Wietse Van Ransbeeck

The through-line

The single conviction underneath everything is that people trust institutions they can influence, and that the way to produce that influence is to make showing up easy. The evidence he keeps returning to is blunt: across OECD countries, only 22% of people who feel they can't influence decisions trust their government, while among those who feel they can, trust rises to 69% [11]. From that follows a plain design brief for government, summed up as the belief that "the distance between residents and government shrinks when showing up is made easy" [2]. Democracy, on this reading, is not a value to be displayed but a practice to be equipped, which is why he admires a presidential museum that sends visitors out knowing how to sign a petition, join community organizing or speak at a local meeting, treating them "as a participant, not a spectator" [2].

The shift over time is one of altitude and ambition. The early argument was about lowering barriers, particularly for young people, by meeting them on the smartphones they already carry rather than in town halls they never attend [15]. The current argument is about permanence and scale: engagement "only becomes useful when it stops being a series of projects and starts working as infrastructure: owned across departments, backed at the top, and still standing after the next election" [5]. Alongside that has come a widening frame, from single cities to European democratic infrastructure [12] and to the question of who controls AI systems that now reach more people than any parliament ever has [1].

On participation as infrastructure rather than projects

A platform used by one team for one consultation is a project; a platform used across an organisation is infrastructure. The benchmark he holds up is Salt Lake City, where fifteen departments now run their engagement through ShapeSLC, "giving residents a real say in the decisions that shape their city" [4]. The three tests he applies are ownership across departments, backing at the top, and survival past the next election [5]. The corresponding product ambition is equally practical: tools that help government leaders "get from a plan to outcomes residents can actually see" [5].

On why participation isn't yet at scale

The obstacle is political rather than technical, and he borrows Juncker's line to name it: "We all know what to do, we just don't know how to get re-elected after we've done it" [9]. His reading is that the willingness to govern more openly exists, and so does the political payoff, but the payoff stays invisible because the work of demonstrating it at scale to leaders has not been done [9]. That gap is why he treats the European Commission's decision to make citizen participation and civic technology a pillar of the European Democracy Shield as a real bet, and a recognition that strengthening democracy means building it with residents rather than only defending it [9].

On the quality of participation, not just the quantity

Asked whether citizen empowerment is the answer to historically low trust in UK government, his answer is "Yes, but" [11]. Yes, because influence is the single biggest driver of trust, and because people do not expect to win every time, they want to know their voice mattered [11]. But, because not all participation is equal: a statutory consultation or a survey is a different thing from genuine dialogue, co-design or shared decision-making [11]. The distinction matters most where communities are diverse and long-standing, which is the territory of Newham's People Power Places work and of co-designing public spaces with residents, children included [13].

On hybrid engagement and the offline voices that get lost

Digital participation has widened reach, but he argues the genuinely transformative shift is hybrid [10]. Much of the richest input still happens offline, in community meetings, paper surveys, workshops and everyday conversations between residents and staff in the field [10]. The failure is what happens next: offline input gets typed up by hand, analysed on the side, or quietly lost while the online data moves ahead in parallel, so "the voices that are hardest to reach end up the hardest to use" and high-quality data never reaches decision-makers [8][10]. The framing he prefers is that the challenge is no longer online versus offline, if it ever was, but connecting the two into one conversation [10], which means capturing every voice and making sense of them together [8], a case he has taken up publicly with Dembrane and Stad Oostende [8][10].

On what travels across borders and what doesn't

Working across 26 countries, with Italy joining after Switzerland and New Zealand [6], has taught him that "how little of the difficulty is local" [6]. Languages, legal frameworks and levels of institutional trust differ enormously; the hard part rarely does [6]. He also pays attention to how participation is staged: Modena launched Modena Partecipa not in a council chamber but in Piazza Sant'Agostino, the very square residents were being invited to redesign, with people standing in the space they were being asked to shape, which he calls a small choice about a venue and a good one [6]. He traces his own comfort with this to Belgium, where diversity read as richness and where overcoming differences meant learning to speak the language of the other, and inverts the usual saying: rather than making it anywhere despite Belgium, "we managed to build it because we started in Belgium" [7]. Fluency in adapting to international contexts is not to be taken for granted, and matters more than ever in a future he describes as European [7].

On scaling civic tech in Europe

He wants civic tech and digital participation platforms treated as essential democratic infrastructure, and welcomes Europe getting serious about scaling it under the European Democracy Shield [12]. Concretely, he pushed three recommendations for the shape of a European Civic Tech Hub alongside his Association Civic Tech Europe - ACTE colleagues, beginning with a cross-border procurement mechanism, building on research by mySociety and Sitra on how to mature and scale civic tech for greater impact [12].

On AI, reach and who holds the microphone

Over a billion people now talk to AI systems each month, and no parliament, broadcaster or international body has ever had standing two-way contact with that many humans at once [1]. Two things follow. First, these systems carry a specific cultural lens: frontier models compared against the World Values Survey Association hold values more secular and individualistic than those of any society on Earth [1]. Second, the same reach could run the other way, because the infrastructure to ask hundreds of millions of people the same question instantly already exists and simply isn't being used for that [1]. The risk he names is that a handful of companies end up holding the only microphone [1]. This is continuous with his longer-running interest in democracy's move into digital spaces, marked by moments like Obama's Reddit AMA showing technology enabling democratic engagement at scale [14], and with questions about how AI, community input and policymaking intersect in municipal practice [14].

On young people and the barrier problem

Rather than lamenting that young people don't come to town hall meetings, he argues for lowering the barrier to where they already are, which means smartphones [15]. The goal is digital infrastructure that lets local democracies function with young people actively involved, making it simple for young citizens to vote, set priorities and be heard [15].

On public servants and the people who do this work

He is consistent about crediting the unglamorous end of the job. City Hall is where budgets are debated, trade-offs are made, and slow decisions move a community forward, and above all where public servants show up every day, often without much recognition, because they care about the people they serve [4]. His view is that this service is not celebrated enough [4]. The same instinct shapes how he describes hiring: four open roles, different jobs but "same profile: changemakers with commercial talent", inside a fifty-person team of 20+ nationalities [3]. The stakes are stated in the same breath: every government won means thousands of residents gaining a real say in the decisions that shape their streets, schools and neighbourhoods [3].

Takeaways

• Use the influence-trust numbers as the argument for participation: 22% trust among those who feel they can't influence decisions, 69% among those who feel they can [11].
• Judge an engagement programme by three infrastructure tests: owned across departments, backed at the top, still standing after the next election [5].
• Treat offline input as first-class data. If workshop notes and paper surveys are analysed on the side or lost, the hardest-to-reach voices become the hardest to use [8][10].
• The blocker on scaling participation is political incentive, not capability. The payoff for governing openly exists but stays invisible, and demonstrating it to leaders is the unfinished work [9].
• Distinguish sharply between a statutory consultation or survey and genuine dialogue, co-design or shared decision-making. Not all participation is equal [11].
• Launch participation where the decision lives: Modena introduced its platform in the square residents were being asked to redesign, not in the council chamber [6].
• Reach young people through smartphones and simple acts of voting and priority-setting, not town hall meetings they don't attend [15].
• AI's reach is a democratic asset going unused: the infrastructure to ask hundreds of millions of people the same question instantly already exists [1].