CitizenSovereignty.org

Scotch Deliberation

No, this is not a post about the comparative weighing of a few well-aged malts.  The title should really be Scottish deliberation. 

As the manoeuvring and positioning of those who aspire to shape civic Scotland and public opinion on constitutional matters begins in earnest; with the Independence Convention, the Constitutional Commission, YouScotland and others, preparing ‘official launch’ events in the coming weeks and months, perhaps we should be asking more profound questions about the nature of democratic participation....So what might this mean in practice as opposed to simply in the pages of journals of political theory? Well, one oft-quoted example is that of Fishkin’s Deliberative Polling^TM which actually might well be of real value in exploring Scotland’s constitutional future. It has already been used in Australia to debate whether or not that country should become a republic and in a number of other countries, including the UK. A major new Europe-wide event is planned for later this year.

You can read it all at Scottish Futures.

Another DP takes on social cleavages - this time in Bulgaria

A representative cross-section of Bulgarians endorsed policies to integrate the Roma, an outcast ethnic minority, in a Deliberative Poll that took place April 14-15 in Sofia.  After the deliberations a significant number of the 255 participants changed their views, in favor of steps to foster integration across a major social cleavage, similar to the results of a DP on education in Northern Ireland that took place in January.  As the New York Times reported,

[The results] appeared to indicate that most Bulgarians were more willing to support measures to integrate Roma into society, even though nationalist politicians use increasingly hostile language towards them.  'The general feeling from the debates,' [Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev] said, was that 'there is a high level of tolerance, which is the most important condition for their integration.'

For a full report on the DP, click here.  For information on DPs from Northern Ireland to China to Texas,  visit the Center for Deliberative Democracy.

National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation

Can California use deliberative democracy to overcome political polarization and address its challenges?  A conference organized by Common Sense California this February will look for the answer.  More details are at the blog of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation.

Shareholder Rights - Through Deliberative Polling

Click on the link to listen to Ian Ayres on NPR's Marketplace about how shareholder rights can be advanced by Deliberative Polls.

Greek Revival

The Financial Times today profiles Jim Fishkin and a Greek revival: of deliberative democracy.

Fishkin, a political scientist at Stanford University in California and the University of Texas, is a man seized with a big idea, which he believes is large enough to be of global importance. He thinks that this idea - which goes by the name of deliberative democracy - addresses one of the large public anxieties of our times: the rapidly eroding popular support for the main variants of democratic politics, evidenced by a decline in voting, in party membership, activism and loyalty, in interest in public affairs in the news media, in trust in politicians and in democratic institutions.

George Papandreou of PASOK described why his party used a Deliberative Poll to choose a mayoral candidate this way.

One of the big things we in politics face is the abstention of the people from politics. We don’t put the complexity of the issues to them. When we do ask them their opinion, we do so in a superficial way. What this does is to go back to an ancient Greek concept - and carries the idea that everyone is equal. But it does it with a scientific method so that we get close to an idea of what society as a whole is saying.

Bill Corbett

Primary democracy

A California judicial election this week had a result worthy of a Seinfeld episode: a bagel store entrepreneur defeated a highly-rated, twenty-year state court judge.  The outcome is attributed to three things: the self-financed winner's bigger campaign war chest ($100,000 to $42,000); the incumbent's foreign name (Janavs) and accent; and, taken almost for granted, popular inattention to the obscure race.  The Election Law Blog and the Los Angeles Times story tell more about this capricious result.

Over on the other coast, a New York state appeals court this week conducted an extraordinary two hour hearing in a lawsuit, brought by reform advocates, against state laws that give party leaders control over judicial candidate selection.  The New York Daily News thinks the reformers are going to win.  But if they do, and elections to the state courts become more like the rest of our elections, will the cautious among us henceforth seek permission to approach the bagel counter?

