What happens to the proposals generated by participatory processes? One of the key aspects of participatory processes that has been the subject of rare systematic analysis and comparison is the fate of their outputs: their policy proposals. Which specific factors explain whether these proposals are accepted, rejected or transformed by public authorities? In this article contextual and proposal‐related factors are identified that are likely to affect the prospect of proposals being implemented. The explanatory power of these factors are tested through multilevel analysis on a diverse set of 571 policy proposals. The findings offer evidence that both contextual and proposal‐related variables are important. The design of participatory processes affects the degree of implementation, with participatory budgeting and higher quality processes being particularly effective. Most significant for explaining outcomes are proposal‐level, economic and political factors: a proposal's cost, the extent to which it challenges existing policy and the degree of support it has within the municipality all strongly affect the chance of implementation.

In this article we analyse the effects of different data collection strategies in the study of local participatory experiences in a region of Spain (Andalusia). We examine the divergences and similarities between the data collected using different methods, as well as the implications for the reliability of the data. We have collected participatory experiences through two parallel processes: a survey of municipalities and web content mining. The survey of municipalities used two complementary strategies: an online questionnaire and a CATI follow-up for those municipalities that had not answered our first online contact attempt. Both processes (survey and data mining) were applied to the same sample of municipalities, but provided significantly different images of the characteristics of Andalusia's participatory landscape. The goal of this work is to discuss the different types of biases introduced by each data collection procedure and their implications for substantive analyses. KeyworDsCitizen participation; Data collection procedures; Internet data mining; Local participation; Participatory experiences; Survey administration mode. resumenEn este artículo analizamos los efectos de diferentes estrategias para la recolección de datos en el estudio de las experiencias participativas andaluzas. Examinamos para ello las diferencias y similitudes entre los datos recogidos mediante diferentes métodos, así como las implicaciones para la fiabilidad de los datos. Para ello, hemos utilizado dos procedimientos paralelos. En primer lugar, una encuesta a municipios y la minería de datos en Internet. La encuesta se realizó utilizando dos modos de administración diferentes, un cuestionario online y un cuestionario telefónico de seguimiento a los municipios que no respondieron al primer intento de contacto vía correo electrónico. Tanto la encuesta como la minería de datos fueron aplicados a la misma muestra de municipios, aunque arrojaron diferencias significativas en cuanto a las características del panorama participativo en Andalucía. El objetivo de este trabajo es discutir los diferentes tipos de sesgos introducidos por cada procedimiento de recogida de datos y sus implicaciones para posteriores análisis sustantivos. Palabras ClaveExperiencias participativas; Minería de datos online; Modo de administración de encuestas; Participación ciudadana; Participación local; Procedimientos de recogida de datos. revista internaCional De soCioloGía (ris) Special issue on methodological challenges in participation researchVol. 70, extra 2, 65-87, diciembre 2012

This paper examines the impact of economic conditions on participatory democracy. It analyses whether economic crises affect the types of proposals that emerge from local participatory processes and the fate of these proposals. Focusing on more than 500 proposals that emerged from 34 participatory processes in Spain between 2007 and 2011, our study covers a period which straddles the emergence of severe economic problems resulting from the global financial crisis. Applying four different but complementary analytical strategies, we find two types of effects. First, proposals made during the crisis period were less costly though more challenging. Second, local governments implemented a smaller proportion of the proposals that were put forward by the public. These findings suggest that external economic shocks reduce the ability of governments to respond to the demands of citizens, but that citizens also recalibrate their expectations in response to austerity.

In many countries, advisory councils are the most common participatory institution in which public administration interacts with civil society around environmental issues. Nevertheless, our knowledge about them is quite limited. The main goal of this article is to show the differences they present with advisory councils in other policy areas in three main aspects: who participates, how they work, and which are their outputs. These differences are especially important because they emerge again regarding their participants’ opinions and satisfaction. We adopt a quantitative perspective in order to analyze this reality in Spain, a country where advisory councils are widespread and highly institutionalized at national, regional and local levels. After developing a mapping of 2013 existing advisory councils, we selected a sample of 55 in three policy areas. The data collected included their formal rules, composition, website characteristics and a survey to 501 participants. This set of evidence shows that environmental councils are more poorly designed, and that this is consequential since it is related with more negative opinions among their members and to a larger degree of polarization in their perceptions.

This article uses recent empirical results from a comparative Southern European study to show that the participatory practices commonly developed in this area are quite different from some of the common ideas related to deliberation in the English-speaking world. One of the main differences lies in the characteristics of the promoters, since most of them are top-down experiences organized by public authorities. The other main difference lies in the role played by equality concerns, which are quite marginal in most of these processes. In other aspects, like the role of participation professionals or the existence of important inequalities in the participation of different groups of citizens, the experiences developed in this area are not as different from what most of the comparative research has shown.