open Democracy News Analysis - Deliberating democracy, - Comments

captbob on "Deliberative Democracy: what and why?"

captbob — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:23:31 +0100

I think Prof. Fishman has put his finger on the critical "attention span" issue that affects any complicated deliberation in a democratic body of any size. The idea of randomly tagging people and handing them responsibility for something creates an interesting dynamic. I wonder how many people "step up" to the challenge (as a percentage of those "tagged")?

mcconeb on "Deliberative Democracy: what and why?"

mcconeb — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:47:36 +0100

Why is it that when Britons discuss the flaws of democracy in the UK there is so little talk about the first-past-the-post system? As in America, this encourages a two-party system rather than a diversity of parties and political representatives for all sections of the community. It encourages the two parties to be as similar to each other as possible in order to "poach" each other's vote, with the Democratic party in America now presenting anti-abortion, pro-gun-lobby candidates and David Cameron's Conservative party becoming almost indistinguishable from New Labour. Could this lack of democracy be part of the problem? As for the discussion about randomly selecting politicians rather than electing them, I must disagree. If a politician didn't want to be a politician, they would not be afraid of losing the next election. That would take away all their motivation to please the electorate. And although your belief that politicians are some monstrous breed totally different from "the man in the street" is touching, aren't you familiar with the phrase "all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"? Sure, there are plenty of politicians that I may personally dislike, but replacing them with apathetic, inexperienced and unrepresentative (what makes you think a randomly selected person will represent the wishes of the people anyway?) citizens to be manipulated by the civil service and to disregard the will of the people does not look to me like any kind of improvement. As far as hoodies, thugs and fifth columns, sure, it would be good to have a greater sense of community responsibility. I would support a program of community work (visiting retirement homes or hospitals, cleaning parks and similar jobs) as a mandatory part of the school curriculum alongside PE. Why should children's physical fitness be more important than their community spirit? But as far as the democratic system goes, I haven't yet heard anything that strikes me as an improvement to liberal democracy and proportional representation. We need more of it in the world, not less.

aduncan_1 on "Deliberative Democracy: what and why?"

aduncan_1 — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 10:21:45 +0100

One of the major issues concerning the poor participation within the democratic process of both the EU and the UK (my home country) comes partly, as highlighted by Professor Fishkin, from the polarisation of opinion regarding issues within society with a diminishing level of modalities for ideas exchange available to the majority of the population. This has been further exacerbated by the “professionalism” of the political sphere, especially within the UK, where presentation, sound-bites and spin have largely taken the place of open discussion and debate on even the most minor of issues within and affecting society at large. Resulting from this, there is a growing sense of extreme apathy and disinterest in the political decision making of the country This is combined with the ever increasing disenfranchisement of the “youth”, basically anyone under the age of 30 in the UK. This process started back in the 1980’s and quickly gathered pace to a point where at present our children and young adults are seen, and largely feared, by the rest of society and the establishment as a type of 5th column, hell bent on the destruction of society. A separate class of almost non-citizens has been created that started as lager louts, teenage pregnancies, hoodies and feral gangs roaming our streets has been created. Where they are not only largely excluded from participation within what is left of our democratic processes but also legislated against to control their movement and participation within the wider spheres of society. As a result of this increasing apathy of the older population and the effective exclusion and criminalisation of the children what little popular participation within the political life of the UK is all but dead. If this dire situation is to be reversed and the once vibrant participation of the citizens of the UK within the political decision making rekindled, then outline for deliberative polling of Professor Fishkin could be an excellent start to this process. The active engagement of randomly selected citizens within this process given the task of input into either local or national decision making based on informed and supported consultation could prove to the last best hope for democracy for the UK and maybe the EU as well.

johnevans7 on "Deliberative Democracy: what and why?"

johnevans7 — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 13:16:01 +0100

The biggest problem is people who choose to become politicians, do so for the worst possible motive ‘their Egos’ and thus make the worst politicians. I think MP's, like a jury members or lottery winners, should be selected at random from a database of all the electorate. The selection should be a balanced by age, gender and geographic location. No one would sit for more than 5 years, and each year 20% replaced by a new intake. Parliament, excluding that year’s intake, would elect its ministers. Thus no minister could be in office for more than 4 years.

mcconeb on "Deliberative Democracy: what and why?"

