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7th OIDP Conference

From the 26th to 28th of November 2007 the French city of Nanterre took in the 7th OIDP annual Conference. During three days more than 300 participants from 22 countries debated and exchanged their experiences about participatory democracy. Latin America was at length represented by participants from Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Argentina, Mexico and Peru. North America at the same time was represented by Canada. France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece represented Europe with Slovakia which began the representative of an increasing number of east European local governments that have been joined recently to OIDP. Also Africa was present with participants from cities of Cameroon, Benin, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Mali or Senegal that started to walk of late on the participatory democracy roads.

The variety of cultural, social and political contexts of every experience contributed to enrich the discussion and also to combine praxis and theory on the same questions: How can we motivate more citizen participation? And why are there absences in citizen participation? For the first day, the Opening session and the Inaugural Conference about Reflections on Citizens’ Participation in Participatory Democracy Processes took part as well as the Award to the City winning the 2nd Best Practices Distinction.

During the second working day, the Conference was divided into three Work Groups to develop a deep and specific dialogue about participation against non participation from three concrete analysis perspectives: social, territorial, and methodological factors were analyzed as possible inhibition determinants of participation. Likewise that kind of dynamic also included the presence of many experts and Public Administration voices engaged to Participatory Democracy who contributed with their knowledge to the discussion.

During the last day it is necessary to emphasize the work made by students of European Studies Society and Évry University. They summarized all that was discussed at the simultaneous thematic workshops and then they set it out in the morning Plenary Session. All the subjects presented by them fed and enrich the discussion about Participatory Democracy from an unusual and external perspective which acted as a mirror to people who work to go into democratic practices. That kind of exercise was assessed as a positive practice to OIDP network.

Concerning to OIDP own activity, the partners chose La Paz (Bolivia) to chair OIDP during 2008 and to be the host of the annual conference; next edition will be focused on “Interculturality and Citizen Participation, inclusion and coexistence models of people”. Moreover the Spanish city of Barcelona was re-chosen as Technical Secretariat for three years.

Finally the II Distinction for Best Practices in Citizens’ Participation was awarded to Belo Horizonte (Brazil) for Digital Participatory Budgeting experience. On the other side, the city of Villa González (Dominican Republic), the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Regions and the General Student Council of Val de Marne were also granted with special mentions as a result of the jury suggestions.

Now we are working on the results of the Conference. We are summarizing the contents of the plenary sessions, workshops and discussions to prepare the final publication. In a short period of time we will upgrade this information to provide you all the necessary materials as soon as possible.