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Cited by 51Political Theory and DemocracyPublic Policy and Administration ResearchPublic Administration and Political Analysis

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Measuring the impact of consultative citizen participation: reviewing the congruency approaches for assessing the uptake of citizen ideas

Open access
Vrydagh, Julien·2022·Policy Sciences
DOI 10.1007/s11077-022-09450-wPMC PMC8869347
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Abstract

As academic and political interest in citizen participation and democratic innovations is growing, the question of their impact on public policy remains essential to assess their genuine contribution to the normative project of democratization. Impact assessments of consultative participatory mechanisms are commonly conducted with a congruency approach-a desk-based research method which assesses impact based on the textual correspondence between a citizen-created idea and public policy documents. This method, however, lacks reliability and uniformity, and this paper therefore seeks to standardize its application and ways to improve the accuracy of its results by proposing two methodological add-ons. First, a sequential impact matrix that considers the preferences of decision-makers before a consultative participatory mechanism to see the extent to which decision-makers take up citizen ideas that align with or diverge from their own agenda. Second, a mixed method that combines a congruency approach with interviews of actors involved in the follow-up of the participatory process to balance their experiences with the congruency approach's main findings. The variants of the congruency approach are then applied to a deliberative minipublic-the citizen panel 'Brussels-Make Your Mobility'. This analysis shows how these methodological strategies alter the impact assessment's results, and its findings suggest that the use of a sequential impact matrix with a mixed method not only produces an accurate and reliable measurement but also generates valuable insights into the diffuse ways in which minipublics can exert substantial influences on the institutional structures and the political decision-making. Supplementary information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11077-022-09450-w.

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Metadata

Authors
Vrydagh, J.
Affiliations
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (BE)
Corresponding author
Vrydagh, Julien
ORCID
Vrydagh, Julien
Venue
Policy Sciences
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2022-02-24
Volume
55
Issue
1
Pages
65-88
ISSN
  • 0032-2687 (ISSN-L)
  • 1573-0891
DOI
10.1007/s11077-022-09450-w
PMC
PMC8869347
OpenAlex
W4213456614
Cited by
51
References
1
Citations by year
2026: 9 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 1
FWCI
29.15
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Policy Sciences (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • VUBIR (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) (submittedVersion)
Funders
vrije universiteit brussel
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
  • Social Sciences › Public Administration › Public Policy and Administration Research
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Public Administration and Political Analysis
Keywords
citizen participation, impact assessment, participatory democracy, policy uptake, deliberative mini-publics, democratic innovation, decision maker preferences, mixed methods

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