Page 94 - Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections

Introduction In any engagement, your starting point for any project is to isolate and identify a ‘problem issue’ where there is a role for engagement and involvement in the public decision. It sounds obvious, but there are some forms of engagement where government does not want to share the decision, there is significant political risk, or the goal is simply to inform. This problem-based approach to decisions allows for governments and decision makers to find the right democratic tool in order to solve their issue – different approaches for different problems. The issue could be: • exposing a single, specific trade-off dilemma (e.g. limited funds so infrastructure spending needs to be prioritised; or addressing growing obesity in the community) or; • multiple competing dilemmas (e.g. an issue like climate change where one part of the solution involving energy mix or pricing creates new dilemmas around equity of impact, loss of jobs in affected communities etc). Note that neither of these two challenges is either just informing the community or getting sign off feedback on a planned solution. You should think about which democratic practice is most suitable to your problem. Does it require deliberation? Or does it require a different type of democratic practice? It will be useful to take a look at the Red Flags on pg 61-65 as well to see if any apply to your situation. 92 A Project of the UN Democracy Fund (UNDEF)