In a time when democracy faces global pressure and institutional innovation is more urgent than ever, one promising path forward involves deep, internal transformation—reforming democratic institutions from within. Among all branches of government, none is more central to this effort than the very place where modern democracy began and where its current crisis is most visible: our parliaments.

In this context, Brazil has emerged over the past decade as a pioneer in promoting citizen participation within its parliamentary processes. It has implemented several innovative initiatives that have not only opened up its legislative system to the public but have also gained international recognition.

A recent series of four excellent posts on this blog by Beth Noveck, Dane Gambrell, Allison Bruno Dias de Queiroz, and Luis Kimaid explores these initiatives:

1. The Senate’s e-Citizenship platform, allowing citizens to propose legislation directly.

2. The ability for citizens to submit questions to Senate hearings through the same platform.

3. Legislative Workshops in schools and universities across the country.

4. A system of public consultations on all bills under consideration in the Senate.

These posts do a great job of showcasing the strengths of each initiative while highlighting their challenges and limitations. Importantly, they offer suggestions for improvement—many of which center around the integration of AI to make citizen participation more massive, inclusive, meaningful, and collaborative.

Brazil stands as a powerful example that parliamentary innovation doesn't always come from the usual suspects like the UK or Finland. Technological innovation, when thoughtfully applied, can help transform even large and still-developing democracies from the Global South.

That said, as with all public innovation—especially when urgent reforms are needed—we must see these examples as first steps in a long journey. The real question is: how can we take the next, more ambitious steps? How these initiatives might be assessed, and then consequently improved? How can they be extended? And how can these efforts in Brazil inform global learning and experimentation in open government? What counts the most is always the bigger picture. 

That’s what this series of posts contributes: it offers international visibility to Brazil’s democratic innovations, identifies promising avenues for future development, and adds to the growing global dialogue on how AI and digital tools can improve democratic quality and legitimacy.

To build on this, I’d like to offer four complementary considerations that I expose in two different posts:

1. The importance of the ends of participation

2. The need for an economy of participation

3. The case for worshipping citizen engagement

4. The centrality of deliberation

These can be viewed as four pillars of democratic innovation that may provide crucial guidance in evaluating actual public initiatives, such as those implemented in Brazil.

I will divide this discussion into two parts, presenting the first two considerations in this initial post and addressing the remaining two in the second.

1. The ends of participation

Our central democratic institutions are partially obsolete, as they were designed in and evolved through a different historical context to face significantly different needs and challenges. But they crystallized over the last two centuries the way they did because they offered a reasonably good balance between effectiveness and legitimacy. Such institutions must now adapt. Deep reform is required. And citizen engagement is surely one of the main ingredients in the new recipe. But, as with any other project of democratic innovation, these initiatives must have clear ends.

We need a clear understanding of why citizen engagement is needed, what problem it aims to solve or reduce, and which exact goals it should pursue.

Unfortunately, in the public sector, innovative actions are too frequently taken solely because they are fashionable, or because they will make institutions appear more modern and responsible, even if that is not necessarily the case. We want to make our institutions more open and inclusive, but why? And what do openness and inclusion mean in this context? What do they require?

This triggers the question of what ends are being pursued by parliamentary democratic innovations in Brazil. We should avoid the temptation to treat this as self-evident. Is giving citizens more voice in the legislative process one of these ends? But, if so, why it should be? Is it because we think greater citizen engagement will increase the parliament's and the whole system's legitimacy? Or will it improve the quality of decisions? Or both? In those cases, it is fair to ask: is having the opportunity to send proposals for new legislation limited to only 140 characters, or to address thousands of questions to Senate hearings, the best way to give them voice? The very idea of "the best way" conceptually implies that we have some previous understanding of the values and ends we are trying to pursue.

In my view, four goals should guide all parliamentary engagement initiatives:

• Rebuilding trust between citizens and parliaments

• Reinforcing democratic legitimacy with an updated 21st-century understanding of democracy

• Improving lawmaking quality, including legislative efficiency, effectiveness, and efficacy

• Fostering civic education, trust, and collective intelligence through collaboration 

Actual innovations should be assessed according to these four standards: Are electronic consultations, for instance, that give Brazilian citizens the chance to vote for or against bills under discussion at the Senate, and which clearly don't meet the standards of legitimate referendums, conducive to improvements in any of these four ends? It's hard to see. But if they are, in what way? Could they be improved in order to contribute even more to those ends? What about the other three innovations?

2. The economy of participation

Citizen participation is a scarce resource. Not all citizens possess the kind of civic commitment and motivation that participatory mechanisms require. And even those who do, possess it in different degrees and nevertheless have limited time and energy.

This implies that there is a total, limited amount of participatory energy that institutions may mobilize and manage in a particular period. Such institutions then have the duty to manage this energy responsibly, in an economic way.

The idea of an economy of participation has many implications. Public innovators must ask, for instance, whether the projects they are leading are sustainable over time or will spoil or exhaust resources, whether they waste too much participatory energy, or whether they are mobilizing such energy efficiently.

Here, the point is not so much that we should minimize citizen engagement or make it cheap or too easy. We should definitely facilitate it and make it less costly, but also, generally speaking, maximize it, if only in those areas where it is really needed, where it might make a real difference. 

More importantly, institutions must take such participation into account. There is no worse waste of participatory energy than authorities opening up calls for ideas, proposals, or questions, or processes of consultation, and then ending up ignoring them, piling them up in the last drawer of the darkest corner of the archive.

That in Brazil 46 legislative bills have been influenced by ordinary citizens making proposals sounds positive and is truly remarkable. We don't know how many of the 120,000 ideas submitted, however, were really good and ended up contributing in one way or another to the legislative process, or were just forgotten. That 30 million votes have been cast in the e-consultations in favor or against the bills being discussed in the Senate is an impressive number. What has been the real political impact of those consultations? Did all that energy really contribute to improving the results of the legislative process? These and many other questions emerge from a correct economy of citizen participation.

Conclusion

In summary, Brazil's pioneering parliamentary innovations represent a significant step toward revitalizing democracy in the digital age. However, their true value can only be realized when guided by clear objectives and managed with an awareness of participation as a precious resource. The e-Citizenship platform, legislative workshops, and other initiatives must be evaluated not just on their technological innovation or participation numbers, but on how effectively they rebuild trust, enhance democratic legitimacy, improve legislation quality, and foster civic education. Simultaneously, these mechanisms must acknowledge the limits of citizen energy and ensure that every contribution is meaningfully considered rather than merely solicited. 

As we look to Brazil's example, the challenge ahead is not simply to create more channels for participation, but to design systems that make each citizen's engagement both economical and impactful—transforming limited participatory resources into meaningful democratic renewal. In the next post, I will focus on the case for cultivating citizen engagement and for giving deliberation the centrality it deserves in contemporary democracy.

José Luis Martí is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Law at Pompeu Fabra University.