Outcomes from the second meeting of the Deliberative Democracy Lab

On 4–5 March, the BRIDGE project team held its second meeting with representatives of civil society organisations, international projects, local authorities, and public participation experts at the Deliberative Democracy Lab.

Participants analysed the experiences of Zhytomyr, Zviahel, Slavutych, and Konotop, where citizens’ assemblies and citizens’ panels have already been tested, and focused on the first three key challenges in the implementation of these practices in Ukraine:

• how to conduct fair random selection
• how to build trust in the process
• how to select topics for deliberative practices

Below are summarized key insights of the discussion.

How to conduct fair random selection?

An assembly involves creating a model of the community in miniature (a minipublic). This ensures that not only active citizens, but also residents who are usually not engaged in public participation processes, are included in the discussion. Creating such a minipublic through random selection ensures the representation of different social groups, including students, pensioners, and parents on parental leave.

Recommendations discussed:

• You can use databases maintained by Administrative Service Centres, electoral registers, and municipal service providers (such as water utilities) to reach actual household addresses.
• Apply systematic random selection when sending invitations (for example, sending invitations to every second or seventh apartment) to ensure randomness of the sample.
• Involve young people aged 14–16 (with parental consent), as they are active users of urban space.
• Use open-access software (such as Panelot) for transparent selection. This helps prevent suspicions of manipulation that may arise with manual selection.

How to build trust in the process?

Without clear guarantees that their recommendations will be considered, citizens lose motivation, and the assembly itself loses its purpose.

Recommendations discussed:

• Before the assembly begins, public authorities should sign a memorandum or adopt formal rules committing to consider the recommendations and provide an official response.
• Launch a large-scale communication campaign (billboards, social media, video messages from public authorities) to ensure residents understand that the process is real and that invitations are not spam.
• Entrust the organisation of the process to an independent third party (such as international partners or civil society organisations) to avoid perceptions that the event is pro-government.
• Establish a hotline or chat where invited residents can ask questions and understand the importance of their participation.
• Establish official monitoring groups among assembly members to track how public authorities implement their recommendations after the process concludes.
• Where possible, make random selection and final voting public, involving journalists or elected representatives as observers.

How to select a topic?

Overly broad or poorly framed topics hinder constructive dialogue. If an issue is not relevant to residents or falls outside the competence of local authorities, people lose interest, and the recommendations cannot be implemented.

Recommendations discussed:

• Focus on topics that local authorities can realistically fund and implement within their mandate.
• Analyse previous surveys and data on the composition and needs of the community to identify the most pressing issues for residents. 
• Hold consultations with key stakeholder groups (businesses, civil society organisations, religious organisations) to narrow down topics to three priority areas. 
• Allow residents to make the final decision on the topic through online platforms (such as E-dem) or open forums. Analyze previous surveys and community data
• Involve subject-matter experts to ensure that the assembly question is clearly formulated and leads to actionable recommendations.  

All outputs from this and future meetings will feed into the final recommendations for the effective implementation of deliberative democracy in Ukraine. The third meeting of the Deliberative Democracy Lab will take place on 16–17 April in Kyiv and will focus on deliberative democracy tools in the context of Ukraine's Law “On Direct Democracy”.