Is there a citizen lobby? A case of participation in the Spanish Congress

Abstract

During the last years, Parliaments in Spain have been incorporating mechanisms and forms of participation that open up decision-making to citizens. In Spain, there are precedents of the opening by the legislative assemblies of the Autonomous Communities of processes of citizen participation. During the Covid'19 crisis, the Commission for Economic and Social Reconstruction opened a channel for citizen participation in the Spanish Congress of Deputies. The study of the contributions received and their content allows us to establish a typology of citizen participation from the perspective of the number and purpose of the proposed proposals, as well as from the analysis of the possible effectiveness in the work of influence, depending on the application or not of traditional lobbying techniques. The article proposes a professional methodology for analyzing all the contributions received to measure the effectiveness of the citizen response in terms of political incidence. Guides and improvement guidelines are established for future participatory processes.