Common Patterns in Coping with Under-Representation in Participatory Processes: Evidence from a Mutual Learning Space for Portuguese Local Authorities (LAs)

This article is based upon work from COST Action ‘Constitution-making and deliberative democracy’ (CA17135), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).Over the past decade, Portugal became one of the countries most committed to involving citizens in public decision-making, using ‘open door' approaches based on participants’ self-selection. To what extent are such practices concerned with inclusiveness? The article is built on the first stage of a two-fold collaborative research to map strategies shaped by Portuguese municipalities for coping with underrepresented actors in participatory processes. The exploratory analysis – funded by the Network of Participatory Municipalities of Portugal (RAP) - reveals common patterns: (1) pursuing inclusion of underrepresented actors is not a policy for fostering a high diversification of actors in spaces of social dialogue, but just a tool for caring of marginalised groups; (2) ‘co-design’ of inclusionary policies with the targeted social actors is not a common method; (3) there is limited coordination between different policy sectors of each local authority; (4) the majority of 58 participation web-portals are imagined as mere instrumental spaces for organising their democratic innovations, but under-estimate their potential as ‘mirrors’ of the community and of the different underrepresented groups targeted. The dialogue opened among RAP members on the two surveys reveals a potential for imagining and co-designing shared solutions through the next stages of the collaborative research