In partnership with Fundación Piensa, IDEA held the first ever series of Deliberative Town Halls (DTHs) in Chile with 3400 citizens of every age, class, and region. Matías Díaz, a program officer from Fundación Piensa, first approached IDEA about potentially facilitating a DTH as Chile was trying to draft a new constitution. The previous attempts had failed and Fundación Piensa wanted to gain greater insight into what the real, full range of voters thought and believed. Díaz believed that DTHs were the solution to this problem.   

The DTH was hosted by a Maximiliano Duarte Cortés, a program officer at Fundacion Piensa. The first DTH was focused on pension reform and featured Constitutional Councilors María Pardo from Convergencia Social and Sebastián Figueroa from the Partido Republicano. Citizens posed high-quality questions.

The second DTH focused on how political rights should be guaranteed in the new constitution and featured two other members of the Constitutional Council, Paloma Zúñiga of the Revolucion Democratica and Arturo Phillips of the UDI. For more than an hour, these citizens discussed the future of Chile's political system, including challenging issues like gender parity, electoral reforms, and governance structure. Despite the deep ideological divides, something incredible happened: both the participating leaders and the constituents watching, asking questions, and offering comments listened to each other. Many disagreed but did so with respect and a genuine desire to understand the other side.   

We are preparing reports based on the pre/post survey data in collaboration with Fundación Piensa. The reports will be delivered to the Constitutional Council before the plebescite in December.