open Democracy News Analysis - Delivering democracy, John Jackson - Comments

spamlet on "From deliberative to determinative democracy"

spamlet — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 17:07:59 +0000

Check out George Monbiot's piece on the way new open cast coal mining is sweeping the wishes of communities before it, as local authorities and government literally move heaven and earth to promote the wishes of the developer over the rights of the community and the future of the planet: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/10/09/the-new-coal-age/ Weep. S

spamlet on "From deliberative to determinative democracy"

spamlet — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 21:47:00 +0000

The author of : "That bill will shortly become law and those who want to take advantage of the achievement it represents should write to their local authority", either has infinite supplies of cash and influence enough to spend all his time in judicial review attempting to get Local Authorities, even to read the law, let alone follow it; or, is not living on the same planet as me: certainly not in the UK! As third parties are not even entitled to appeal, and 'ombudsmen' are kept deliberately toothless, there is no way for any ordinary person or group to hold 'our leaders' to account, whatever the laws or guidances may say. This is the preserve of the legal giants, the likes of Tesco can afford to employ to get their way. Best thing you can do John: don't hold your breath. Local Authorities, in my experience, are development mad party oligarchies; who, despite supposed euro regulations about 'fair tribunals', never the less have carte blanche to go on as both developer and passer of their own plans. Furthermore, Local Authority councillors are selected from very small, very odd bunches of people, weird enough to want to get involved with the same tired old three antedeluvian parties, dutifully kept in place by the media. These people are ruled by even smaller, even more weird and power crazed 'controlling groups', and scarcely a one of them would ever dare to disobey the whip to actually support what constituents want and are nominally entitled to expect. We have a 'media' dedicated to preserving this antidemocratic status quo, by pouncing on every slight disagreement within a party as a weakness, and thereby strengthening the hand on the whip still further, and stifling the development of the unpalatable policies of truth that are needed to ensure our survival. And, of course, while your devotees are dutifully popping off green inked missives on local sustainability to their LAs, Gordon Brown and his 'economist' cronies are enforcing 'growth' and immigration policies that will see a massive 17% increase in UK population in the all too near future. This fact alone ought to be ramming it home to you in no uncertain terms that our leaders are bent on leading us to disaster in the shortest possible time, and sustainability went out the window a long long time ago. While all 'Plans' - however couched - are designed to be engines of 'economics' and infinite, exponential, 'growth', the inevitable outcome is plain to anyone brave enough to take off the blinkers. And now, the power mad, can aim a little higher, as they steer us all to accepting a European PM - probably Blair (Which planet will he declare war on first I wonder?) - in a future which looms more and more frightening every day. Not disillusioned John: Petrified!

Barry Davies on "From deliberative to determinative democracy"

Barry Davies — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 09:20:37 +0000

There is an ever increasing democratic deficit in the UK mainly due to the ever increasing flow of the power to govern the country being handed to brussells, and the unelected commission in particular. As for sustainable communities the problem is not ghost towns, the eu has put paid to that with the massive influx of foreigners since the introduction of schengen, and we aren't even signed up for it, which is increasing the population exponentially, by 2012 we will be passed breaking point population wise and no longer have any chance of sustaining any communities as they are now, although it is likely that ghetto's of different nationalities will emerge.

John Jackson on "From deliberative to determinative democracy"

John Jackson — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:21:30 +0000

The author of "Sustainable Communities? No Chance" exhibits the weary cynicism of someone who is disillusioned with their power to influence outcomes. It was the determination to give such people a possibility of changing things which fuelled the Local Works campaign for the Sustainable Communities Bill. That bill will shortly become law and those who want to take advantage of the achievement it represents should write to their local authority (with copies to their parish council and their MP) asking how that authority proposes to go about preparing the local plan which the bill calls for.

