Deliberative Sustainability Test

Sub-Saharan Africa Eastern Europe Latin America Southeast Asia & India

This “Deliberative Sustainability” Test is a self-diagnostic tool that allows you to reflect on and evaluate the current status of a deliberative model or practice, using a rating scale from 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to “not implemented” or “never,” and 5 corresponds to “fully implemented” or “always”, according to the level of implementation achieved in each characteristic.

“Deliberative sustainability” is the ability of participatory processes to sustain themselves over time, adapt to changing contexts, and maintain their transformative potential through robust legal institutions, diverse financial viability, and social legitimacy rooted in local political culture. Sustainability is not a final goal, but an ongoing process.

This tool creates a space for reflection on our sustainability lens, but it is not a success index. It helps organizations analyze their practices, strengths, and areas for improvement trough reflection and self-diagnosis.

We invite you to look beyond short-term thinking and analyze the following five key areas:

Thoughtful design and adaptation to the local context.
Strong links and effective engagement with public institutions and key actors.
Community anchoring and social legitimacy.
Internal strengthening of the model and its partnerships.
Access to resources and continuity over time.

This test is designed to be completed as a team. Please reflect with the design and implementation team to ensure consistent results and recognition of group capabilities.

Estimated time required to complete this test: 30 Minutes

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BASIC INFO

Name

Email address

Phone Number

Name of the organization or social group to which you belong

Deliberative practice name

Country

Role within the deliberative model

FACTOR 1: APPROPRIATE DESIGN AND ADAPTATION TO THE LOCAL CONTEXT

Strong deliberative practices begin with designs that are capable of understanding and adapting themselves to the unique characteristics of the territory. This factor invites you to reflect on how well the model reads its local context, balances technical and citizen knowledge through pedagogy and dialogue, and incorporates flexible mechanisms that allow it to adapt to unexpected crises or social situations without losing rigor.

1. Is the model's design based on a prior participatory diagnosis of local characteristics (culture, social gaps, governance structures, and community dynamics) to ensure that the process responds to territorial realities and their actors?

2. Does the design of participatory spaces prioritize deep deliberation and incorporate mechanisms and tools that encourage reflection, balance the use of speech, and prevent political, technical, or institutional actors from dominating or overshadowing citizens' opinions?

3. Does the model incorporate knowledge-leveling mechanisms through pedagogical approaches and knowledge exchange, facilitating an equitable dialogue between expert knowledge and citizen knowledge, preventing technical aspects from subordinating local experience?

4. Does the model implement mechanisms to identify and reduce economic, cultural, logistical, and access barriers to ensure effective inclusion, recognition of public work, and meaningful participation of vulnerable social groups?

5. Does the model's design include mechanisms for methodological flexibility that allow it to adapt to unexpected internal or external changes, such as environmental crises or socio-political situations, to avoid forced or decontextualized deliberation?

6. Does the design incorporate mechanisms for continuous systematization and ongoing evaluation to facilitate adaptive design during the deliberation phase and to improve future interventions?

FACTOR 2: LINKS AND IMPACT WITH PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS AND ACTORS

For a deliberative model to be politically viable, participation must go beyond consultation and create real connections between citizens and decision-makers. This factor invites you to reflect on how advocacy processes, led by the deliberative model, can overcome or reduce bureaucratic barriers through mandatory accountability mechanisms, the creation of multi-stakeholder collaborative platforms, and the proactive inclusion of ideological, political, and cultural diversity to shield initiatives from electoral cycles and short-term volatility.

7. Does the model create or activate mandatory mechanisms for traceability, transparency, and accountability so that citizens can clearly understand the status of discussions, the level of adoption or rejection of their proposals, and their follow-up in related public and/or social management?

8. Has the model developed relational competence in political and administrative spaces to interact, engage in dialogue, and build consensus among actors across the territory, enabling ideological, political, and cultural diversity?

9. Does the deliberative process successfully influence and transform regulations and/or practices within the administrative-legal state, generating changes in administrative procedures, social services, and/or public policies?

10. Does the model foster coordination among civil society, academia, the private sector, and the state to create collective governance that enables co-construction, shared responsibilities, and sustained strategies to strengthen advocacy outcomes?

11. From the early stages, has the model engaged political opposition actors to strengthen legitimacy, support the future adoption of proposals, and ensure continuity during government changes and periods of polarization?

