Democracy

Citizen Deliberation Meeting (Shimin Tougikai in Japanese)

The method of Citizen Deliberation Meeting (CDM)is based on the Planning Cell from Germany. Randomly selected people are invited to participate in deliberations on policy issues. After the first CDM in 2006, a number of CDMs were held at the municipal level.

Toyoyama Town is a small town with 15,000 residents that continues to select 2,000 residents for a CDM every year since 2011. As a result, a large number of residents of the town are veteran participants and have organized themselves as Community Development Supporters. Some veteran participants even started to help with future CDMs.