spamlet on "From deliberative to determinative democracy"

spamlet — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:33:06 +0000

As in most things 'Planning' and 'Consultation', I'm fed up with hearing this sort of thing: "turning rural communities into "ghost towns" whose inhabitants are increasingly deprived of good transport links, local shops and post offices, and have little opportunity to influence directly the policies that have made this happen." People choose to move to the 'countryside' - what is left of it - precisely to get away from all these things, that are, after all, what characterise - or used to characterise - a city/town as opposed to a country village or hamlet. They are able to move to the countryside, while retaining their city income, because they have cars. Simultaneously, their cars have enabled them to drive out to superstores, thus depriving 'their own' local shops of trade. When these shops close down they in turn become housing for yet more incomers, like the village schools, pubs, chapels, and police houses before them. One does indeed have to feel sorry for the original denizens of the countryside, who really have been deprived, swamped, or forced out by the new car-created generations, but somehow, I feel that these are likely to be the minority, and the majority are themselves the assassins who created the 'ghost towns', and now find the lanes too narrow and slow for their FWDs to race along. But have no fear: the 'ghost towns', under this 'sustainable' plan, with its (like all other government documents) enforced doctrine of infinite economic growth, swell to become 'thriving new' cities, full of identikit 'me too' sky-scrapers, and then coalesce to become one big happy 'New Manhattan', with no pesky countryside in between to house any whingeing 'rural communities'. While political parties are allowed to make the decisions on our behalf, 'sustainability' will only ever exist as a word whose true meaning has been reversed to make it acceptable to 'economists' - even in the countless 'plans' and 'strategies' that the decision makers themselves won't ever read: because they know that they can do exactly as they please and the public has no way of holding them to account (Elections just simply returning more of the same.). The government quietly removed the Regional Assemblies, soon after the advent of Brown - they had been in danger of really promoting sustainabiity: some had been too keen to preserve their own environments from the ravages of uncontrolled and unwanted 'growth', and were showing alarming signs of actual democratic processes. If any 'sustainable communities' actually do manage to produce a real plan for sustainability: they will quickly be disbanded, just like the RA's, and with just as little notice in the media.

Delivering democracy, John Jackson

John Jackson — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:07:14 +0000

What we call "democracy" is an amalgam of values, rights and systems. Attempts to define it will always be fuzzy round the edges. The same goes for "deliberative democracy". Do we mean a situation in which each citizen has an equal right to influence decisions which affect them by a process of informed interactive consultation? Or do we mean something that goes further - more Athenian, something more than "merely" deliberative?

John Jackson chairs the legal firm Mishcon de Reya, and is a director of openDemocracy and History Today

John Jackson's article continues openDemocracy's "Democracy and deliberation" debate, which also features:

James S Fishkin, "Deliberative polling: distilling the crowd's wisdom" (12 October 2007)

Matthias Benz, "Democratic vote or deliberative poll?" (13 October 2007James Fishkin's description of what "Tomorrow's Europe" deliberative poll is attempting makes it clear he is talking about the former and has demonstrated how to do it (see "Deliberative polling: distilling the crowd's wisdom", 12 October 2007). But does it go far enough? There is a growing number of citizens who are disenchanted with mere consultation and want a process which really holds the promise of determining outcomes. Matthias Benz has argued that genuine citizen participation does enrich political culture (see "Democratic vote or deliberative poll?", 13 October 2007). If this is what we want, how should we go about it?

A coalition for change

One way can be teased out of the history and content of the Sustainable Communities Bill, 2006-07 - a piece of draft legislation currently being discussed in the British parliament whose core purpose is to oblige the responsible government minister to work with local authorities and communities to publish action plans that promote these communities' sustainability.

This largely unnoticed but remarkable bill - first introduced to parliament in March 2003 - is expected to become law in England and Wales shortly. The story of this remarkably "Trojan" piece of participative legislation tells us how the distribution of power will have to change for a more Athenian conception of democracy to take hold in Britain.

