In the last ordinary plenary session of the Lanzarote Island Council, on March 6, the political party Somos Lanzarote proposed a motion for the island institution to "urge the Government of the Canary Islands to adopt a series of improvements to the means and processes of citizen participation." The main argument revolved around improving the Citizen Participation area, mainly with mechanisms similar to those carried out by the Madrid City Council through the digital platform "Decide Madrid." Councilor Tomás López advocated for the capacity of this initiative to channel citizen participation, as well as the capacity for popular decision-making that emanates from it.
As a result of the phenomenon associated with the Madrid City Council's initiative, at the beginning of the year we launched a working group at the Autonomous University of Madrid to analyze this phenomenon in detail. In this article, I will not analyze all the results, but I will present a series of considerations that seem relevant to me and will help to develop an objective opinion.
Firstly, it must be clear that Decide Madrid revolves around free software, that is, a digital platform where citizens, whether or not they are registered in the municipality, can generate demands and requests - we estimate that there are around 17,000 requests on the platform for countless issues. Those requests that reach 27,000 supports will be, and this was made known to us by the General Director of Decide Madrid, Miguel Arana, directly passed to the Administration - without filters or political mediation. The question that arose for us is how is the entry of requests that may go against the general interest managed? In the theory of the representative mandate, it is the public representatives through the administrations who ensure the general interests. It could be said that if a request has the support of at least 27,000 citizens - an important figure that we do not question - it is inexorably a reflection of the general interest, but this statement is debatable. As Chantal Delson reflects, "the harmful particularity is that which consists of taking one's own opinions as the only truth. In the city, the most harmful particularity is that which consists of serving one's own desires, instead of serving the general interest." What is our own usually seems more important to us and we tend to maximize demands without realizing that politics, the res publica, is based on the general desire. In no way should particular demands be underestimated, it is legitimate for each person to expose and demand a solution to considerations that he believes are important, but democracy and politics, and especially decision-making, go beyond individualism. Are 27,000 "likes" enough reason for that demand to be binding? If we take into account the theory of the Psychology of Crowds, the capacity for reasoning and sanity decreases when we participate in ideas that gather a large number of followers. Thus, it is to be expected that requests that at first would not have substantial relevance for us, involve a spontaneous "click" of support without saving more long-term reflection considerations, with the result of legitimizing initiatives that will later prove to be counterproductive to the general interest.
Important is the fact that the Madrid mechanism not only conforms the software, but is linked to a series of offices throughout the city. It is a kind of alternative, since it is worth asking to what extent a digital platform can reach the entire population? The misnamed digital divide, a concept that in these times lacks meaning, could be a differential factor when participating and deciding online. Although Mr. Arana replied to this fact arguing that almost 90% of the population in Spain had a Smartphone, it is not clear that they are used for participatory purposes. In a study conducted by researchers Lehman Schozman, Sidney Verba and E. Brady of the University of Chicago, it was evidenced that innovations designed for citizen participation via electronic means did not necessarily improve the inequalities of the same. The use of the internet did not generate new citizens, nor was there even a correlation between young people, as the main users, and the use for political purposes. It is clear that a digital platform is far from being the best participation mechanism, and even less the most universal and effective.
If the initiative of the Somos Lanzarote group - legitimate and good to see given the context and the need for alternative channels to the straitjacketed Weberian bureaucracy - goes in the line of implementing a mechanism similar to the Madrid one on the island of Lanzarote, it would be worth asking whether the island has the logistical capacity to carry it out and, for me the most important thing, whether the conejero social fabric encourages a constant and costly participation process - not only in economic terms for the Administration, but in terms of social compensation. The fact that the approved initiatives go through a final phase of popular consultation, makes the cost of participation increase. The cost of participation is the fact that it costs a person more to go to vote than to abstain, or in a more didactic way, if on the day of the vote the unfavorable weather conditions represent a greater cost for the individual, he will tend to stay at home. This is the reason behind the results obtained in Madrid. Although the digital platform has a considerable participation influx, the final endorsement is lower in comparative terms - a scarce 8% of the Madrid population participated in the referendum. If we make an effort to extrapolate that reality to Lanzarote, and observing the electoral abstention rates that the island presents for the elections to the Island Council in historical terms, it would be expected that it would not even reach 8% - about 11,606 people. Finally, we must take into account the territory, whether participation processes of this magnitude are feasible in geographies with population disparity. Clemente Navarro and Magdalena Wojcieszak have shown that decision-making varies according to the issues and the scale at which they are taken. Citizens seem to be more receptive to participation at the local level - participatory localism - due to the opportunities for contact between them and the problems that need to be decided. They point out that the optimal populations for considerable participation would be around 50,000-100,000 inhabitants, although it depends on other factors such as socioeconomic level, education, etc. In these terms, the only sui generis possibility that occurs to me is to develop a pilot project in the municipality of Arrecife, always adapted to the possibilities and capacities of the consistory. However, that is a political decision that must be generated within the City Council, or in the porteña civil society.
My opinion is one of caution when implementing mechanisms similar to "Decide Madrid" on the island of Lanzarote. I am not against it, nor do I question the need to develop projects that encourage horizontal participation, that which brings citizens closer to their administration, but there are other alternatives that can be better adapted to the conejera reality, and can be a gateway for the realization of more ambitious projects. Neighborhood councils, participatory budgets, participatory surveys or the co-management of services are some of the many that can be proposed.
There is a widespread error of trying to compare antagonistic models. The elaboration of public policies requires analytical processes that go beyond mere desires to have what such or such city possesses. Lanzarote is not Madrid, just as Madrid is not California or Copenhagen, although some of us wish that were not entirely true.
Ayoze Corujo, Fourth-year student of Political Science and Public Administration at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
