Consultation is a formal stage in policy and regulatory processes, with legal requirements in many systems and considerable variation in how meaningfully it is conducted.
The legal position
Where consultation is required, courts have generally held that it must occur at a formative stage, provide sufficient information, allow adequate time and be conscientiously considered.
Which are the standards that have emerged from litigation, and failure to meet them has grounded successful challenges.
Consultation conducted after a decision has effectively been made fails the first requirement.
Who responds
Organised interests dominate, since responding requires capacity.
Which means response volumes do not indicate public opinion, and treating them as a vote is a misuse.
Well-run processes weight the substance of arguments rather than counting responses, and they state this.
Coordinated campaigns
Organisations mobilising supporters to submit identical or similar responses.
Which is legitimate participation and distorts any counting approach.
Processes generally distinguish between substantively distinct responses and campaign submissions, and report both.
The response document
Governments generally publish a summary of responses and their reasoning.
Which is where the value of consultation to an outsider actually lies, since it reveals what arguments were made and how they were addressed.
Reading it is considerably more informative than reading the original document.
Timing
Consultation periods vary, and short periods over holiday periods have been criticised and successfully challenged.
Which is why guidance in several systems specifies minimum durations, generally with flexibility for urgency.
Accessibility
Documents written in technical language exclude non-specialist participation.
Which is addressed variably through plain language summaries and alternative formats.
Where a decision affects a specific group, targeted engagement with that group generally produces better information than an open call.
Deliberative methods
Citizens' assemblies and juries, bringing together a randomly selected representative group to consider an issue in depth with expert input.
Which have been used for constitutional questions, climate policy and local decisions in several countries.
Evaluations generally find participants shift positions with information and reach recommendations that surprise organisers.
The limitation is that recommendations are advisory in most cases, and the connection to actual decisions varies.
Consultation fatigue
Repeated consultation on similar matters, particularly where previous input appeared to have no effect, reduces participation.
Which is a documented problem, and explaining what changed as a result of previous consultation addresses it.
Participating effectively
Address the specific questions asked, since responses outside scope are given less weight.
Provide evidence rather than assertion.
State your interest, since transparency about position strengthens rather than weakens a submission.
And respond individually rather than only signing a template, since distinct submissions carry more weight.
Impact assessment
Analysis of expected effects, generally required for significant proposals and published alongside consultation.
Which is the document containing the quantitative reasoning, and it is where the assumptions are stated.
Equality impact assessment, examining effects on specific groups, is required in several systems and its quality varies.
Devolved and local consultation
Requirements differ between levels of government.
Which means the same type of decision may require extensive consultation at one level and none at another.
Local planning consultation is the process most people encounter, and participation rates are low relative to the effect of the decisions.
Finding consultations
Governments maintain registers of open consultations, searchable and generally with email alerts by topic.
Which is the practical route to participating in decisions before they are made rather than reacting afterwards.
Regulatory consultation
Agency rulemaking generally involves formal notice and comment, with obligations to respond to substantive comments.
Which is a more rigorous process than general policy consultation in several systems, and it produces detailed published responses.
Comments become part of the record and can support later legal challenge, which is why organised interests invest heavily in them.
Co-design
Involving affected people in developing a policy rather than commenting on a completed proposal.
Which is more resource-intensive and has evidence for producing more workable outcomes.
It is used more in service design than in legislation.
Transparency of responses
Publishing responses, or a register of who responded, allows external assessment of who participated.
Which varies, and some processes publish all responses while others publish only a summary.
What a good process looks like
Clear questions, adequate time, accessible documents, published responses and a reasoned account of what changed.
Which is checkable against any specific consultation, and departures from it are grounds for complaint and occasionally for challenge.
Why it matters
Decisions made after genuine consultation are generally better informed and more durable, since problems are identified before implementation.
Which is the practical argument, independent of any democratic one.
Consultation conducted as a formality wastes everybody time and produces the outcomes that unconsulted decisions produce.
Which is why the response document matters as much as the consultation itself.
An organisation that publishes what it heard and what it changed is demonstrating that the exercise was real.