The background to the bill is widespread local dissatisfaction about the condition of (in particular) the English countryside, especially the way that a range of economic and social processes (with their wider effect on working, travelling and shopping patterns) are turning rural communities into "ghost towns" whose inhabitants are increasingly deprived of good transport links, local shops and post offices, and have little opportunity to influence directly the policies that have made this happen.

Also in openDemocracy: dLiberation - discovering tomorrow's Europe, a blog dedicated to exploring the merits of deliberative democracy in the context of the Tomorrow's Europe experiment on 12-14 October 2007; edited by J Clive Matthews, it features contributions from (among many others) James S Fishkin, Arthur Lupia, Amy Gutmann, and Ian O'Flynn This dissatisfaction resulted in a broad coalition for change, campaigning under the slogan "Local Works". The first step was to organise across the country meetings of community members and their elected local-government representatives to discuss needs and wishes and to assess the level of potential support. So well attended were these meetings and such was the interest roused by this process (which ran for well over a year) that it attracted the attention of national members of parliament (MPs) and, very significantly, one of the main political parties.

This, in turn, resulted in the development of a large cross-party parliamentary consensus and the promise of help in drafting a "private member's" (i.e. non-government-sponsored bill with political support behind it (in the United Kingdom, political backing of this kind is essential if such bills are to make any progress in parliament).

A remarkable outcome

The bill places an obligation on central government to call on each local-governmental authority to produce a plan to enhance the sustainability of those communities by locally implemented economic, social and environmental measures. The bill stipulates that the plan should be arrived at through a process of discussion and deliberation that involves local citizens' panels which have rights of policy-proposal enshrined. Central government has the obligation to cooperate with each local-governmental authority in assisting with the prioritisation and implementation of its plan. In current jargon the emphasis is strongly "bottom up" rather than "top down".

The bill implements a "double" devolution: it devolves from central government as well as introducing direct, participative policy-making.

Also by John Jackson in openDemocracy:

"Mr Town meets Mr Country" (14 June 2001) - a conversation with Richard Rogers

"Do we want freedom, or simply to rattle the bars?" (8 August 2001)

"Write the constitution down!" (17 February 2005)

"A democracy in trouble" (1 March 2006)

"Alice Wheeldon and the attorney-general" (8 April 2007) When the bill was introduced the early, disappointing indications were that it would be opposed by government ministers. It soon transpired that the main source of opposition was not the ministers themselves but the civil servants advising them. This was startling and worrying - and not only in constitutional terms. Private-members' bills opposed by government have a short parliamentary life.

Despite the very large support in parliament for the measure, this opposition by "officials" persisted until a late stage and coloured the discussions with ministers in finalising a text to which they could agree. Eventually the bill went through its parliamentary stages little changed from the original proposal (particularly in respect of the participative elements) and with increasing support and understanding from ministers. On Thursday 11 October 2007, it cleared its passage through the upper chamber of parliament, the House of Lords, with formal government support. It is a remarkable outcome.

A message from London

What are the lessons from this saga? Two suggest themselves:

* Democratic change whose impetus comes from the "grassroots" is ultimately hard to resist. But it must still intelligently use and get itself adopted by "the system" - particularly the established parliamentary process. Revolutions rarely work.

* Beware of "officials". All democratic citizens support the independence of the civil service and expect it to have an ethos based on probity and serving the public. But it is not a separate "estate". Although the civil service may feel more comfortable with "its" legislation proposed by "its" ministers, there needs to be vigilance about the possibility that such unspoken sympathy may unduly influence the "impartial" advice that it dispenses.

Could the history of the Sustainable Communities Bill be relevant to the European Union? The present means of making and implementing policy - particularly the bar on the European parliament initiating legislation - make it difficult to see how grassroots pressure might result in Euro-legislation. Europeans should worry about that. Perhaps the powers of the European parliament should be reconsidered, in a deliberative way, by the 490 million of us who elect its members.

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