Understanding the policy impact of Citizens’ Assemblies: a dispatch from Gdansk

Whilst Citizens’ Assemblies are spreading in practice, significant doubts remain about the extent to which they and similar processes actually influence public policies. My research investigates Poland’s first Citizens’ Assemblies, finding that although on the surface, they seemed to achieve a high level of policy impact, a closer look reveals a less clear-cut picture, and reasons to be cautious about the claims we can make about them.

The Gdansk Citizens Assemblies in 2016-17 were the first Citizens’ Assemblies organised in Poland and they led to popularisation of this participatory tool in other Polish cities. After Gdansk, nine more Citizens’ Assemblies were organised in seven different Polish municipalities. The Gdansk Assemblies are an interesting case study to analyse policy impact for two reasons. Firstly, sufficient time has elapsed to allow us to track the implementation of policy recommendations. Secondly, the president of the city claimed that the recommendations would be treated as binding.

Such a declaration could suggest that policy impact of the Gdansk Assemblies would be stronger than in case of other, non-binding assemblies. However, my research suggests that the general impact of these processes was in fact, limited for several reasons. In particular, not all their recommendations influenced public policies to the same extent, and the process was perceived by some of its participants as a tool for legitimating the decisions made by public officials.

Assessing the policy impact of Citizens’ Assemblies is a challenge for researchers

Assessing the policy impact of Citizens’ Assemblies is a challenge for researchers. The simplest method is to compare the congruence between the democratic innovations’ recommendations and public decisions. This method, however, is ineffective in the case of very general recommendations because they do not directly correspond to a concrete policy. It also cannot determine if decision-makers make certain policy decisions because they are implementing recommendations, or if these decisions were results of some other external factors – and they happen to be the same or similar as the recommendations. Therefore, in order to assess the policy impact of democratic innovations we need to know if the changes in public policy were caused by this innovation itself or other factors. I analyse the policy impact of the Gdansk Citizens’ Assemblies’ from various perspectives. I first examine if their recommendations were implemented in public policies. Next, I characterise different kinds of impact on policies, and the general policy impact of the whole process.

The recommendations of Gdansk’s Assemblies were implemented to a large extent (in total around 75% of the recommendations were implemented in the city’s public policies). However, in the case of almost a quarter of recommendations it was not possible to assess if they are implemented or not – mainly due to their very general character. But this only scratches the surface, illustrating congruence between the recommendations and public decisions.

A closer look at the details shows that at least 11% of the recommendations were implemented not as a result of the Citizens’ Assembly but because of some external factors, such as obligations resulting from a national law, other participatory processes, or pressure from stakeholders. In particular, some recommendations covered solutions which were planned or even implemented before the organisation of the Assemblies. Therefore, even though these recommendations were implemented in public policies, they cannot be considered as direct policy impacts from the Assemblies.

some recommendations covered solutions which were planned or even implemented before the organisation of the Assemblies.

The Gdansk case also illustrates various kinds of impact that democratic innovations’ recommendations can have on public decisions. As one can expect, some of the recommendations produced new, innovative solutions, which were next implemented in public policies, and which would not have been formulated by the public authorities otherwise. But there was also a group of recommendations which did not have any impact on public policies, either because they were not implemented, or because their implementation was a result of factors external to the Assembly process. In addition, some of the recommendations were implemented indirectly – since their character was very general, they could have not been implemented directly, but they provided directions for public officials to make more concrete decisions. Finally, some interviewees claimed that the Assembly recommendations helped to speed up the process of making or implementing public decisions – which would be made and implemented anyway, but at different times:

Finally, we can move from the analysis of the impact of specific recommendations to assessing the general policy impact of the analysed case. Both the analysis of implementation of recommendations and opinions shared in interviews imply that the Gdansk Assemblies were to a large extent used to legitimise the decisions made by public officials. This is first suggested by the fact that some recommendations were planned or even implemented before the organisation of the Assemblies. Second, various actors involved in the Assembly (both public officials and stakeholders) claimed that the processes were used as a tool of legitimation of public policies of the city, including those implemented before the Assemblies. As one explained:

In particular, the participants saw the Assembly as a tool which helps public officials ‘not limit oneself with alleged barriers of social acceptance’ – as one of them put it – or let them get ‘a green light to broaden the policy, clarify, explain and expand it.’

Nobody, either on the part of public authorities or the stakeholders, was interested in monitoring the process of implementation of the recommendations.

The general impact of the Assemblies seemed to be lowered by a few different factors, which I argue can be summarised as a lack of willingness to treat these processes as an actual decision-making tool. It is especially notable that nobody, either on the part of public authorities or the stakeholders, was interested in monitoring the process of implementation of the recommendations. Moreover, my interviews with the people involved showed that stakeholders are still more willing to engage well-qualified public officials in decision-making rather than entrust it entirely to lay citizens.

Even when promising conditions are present, pathways to policy impact are far from guaranteed.

The case of Gdansk Citizens Assemblies shows that deliberative democratic innovations impact public policies in various ways. It is notable that even though the Assemblies were given a binding commitment upfront, and even though the level of congruence between recommendations and public decisions was high, their role in influencing public decisions was still limited. This demonstrates that even when promising conditions are present, pathways to policy impact are far from guaranteed.

About the author

Adela Gasiorowska is a researcher specialising in the area of deliberative democracy and citizen participation. She is currently a PhD Student at the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Law and Administration, where she conducts a research project on citizens’ assemblies in the Polish political and legal system.