Effectiveness and efficiency of a public hearing in the Polish Parliament

Paper aims to analyze the normative assumptions and the recent practice of public hearing in decision-making process in the Polish Parliament, being one of less investigated form the wide spectrum of participatory tools experimented in Poland in the last two decades. Public hearing as a consultative, opinion sharing and informative mechanism was introduced in Polish Lower Chamber (Sejm) in 2006 resulting from NGO’s initiative to improve involvement of citizens in the law-making process. Respectively, the Senate adopted a similar arrangement into the inner regulation in 2013, as a facultative stage of procedure relating legislative proceeding. The device using fluctuated over the time: from 2006 to 2017 have been proceeded 30 public hearings, while after 2018 none have been implemented, due to consequent rejection by majority in Lower Chamber committees. In contrast, in Senate a prior modest practice has showed increasing progresses and new significance (as a counterbalance mechanism to the governing majority). Moreover, the NGO’s have initiated to organize hearings concerning the most important to public opinion issues (fe. as a design of the Post-Covid New Recovery Plan) independently from MPs and beside of the parliament buildings. The use of this particular tool of participatory democracy in Poland manifested its potential of shaping the institutional arrangements, but also showed the weaknesses of normative constructions and high fragility to the contextual factors. In our analysis, we emphasize the question of measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of this normative tool by referring to the inclusiveness of marginalized or under-represented groups. Not only the low participation of citizens, the reluctant attitude of the parliamentary majority, but also the problematic quality of the deliberation is a matter that requires in-depth research and exhaustive explanations.