Page 210 - Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections

Madrid Observatory of the City Amidst corruption scandals and declining public confidence in local government in Spain and around the world, Madrid City Council, in 2015, designed and launched a digital participation platform called Decide Madrid. The online platform aimed to widen public participation in Council decision-making and spending processes by creating a direct democracy mechanism that allowed anyone in Madrid to make a proposal for the improvement of the city. Proposals that received enough support would be passed through to a city-wide referendum. This mechanism worked, involving thousands of Madrid residents in participatory budgeting and making their own online proposals. However, there was room for improvement in the way proposals were accepted. To date, only 2 proposals had received the required 1% of the population support to pass on to a referendum – and each of those were an expression of public opinion which would not be able to be acted on by government. A complementary deliberative body was designed to work with the information gathered from Decide Madrid and weigh up which proposals they believed should be sent to a city-wide referendum after having fact-checking and tradeoff conversations. The City Council of Madrid’s Observatory of the City is a permanent body of citizen participation. Sitting alongside the 57-member City Council, a group of 49 people chosen at random address and propose solutions for key issues for the life of the citizens of Madrid. It plays a monitoring role for municipal actions and makes recommendations for improvement during a one-year term. 208 A Project of the UN Democracy Fund (UNDEF)