Anthony Barnett (London, OK): A new openDemocracy blog has been launched: dLiberation. Its immediate mandate, to cover the Tomrrow's Europe experiment in Brussels next month. Its author, the famous J Clive Mathews, known to many of us as nosemonkey.Three things are coming together here. At the top level there is the question of how, in an age of globalisation and the internet, we can arrive at trustworthy knowledge, methods of understanding and policies that actually influence the way the world is governed - and as the current financial crisis shows it does need government! It is not good enough for policy makers just to come to the right opinion. The process effects their legitimacy and authority and also their ability to come to conclusions that offend vested interests. This calls for democracy, not of the plebiscitary variety, but a democracy based upon a wise public.
Don't laugh, the public called the Iraq war right.
But how to get there, and how to ensure there is input from those without power and wealth and not living in rich countries? The web can make the problem worse, and for good reasons is less trusted than traditional media (where trust is also declining). Can it make it better and become part of the solution? These questions have fascinated Tony Curzon Price, openDemocracy's new Editor-in-Chief. And he is launching a debate on the main site about the whole process of deliberation, democracy and trustworthy practical knowledge. dLiberation will be part of this.
Second, as part of its response to the ‘Non' votes on the constitutional treaty, the EU (under Commissioner Wallström) launched 'Plan D'. This funded various experiments in relating regular citizens across Europe to the issues of the Union (which openDemocracy has covered in the past). Now a "deliberative poll" of a cross-sample of the EU will be held in Brussels. A deliberative poll is a professionally run process which has been developed by Jim Fishkin, now at Stanford, to apply the Athenian or jury system to political decision making. There is an introduction to his methods, written by him, on the new blog.
There will be 400 citizens meeting in the European parliament building with full translation facilities. dLiberation and Clive will be tracking the whole thing, intellectually, humanly and everythingelsely.
Now third and finally, and from the parochial view of OurKingdom: the government is launching citizens juries on an unsuspecting Britain. What kind of a deliberative process is this? We hope that the openDemocracy debate will help to ensure that what we do here does not proceed in a parochial haze of ignorance and spin.
So read dLiberation - the feed is on the right - and we will be keeping track of its progress over the next seven weeks.
