Overview and Background

The Democracy Beyond Elections initiative explores avenues for strengthening deliberative democratic practices across New York City and North America. It began in 2019, through a partnership with New York City’s Civic Engagement Commission (CEC) to map opportunities and risks associated with digital platforms promoting civic participation and empowerment. Since then, CWP has broadened its work with the CEC via a research partnership to assess the efficacy of “The People’s Money,” the city’s participatory budgeting program. In April 2024, we expanded the initiative to include a collaboration with FIDE-North America and New America on programming that investigates the promise and difficulties of implementing citizens’ assemblies across a wide range of jurisdictions. 

Summary

Public trust in democratic institutions has declined in recent years, both in the United States and globally. This trend has renewed interest in increasing public participation in political decision-making. As a result, governments and democracy advocacy groups are turning to deliberative tools, including citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting, and digital platforms designed to support and scale these efforts.

In response to this growing interest, CWP partnered with the CEC in 2019 to identify the opportunities and risks of using digital platforms to strengthen civil society participation and empowerment. CWP’s report, Digital Tools for a Responsive Government, published in March 2021, highlights effective uses of digital technology to achieve these goals. Alongside developing a playbook for the CEC as they contemplated the adoption, launch and continued use of Decidim, a digital platform to foster connections between residents and city government, we examined how – and under what conditions – civic technology writ large can deepen civic engagement and build public trust in government.

Today, CWP continues to support the CEC in implementing and evaluating The People’s Money, New York City’s annual participatory budgeting process. This includes hosting presentations from city agencies for borough assembly members, assisting in project refinement, and providing evaluation and interview support. CWP remains committed to helping city agencies test and expand deliberative democratic practices that connect with local residents. We have also worked with Columbia Journalism School students to profile city residents who have participated in The People’s Money to better understand how deliberative democratic processes shape . 

In April 2024, we expanded our by partnering with the Federation for Innovation in Democracy–North America and New America’s Political Reform Program. Together, we launched programming to explore how citizens’ assemblies can become a regular part of American governance, including a closed-door session that brought together federal officials, civic leaders, and international experts to examine how citizens’ assemblies can improve political decision-making. We also highlighted the global knowledge and technical support available to help U.S. government agencies implement these assemblies.

We also host a public webinar series to explore the opportunity and challenges presented by citizen assemblies, as well as regular events across New York City with organizational partners engaged in expanding and testing the limits of these democratic innovations.