Melissa Lane joins the discussion of the possible strategies for democratic reform post-expenses launched by Anthony Barnett in his recent post.
Anthony Barnett > Peter Oborne > Melissa Lane
Anthony's 7 options is an excellent clarification of the choices we face. I also agree with Peter Oborne that the rehabilitation of parliament is critical. Attacks on parliament as a meaningless charade from both the left and the right were a key part of the delegitimisation of liberalism in the Weimar Republic, echoed contemporaneously in France and Italy especially. If people give up their faith in parliament, right-wing 'solutions' will be quickly offered.
So the question is how to go forward: how to combine a meaningful expression of public opinion with the prospect of real change within the actual system. I would argue for an iterative process: start with a series of citizen juries, say one per region, to generate a shortlist of ideas to feed into public meetings, and then synthesize those results back into a citizen jury panel. Or, start with just the pure local meetings, but then work up from the first round to a more focused agenda for the second round. As Philip Pettit has pointed out, people can participate as 'editors' as well as 'authors': forms of participation will have to be diverse if the whole process is going to be both inclusive and productive.
It's crucial that parliamentary candidates and parties are involved if the process is to culminate in passing actual reforms. The 'pledge' for candidates and parties could be to respond to the process at specified intervals: 'Tell Us Where You Stand' by posting on parliamentary reform and civil liberties (1) on the opening day of the party conference, (2) in the aftermath of the 1000 Real Change meetings, (3) in the aftermath of the election itself. If the postings are boilerplate or indifferent to what's come about as a result of the process, it will be obvious very quickly. Candidates could also be challenged to host/attend a Real Change meeting themselves.
