Seoul's Gwanak District has won international recognition for a citizen-led pledge management system in which residents take part in every stage, from proposing campaign pledges to evaluating how they are carried out.
The district said on the 23rd that it received a special award at the 20th OIDP Award for Best Practice in Citizen Participation for its case titled "Beyond Promises: Gwanak District's Citizen-Led Manifesto Governance." It is the first Korean local government to win the prize.
The award is organized by the International Observatory on Participatory Democracy (OIDP), a global network under United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), and is given to identify outstanding local government practices in participatory democracy and spread them internationally. This year drew a record 188 cases from 41 countries. Forty cases cleared the first round of screening to become finalists, and Gwanak District received the special award after final screening and a public vote.
The core of the district's citizen-led manifesto governance is a system that breaks from the previous practice of having the administration carry out campaign pledges unilaterally, giving residents a leading role across the entire process — proposing and finalizing pledges, monitoring implementation and conducting evaluations.
As the current, eighth-term popularly elected district government took office (Korea has held direct local elections since 1995), the district designed six goals and 60 priority pledges together with residents, reflecting their input. Residents' participation bodies then monitored progress on an ongoing basis, and a policy advisory group proposed 103 policies. A residents' jury took part directly in adjusting and revising pledges, serving to reflect residents' views.
Gwanak-cheong, a communication channel where the district mayor meets residents in person, has been held 571 times so far, gathering the views of about 2,000 residents. The digital platform "Online Gwanak-cheong" operates as a standing channel that allows policy proposals and discussion 365 days a year, without limits of time or place. In recognition of improving access to resident participation both online and offline, Online Gwanak-cheong was also selected as an OECD public sector innovation case in 2022.
The district said it strengthened residents' policy participation and right to know by transparently disclosing the status of pledge implementation, and that this systematic pledge management produced a 99.8% implementation rate for the pledges of the current, eighth-term popularly elected district government.
"This award is all the more meaningful in that it has shown the international community what Gwanak District has achieved in participatory democracy, built together with residents who took part directly from the proposal of pledges through implementation and evaluation," Gwanak District Mayor Park Jun-hee said. "We will do our utmost to advance citizen-led participatory democracy, in which residents' voices become policy and promises made to residents lead to real change, so that Gwanak District establishes itself as a city leading 'K-democracy.'"
