see the framework.
5. Who chooses the questions matters. Signature thresholds, random selection, and government referral are three different ways of setting an agenda. See governance.

Hypothetical example. A town runs an online survey asking residents to rank five budget areas. Parks rank first. The council then cuts park funding for legal reasons it already faced. If the survey had stated at the start that it was advisory and that some spending was fixed by law, residents would have understood the result as information for the council, not a decision. See tradeoffs.

Unresolved questions

• Under what conditions do advisory processes change decisions, and how could that be measured without counting only the cases where officials already agreed?
• Does frequent direct voting increase understanding and participation, or does it tire voters out? The evidence differs by country and design; see cases.
• How should a binding mechanism protect rights that a majority might restrict? This is a question for constitutional law in each jurisdiction.
• How should results from people who chose to participate be weighed against the views of those who did not? See measurement.