Hybrid deliberation: Citizen dialogues in a post-pandemic era

TL;DR

This paper reviews various citizen dialogue formats, identifies challenges, and proposes hybrid deliberation as a promising approach to enhance digital and face-to-face participation for better democratic engagement.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of hybrid deliberation, analyzes six case studies, and offers best practices for combining digital and traditional citizen participation methods.

Findings

Hybrid deliberation addresses participation challenges.

Successful cases highlight digital and analogue integration.

Best practices improve citizen engagement outcomes.

Abstract

This report first provides a brief review of various forms of dialogue-based participation, e.g., Citizen Assembly, Citizen Lottery, Citizen Jury, Deliberative Polling, and Participatory Budgeting. Challenges associated with these long-lasting practices are identified and hybrid deliberation is proposed as a concept to address the challenges. The report then analyzes six leading examples of digital or hybrid formats of citizen dialogues. Through the comparison of the cases, the report concludes about the hurdles/risks, success factors/opportunities, and best practices for a complementary use of digital and analogue participation formats. Hybrid deliberation is proposed to be the future direction for dialogue-based participation that involves masses and generates high-quality outcomes.