Speaker
Description
Governments have been experimenting with innovative practices in the field of deliberative democracy to make the public participate in decision-making. However, these experimental practices do not create citizens´ entitlements, nor public power duties. Citizens´ participation needs to be secured and guaranteed through codification and institutionalization. Otherwise, no rights are conferred to citizens and deliberative processes operate at the discretion of public authorities. Experimental practices, without a legal framework supporting them are likely to bring about harmful effects on democracy. Citizens may perceive that their participation is useless if their opinions are not finally considered in decision-making because not legal framework makes compulsory for public authorities to integrate these inputs in the process.
To turn these pilot programs into sustained governmental practices remains a challenge. However, institutionalization of deliberative democracy is the key to secure citizens’ rights and also to provide deliberative processes with a set of guaranties and safeguards. As well as this, deliberative democracy needs to address an additional challenge. Any legal considerations to deliberative processes must take a future-oriented approach, considering not only to give solution to current unsolved problems, but also considering the lurking challenges in a changing world dominated by new technologies and AI.
| Presenting author | María Jesús García García |
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