The Digital Participatory Budgeting and the Question of Deliberation: the Case of “Decide Madrid”

Abstract

This article analyzes the emblematic case of digital participatory budgeting in Madrid, that took place between 2016 to 2019, known as “Decide Madrid”. The online platform “Consul” created by Madrid’s City Hall for Decide Madrid and other digital citizen participation mechanisms, was awarded by the United Nations and shared with dozens of cities around the world to implement their own digital participatory budgets. This document asks whether the apparent success of Decide Madrid has basis and particularly whether it served as a mechanism for citizen deliberation, this being one of the core values of the advocates of participatory democracy. The paper analyzes the number and content of digital comments on the 648 winning proposals in the last three years of Decide Madrid. Quantitative and qualitative analyses show that, despite its fame, Decide Madrid never served as a deliberation mechanism. Its few participants limited their activity to voting or, at best, leaving a comment on a web page. Deliberative discussions were minimal, even with the addition of some face-to-face spaces of participation. The analysis suggests that even in relatively wealthy countries, where the digital divide is weaker, digital mechanisms -at least on their own- are not yet sufficiently well designed to promote deliberation.