mcconeb — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:13:57 +0100

James Fishkin's exercises are interesting. They would make excellent school projects or could be adopted on a wide scale for a more interesting form of opinion polling. However, before we talk about hypothetical ways of forming opinions and weeding out special interests, let us look at a more tried and tested one: the democratic system currently used in all European member states. We have a party-based democracy in which parties stand for political positions, allowing all voters to have their say on the political direction they wish their country to take, through elected representatives. These representatives work to satisfy the demands of the electorate, not simply because it is their obligation/stated platform, but because of the fear that voter dissatisfaction will lead to defeat in future elections. As for those voters that are uninformed and uninterested, they are self-selected out of the equation by not voting. Obviously, not a perfect system. There will be those who vote based on ignorance, there will be politicians who do not deliver on their manifestos, but it has worked surprisingly well for hundreds of years and delivered great improvements in the standards of living on the European continent. Let's compare this to the situation at European-level politics. *The directly-elected parliament does not have Europe-wide political parties that present common platforms for European policy. *The Commission is only very loosely accountable to the parliament. *The decision-making process is dominated by national governments, whose mandate for election in their native countries very rarely focuses on what policies they aim to pursue in Europe. Could it be that the current stalemate in Europe is due to the lack of good, old-fashioned democracy? Could it be that our global disillusionment is because the process of increasing globalisation and interconnectedness are administrated by the UN, a body that has been congealed together from necessity and the horrors of war rather than democratically planned, a body with the minimum of enforcement mechanisms and democratic accountability? In my opinion, we need to introduce good, old-fashioned, tried-and-tested democracy into the European and global levels of government, not struggle to break our deadlock by reinventing the wheel.

fredgohlke on "Deliberative Democracy: what and why?"

