Do government invitations to consultations shape stakeholder participation in public policymaking?

Online public consultations are an instrument frequently used by governments to invite citizens and interest organisations to participate in the formulation of public policies. A key feature of the consultation design is the prerogative of policymakers to send formal invitations to consultations with stakeholders. The extent to which these invitations shape the patterns of stakeholder participation in online consultations is a relevant theoretical and empirical research puzzle that remains largely overlooked in the literature on participatory governance and bureaucratic policymaking. Our study addresses this gap in research and asks: Do government invitations to consultations increase the levels and diversity of stakeholder participation in online public consultations? We explain when and why the number of government invitations is systematically associated with higher levels of participation and diversity of stakeholder interests and how this systematic co-variation is conditional upon the policy act type on which the government consults. We test our argument on a new dataset containing information about 251,153 instances of stakeholder participation in 4062 online public consultations organised by the Norwegian government across all policy areas during 2009–2023. We find that a higher number of government invitations is systematically associated with significantly higher stakeholder participation, higher diversity of interests represented and a higher likelihood of and more frequent citizen participation. This positive association is, however, moderate in size and is also conditional upon policy act type. Invitations increase participation and stakeholder diversity more in consultations on legislative acts and government reports relative to all other acts. These are acts on which the demand for stakeholder participation successfully meets stakeholders’ interest in supplying it. Our study underscores the importance of government invitations as a relevant feature of consultation design that shapes patterns of participation in public consultations while accounting for the impact of the policy context in which consultations are organised.