FACTOR 3: COMMUNITY ANCHORING AND SOCIAL LEGITIMACY

For a deliberative model to endure over time, it needs strong sociopolitical legitimation rooted in the community. This factor invites you to reflect on how the model prioritizes everyday human experiences and whether it follows a bottom-up approach that reflects the diversity of the territory. It also assesses how the model builds public trust through transparent information and whether it demonstrates tangible changes that reduce skepticism and strengthen the community’s commitment to social transformation.

12. Does the model promote broad and sustained community participation through deliberative practices that have social and institutional impact and reinforce the community's commitment to social and political transformation?

13. Does the process include strategies and methodologies that actively and representatively involve local social and cultural diversity, including the knowledge, voices, know-how, and experiences of social organizations, ethnic groups, and traditional communities from the territory?

14. Does the model incorporate a design approach centered on people and experience, prioritizing local civic practices and specific social issues, in order to learn, engage in dialogue, design solutions, and build consensus?

15. To what extent does the model recognize and promote autonomous participatory processes? E.g., those that arise from collective actors and local initiatives that have gained social legitimacy.

16. Does the model build social trust through communication strategies that guarantee access to clear, open, public and continuous information, allowing the community to take ownership of the participatory process and its results?

FACTOR 4: INTERNAL STRENGTHENING OF THE MODEL AND ITS ALLIANCES

For participatory processes to become sustainable over time, they require a professionalized organizational infrastructure and a solid ecosystem of collaborations. This factor invites you to reflect on the model’s internal operational capacity. In particular, it helps you to look at whether the model has institutionalized governance structures, if the team shares a clear sense of purpose, and the incorporation of specialized roles, such as friction managers, help anticipate and manage tensions between actors. This factor also highlights the importance of network-based reflection and continuous self-evaluation to maintain the vitality of the model’s internal governance structure.

17. Does the model have a permanent internal structure and formal collaborations with external actors that enable institutionalized participatory governance, including technical committees, boards of directors, and documented and transparent processes for decision-making and strategic planning?

18. Does the model foster a shared sense of purpose, political principles and democratic values that align with the implementation team’s guiding agenda, strengthening their continuity, commitment, and resilience throughout the process?

19. Does the implementation team actively participate in experience-sharing networks and engage in ongoing reflective exercises that enable them to question their own assumptions, enrich their practices, and avoid both isolation and routine in their practice?

20. Does the team have a ‘friction fighter’ role, whose function is to anticipate, manage, and resolve tensions between actors, facilitating strategic alignment and maintaining fluid relationships in advocacy and collaborative governance processes?

21. Does the model implement periodic self-assessment and critical reflection on its internal governance to identify structural risks such as isolation, financial dependence, bureaucratisation, and co-optation, and to design strategic responses that sustain its effectiveness and legitimacy?

FACTOR 5: ACCESS TO RESOURCES AND CONTINUITY OF COLLABORATIONS

Sustaining participatory processes over time requires resources and long-term planning or culture beyond political and market cycles. This factor helps you reflect on the organization's prospective thinking regarding the operation of the deliberative model. In particular, the model diversifies its funding sources, builds stable technical partnerships, and preserves organizational memory, so knowledge and social capital created through the process are not lost when new actors or political administrations take office.

22. Does the model encourage prospective thinking and long-term visions for itself and/or for deliberation, while strategically managing short-term (business or electoral) pressures that affect learning processes and social change?

23. Is the financing structure diversified (e.g, public, private, donated and self-generated resources), designed from its initial phase to anticipate risks, guarantee operational continuity, and ensure economic sustainability, avoiding dependence on a single source of financing?

24. Does the model maintain collaborative and strategic relationships that provide access to non-monetary resources (such as institutional alliances, owned or borrowed infrastructure, specialised capabilities, and support networks) to ensure operational stability and long-term strategic viability?

25. Does the model have strategic and recurring collaborations with technical partners such as universities, research centres, and other specialised entities to ensure operational continuity, technical quality of information, and methodological support over time?

26. Does the model have organisational memory mechanisms, and/or is it protected by legal frameworks that prevent processes from having to start from scratch when new actors enter the scene, thereby preserving accumulated social capital?

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Your Deliberative Sustainability Results

The graph shows the level of development of the 5 key factors, on a scale of 1 to 5.

Deliberative Sustainability Test