fredgohlke — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 23:06:33 +0100

Dear Sir, You said, "As a social scientist, I believe that we need to experiment with different modes of democratic consultation and use social science to ensure that processes are balanced and representative." Would you consider this concept worthy of thought? To improve our nation's government and our society, we can no longer allow unknown politicians to select our political leaders. Instead, we must select our leaders from among ourselves. We must insure they are the best of our people rather than the worst. In other words, our leaders must be selected FROM the people rather than FOR the people. Our method must be democratic (i.e., allow the entire electorate to participate), and egalitarian (i.e., give everyone an equal chance to participate). The following describes a way to accomplish this while harnessing human nature by making probity a prime concern when evaluating potential representatives. Although the process is continuous, I will describe it as having two phases. The human factors dominating the first phase will metamorphose into a different set of factors as the second phase develops. This metamorphosis is the "magic" of the process; it makes virtue a valuable quality for aspiring candidates. 1. Divide the electorate into groups of three people. 2. Assign a date and time by which each group must select one of the three to represent the other two. a. No participant may vote for himself. b. If a group is unable to select a representative in the specified time, the group is disqualified. 3. Divide the participants so selected into groups of three. 4. Repeat from step 2 until a target number of selections is reached. Selecting Leaders, Discussion An Election Commission conducts the process. It names the participants of each group and supplies the groups with the text of pending ordinances and a synopsis of the budget appropriate to the group. In addition, on request, it makes the full budget available and supplies the text of any existing ordinances. This insures a careful examination of public matters and encourages a thorough discussion of partisan views on matters of public concern. For convenience, we refer to each iteration as a "Level", such that Level 1 is the initial grouping of the entire electorate, Level 2 is the grouping of the selections made at Level 1, and so forth. The entire electorate participates at level 1 giving everyone an equal opportunity to advance to succeeding levels. * As the process advances through the levels, the amount of time the participants spend together increases. At level 1, groups may meet for a few minutes, over a back-yard fence, so-to-speak, but that would not be adequate at higher levels. As the levels advance, the participants need more time to evaluate those they are grouped with. They also need transportation and facilities for meeting and voting. These are mechanical details. * The public has a tendency to think of elections in terms of just a few offices: a congressional seat, a senate race, and so forth. There are, however, a large number of elected officials who fill township, county, state and federal offices. The structure outlined here provides qualified candidates for those offices, as follows: At a predefined level (determined by the number of offices to be filled), the two candidates not selected to advance to the next level move into a parallel process leading to selection for offices; first in the local, then the county, then the national, and, finally, the state governments. The initial phase of the process is dominated by participants with little interest in advancing to higher levels. They do not seek public office; they simply wish to pursue their private lives in peace. Thus, the most powerful human dynamic during the first phase (i.e., Level 1 and for some levels thereafter) is a desire by the majority of the participants to select someone who will represent them. The person so selected is more apt to be someone who is willing to take on the responsibility of going to the next level than someone who actively seeks elevation to the next level, but those who do actively seek elevation are not inhibited from doing so. As the levels increase, the proportion of disinterested parties diminishes and we enter the second phase. Here, participants that advance are marked, more and more, by an inclination to seek further advancement. Thus, a powerful human trait is integrated into the system. Those who actively seek selection must persuade their group that they are the best qualified to represent the other two. While that is easy at the lower levels, it becomes more difficult as the process moves forward and participants are matched with peers who also wish to be chosen. Each participant must make a choice between the other two people in the group knowing that they must rely on that person's integrity to guide their future actions and decisions. Since they are unable to control the person selected, they must choose the person they believe most likely to conduct public business in the public interest. However, they do not make their choices blindly. Elections are a periodic process. The majority of those seeking advancement will do so each time the process recurs. Some will be successful. They will achieve public office and their performance will be a matter of public record. When they participate in subsequent occurrences of the process, their peers can evaluate that record to help them decide the candidate's suitability for advancement. Furthermore, the names of advancing candidates are announced as each level completes. Members of the public with knowledge of unseemly acts by an advancing candidate can present details for consideration at the next level. Since, after the initial levels, the peers also seek advancement, they won't overlook inappropriate behavior. Face-to-face meetings in three-person groups eliminate any possibility of voting machine fraud. Significantly, they also allow participants to observe the non-verbal clues humans emit during discourse and will tend to favor moderate attitudes over extremism. The dissimulation and obfuscation that are so effective in media-based politics will not work in a group of three people, each of whom has a vital interest in reaching the same goal as the miscreant. Thus, the advancement of participants will depend on their perceived integrity as well as the probity with which they fulfill their public obligations. This is a distillation process, biased in favor of the most upright and capable of our citizens. It cannot guarantee that unprincipled individuals will never be selected ... such a goal would be unrealistic ... but it does insure that they are the exception rather than the rule. The process is inherently bi-directional. Because each elected official sits atop a pyramid of known electors, questions on specific issues can easily be transmitted directly to and from the electors for the guidance or instruction of the official. The cost of conducting an election by this method is free to the participants, except for the value of their time, and minimal to the government. Thus, it removes the greatest single cause of corruption in our current system ... the need for campaign funds. I originally thought to buttress this presentation by citing two newspaper articles that discuss the (apparent) lack of interest in the election process among the majority of the electorate and the working of corruption in our system. I've decided that to do so would be superfluous. This table provides a visual description of the Active Democracy (or Troika) method of selecting public officials. It uses the 2004 voting-eligible population of New Jersey reported by Dr. Michael McDonald, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA. At about the seventh level, unselected candidates may enter a secondary process for selection to positions in municipal, county, state and federal governments.


             Remaining          Candidates
Level      Electors     Selected   Unselected
  1)      5,637,378    1,879,126     3,758,252
  2)      1,879,126       626,375     1,252,751
  3)         626,375        208,791       417,584
  4)         208,791          69,597       139,194
  5)           69,597          23,199          46,398
  6)           23,199            7,733          15,466
  7)             7,733            2,577             5,156
  8)             2,577               859             1,718
  9)                859               286                 573
 10)               286                 95                 191
 11)                 95                 31                   64

CONCLUSION The idea presented here will be considered radical. It bears little chance of adoption because it protects no vested interest. The only way such a process will ever be adopted is if the concept can be made a topic of discussion, particularly among students interested in achieving a righteous government. Respectfully submitted Fred Gohlke

Deliberating democracy,

James Fishkin — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 01:26:15 +0100

Professor James Fishkin of Stanford University, the mastermind of deliberative polling, kicks off dLiberation's coverage with a look at the thinking behind deliberative democracy, and the ways in which such a method of public consultation may be able to help the European Union both address its democratic deficit and its current ongoing stagnation:

There is a basic, and recurring problem of public consultation-if we ask elites, we have deliberation without political equality. If we ask the people directly, we can have political equality but usually without deliberation. Can we have both... can we have a method that represents everyone under conditions where the people can become informed and can think through difficult issues?

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