This chapter looks into the growth of diverse types of public inquiries and public consultation arrangements in policymaking. These arrangements bring to the table individual members of the public who otherwise have no direct policy – advisory – role, given the predominance of neo-corporatist style advisory bodies in Belgium (Van Damme and Brans, 2012). In some of these new public consultation and participation forms, citizens are not at the end of the delivery process, but are actively engaged in framing policy problems, and selecting and evaluating policy solutions. Nonetheless the rationales behind these consultation and participation processes may differ widely as to perspectives on democracy (Mayer et al, 2005). Some inquiries and consultations are conceived from an instrumental perspective from which it is believed that engaging citizens in policy analysis has something tangible to contribute to policy, by, for instance, enriching knowledge of specific policy problems, or by fostering policy support necessary for implementing solutions. From a more substantive view on democracy, citizen participation is rooted in participatory and deliberative democracy, and expected to contribute to the legitimacy of the decision-making process (Michels and De Graaf, 2010).

This chapter analyses the variety of public consultation and participation arrangements in Belgium at different levels of government in order to clarify the public's role in policymaking and analysis beyond the ballot box. To this end, a framework of analysis in three dimensions is used: Who participates? How do they participate? Why do they participate? This analysis focuses on public consultation and participation forms that are ‘arranged’ and managed by public authorities, but we also include recent experiments such as the G1000 citizen-led initiative. Such an initiative proposed a bottom-up approach for public participation in the agenda setting of policy problems and even in the formulation of public solutions.

Policymaking and public consultation

The increasing complexity of the policy environment has been critical for the policymaking process. On the one hand, so-called ‘wicked problems’ combining scientific uncertainty with societal dispute challenge traditional ways of policymaking (Jacob and Schiffino, 2011). Governments are increasingly dependent not only on external information, knowledge and expertise, but also on external support and commitment in order to successfully deliver policies (Barker and Peters, 1993).