It just so happens that last Sunday in Greece, the birthplace of democracy, a Deliberative Poll was used to head off such a dilemma.  George Papandreou, leader of the opposition party Pasok, wrote an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune describing the DP and, indirectly, events of the next few days in California and New York as well.

"Citizens who do participate [in primary or other elections] do not always have the time or motivation to become properly informed about candidates' positions or topical issues.  People often vote on the basis of name recognition and a superficial impression of sound bites broadcast through the news media.

"So what is the alternative?  In most countries, parties that do not use the mass primary usually leave the nomination of candidates to party elites.  Democratic reformers face an unsatifactory choice between primaries and elites - between politically equal but relatively uninformed masses, or better-informed but unequal party players.

"Is there a way out of this dilemma?  Is there a way to include an informed and representative public voice in the nomination process?  A solution can be found in the practices of ancient Athens, where hundreds of citizens chosen by lot would regularly deliberate together and make important public decisions."

The use of a Deliberative Poll to determine a political nomination is a first; but DPs and other deliberative democracy tools are increasingly in use to make political decisions.  The most prominent example is that of the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly in 2004, which led to a plebiscite on whether to adopt a proportional electoral system; a DP was used in a southern Chinese town last year to decide how to spend its infrastructure budget. 

Judicial elections in the United States are becoming more like the rest of our politics, with campaign money playing a prominent role.  Unless that changes, Lady Justice may someday wind up exchanging her scale for a disposable Greek coffee cup.

Legislators & Deliberation

The Policy Consensus Initiative, an eight-year-old organization led by current and former legislators and government officials and headquartered in Oregon, has published Legislators at a Crossroads: Making Choices to Work Differently.  A snippet:

Legislators are beginning to recognize the role of convening as a way they can take action, or facilitate action, without waiting for the legislature to act.

It's short, just twelve pages, and a good introduction to flexible problem solving.

Bill Corbett

Democracy: Amercian v. Athenian

Jim Holt writes in the New York Times Magazine,

Our own government, to the Athenians, would look like an elective oligarchy. In fact, it was deliberately set up to ensure, as James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, "the total exclusion of the people in their collective capacity, from any share" in it....Moreover, in one of the more devastating theoretical arguments against democracy, Anthony Downs observed that most citizens have no economic incentive to learn enough about what politicians do to vote intelligently. Nearly half of American voters acquiesce in their infantilization by not voting at all.

Should any of this make us yearn for Athenian-style demokratia, where citizens come together on terms of equality to reach consensus about the common good? An innovation in this direction has been proposed by James Fishkin, a political scientist at Stanford, and Bruce Ackerman, a Yale law professor. They envisage a new national holiday, called "Deliberation Day," a couple of weeks before each major election. On this day, voters would gather in groups as large as 500 and hash out issues together, like the ancient Athenians.

Take a look a this short article for a short history of the concept of democracy.  It is, more or less, what we make of it.

Bill Corbett

Deliberation & Direct Democracy

Jim Fishkin has published in the Boston Review The Nation in a Room: Turning Public Opinion into Policy.  It's a great explanation of how deliberative polling and direct democracy can relate.  An excerpt:

From the standpoint of democratic theory, giving random samples of ordinary citizens the power to make political decisions has some advantages over giving that power to elected representatives. Citizens can deal with issues without worrying about the implications for their re-election. They are not subject to party discipline. They can offer their sincere views at the end of the process without worrying about social pressures from the other participants for consensus. In Madison’s terms, the process of Deliberative Polling does indeed seem to be capable of refining and enlarging public views, of merging the good judgment that comes from deliberation with the citizen involvement that comes with democracy. The result is something like what Gallup hoped for in the conventional poll—a town meeting on a national scale. But getting the informed and representative views of the public requires more than polling alone.  It requires an institution that facilitates discussion and grants access to good information and differing experts, and a public space where people feel free to express themselves.

More on the topic of deliberation and direct democracy -- and David Broder -- is here.

Bill Corbett