After paying taxes, we leave the rest to the efforts of the national and local governments, and complain if things don’t go well. Such citizen behavior is ironically referred to as “vending machine democracy.”
Naturally, when the product comes out, if it doesn’t come out, you try hitting it or shaking it, but most of the time it ends up being a waste of effort and you give up. A new citizen participation movement is trying to reconsider the way government and citizens should behave. In 2022, the OECD published “Guidelines for public participation processes”.

The first chapter introduces “myth of citizen participation.” “Citizens do not have the ability to understand the complexity of issues and projects,” “They cannot be trusted and drop out during the participation process,” and “[even when their voices are heard] they only create a list of wishes and complaints”.

The guidelines state that these are not necessarily true in practice.
However, cases of suspected customer harassment at administrative counters have also become a hot topic. It is understandable that some people in charge feel uneasy about interacting with unknown “citizens”.
The person in charge of the local government that introduced the resident participation tool that introduced earlier also frankly stated that she had such concerns at first. However, she commented that as she progressed, she realized that her fears were unfounded.

The relationship of trust between the government and citizens is not a given, but rather something that gradually develops at each site. With new information technology (ICT) such as SNS, anonymous malice has often become a social problem, but at the same time, it has become possible to visualize the interests and good intentions of citizens, which were previously difficult to see from the government.

Consensus-building systems like Decidim, as well as crowdfunding and online fundraising involving local governments and regions, can be said to be behavioral citizen participation made possible by ICT.
These systems create interactions with the government in which participants and supporters are made visible, not as “anonymous,” but through handle names and real names. Of course, there is also criticism that these are just temporary fads.

However, on the other hand, even a small commitment made over a period of time is not a bad thing if it is repeated two or three times. Such relationships will also become part of “training for democracy” (OECD guidelines).

Governments and citizens alike tend to unconsciously fall into the aforementioned preconception of “ignorant and uninterested citizens,” but in reality, citizens are made up of a wide variety of experts.
Even if they have no prior knowledge, their interest often leads them to gradually deepen their knowledge of the field. When administrative staff members are transferred to a new department, it is natural for them to voluntarily learn the necessary knowledge and improve their expertise. The same thing is happening to citizens.
We cannot get started if both the government and the citizens assume that each other will remain the same. Things may not always go well, but I think that working together without getting too excited or giving up hope that both sides will gradually change will open up a future for citizen participation.