Innovating in the Mainstream: Looking at Advisory Councils as Democratic Innovations

Regarding those institutional innovations devoted to promoting a closer dialogue between politicians and citizens, sectorial and territorially based advisory councils are the most common of all existing participatory devices. However, the generalized perception that they perform in most cases basically a ritual role and their more limited media visibility has resulted in an almost complete lack of research about their development and results. Well known international research is quite limited (Fung, 2004), and often the research is mostly focused on the most successful experiences and, therefore, generates a considerable bias regarding our knowledge of reality (Font, Della Porta and Sintomer, 2014). One objective of this paper is to stablish a mapping of the existence of these councils in Spain at three territorial levels: local (municipalities above 200.000 inhabitants), regional and national level. We want to analyze the limitations and transformative potential of advisory councils, in terms of accountability, effective policy-making and political equality. The description and evaluation of the advisory councils’ development will be based on the Spanish data produced by the Assodem Project (Associational democracy: accountable autonomy, participatory bias or vicious circle?), directed by Joan Font (IESA-CSIC). This includes a multilevel mapping of the existing advisory councils at the national, regional and local level (municipalities of more than 200.000 inhabitants). More specific information has been obtained from the constitutional documents and rules of 70 selected advisory councils, and an online survey has been addressed to participants, obtaining 569 respondents.