Doing Democracy Better
Doing democracy better: learnings from Iain Walker, Executive Director, newDemocracy Foundation.
In mid May, our team attended an “Ask Me Anything” session and follow-up discussion with deliberative democracy expert Iain Walker, to explore how communities can participate more meaningfully in local decision-making.
The conversation focused on a question that sits at the heart of our work: how can we ensure more people can genuinely participate in shaping the future of the places where they live, work and belong?
One of the strongest themes from the session was the importance of engaging with people early, before decisions have already been made. Rather than asking communities to give reactive feedback on finished plans, deliberative engagement focuses on involving people at the beginning of the process, when their input can still shape outcomes.
Iain also highlighted the importance of helping people participate meaningfully by providing balanced, accessible information first. Good engagement is not simply asking for opinions. It is creating the conditions for informed discussion, reflection, and community-led problem solving.
A key challenge discussed was representation. Across many engagement processes, the same voices tend to participate repeatedly, while younger people, renters, migrants, and others facing barriers to participation are often underrepresented. In particular, people aged 18 to 24 are consistently one of the hardest groups to engage, while those under 18 are rarely included in democratic processes at all.
The discussion reinforced the importance of designing engagement processes intentionally, rather than relying on traditional consultation models alone. This includes asking fundamental questions like:
- Who is missing from the conversation?
- What barriers prevent participation?
- How can we move beyond tokenistic engagement toward processes that genuinely reflect lived experience?
For Shaping our Future, these conversations are highly relevant to the work we do across the Queenstown Lakes and Upper Clutha districts. As our communities continue to grow and change, ensuring diverse voices are heard becomes increasingly important.
We are particularly interested in exploring practical, community-led approaches that can work in local settings with limited resources, not just large-scale government processes. This includes thinking about how to recruit more representative community groups, engage people earlier in planning processes, and build long-term trust and participation in civic engagement over time.
The session was a valuable reminder that doing democracy better starts with creating spaces where people feel informed, included, and genuinely able to contribute.
