The INCITE-DEM project reveals alternatives for popular participation in political decisions.

For three years, the European project INCITE-DEM brought together a dozen institutions with the aim of studying new alternatives for citizen participation within current democratic systems. At the end of January, a conference held at the European Parliament presented the conclusions reached by a consortium of researchers led by the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Change (CE3C) through the association FCiências.ID. In the end, the project revealed that European citizens expect to be able to resort to new mechanisms that guarantee they have a voice in the political decision-making process.

“If we want to maintain our democracy, we have to invest in new models of popular participation that are inclusive, transparent, and efficient. It's not about replacing democracy, but strengthening democracy with participatory models,” emphasizes Inês Campos, coordinator of the INCITE-DEM project. “There's this idea that people don't vote or vote under protest, and what we see in this study is that, eventually, current democratic systems aren't providing enough tools for people to have a voice,” adds the researcher.

Over the three years it ran, the INCITE-DEM project carried out several initiatives aimed at gathering opinions and fostering active citizen participation in various democratic processes. It was in this context that INCITE-DEM researchers developed Democracy Laboratories in Lisbon, Barcelona, ​​Rome, Trondheim, and Ljubljana, with sessions for groups of 25 citizens who agreed to debate and present innovations for democracy. The European project's roadmap also included a survey that gathered responses from 14,000 citizens in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, and the United Kingdom.

Of the proposals collected throughout the project, the formation of citizen assemblies has received the most attention. Inês Campos acknowledges that there is no single model for a citizen assembly, but notes that, should these spaces for debate and the presentation of proposals and ideas advance, they will have to be properly "anchored in legislation." "Governments must create laws for this, even if these laws may vary in how citizens' proposals are treated at the political level," the researcher reiterates.

The proposals collected during the public consultation initiatives were presented at different political levels. At the presentation session in the European Parliament, which took place on January 27th, representatives from different political backgrounds praised the importance of promoting innovation in the democratic system. “With this project, we present empirical evidence on the importance of public participation in strengthening democracy,” concludes Inês Campos. Democracy now has the floor.