Anthony Barnett & Jon Bright (London, OK): Yesterday openDemocracy participated in the seminar on popular participation which Alexandra Runswick plugged on our pages the day before. It was serious, wide ranging and achieved its first aim of bringing international experience of popular democratic processes into a discussion with representatives from the Ministry of Justice working on the projected Citizens Summit.
Brice Dickson, who chaired the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, and Matthew Mendelsohn, who oversaw the referendum after the Ontario Citizens Assembly on Electoral reform - had some sage advice, and were at pains to emphasise both how hard it is to do this sort of exercise well but that it is possible to succeed.
Mendelsohn pointed out the difficulty of getting genuine, large scale public involvement in the process. A deliberative assembly may be temporary but it must have both independence and be empowered to deliver a real outcome. It is not a consultation dependent on the puppet master who asks the questions. It also requires a carefully chosen issue - too contentious and it will be broken apart by entrenched and vested interests mobilising for and against. A gathering of this type, without dominant personalities, scandal, or "negative" politics, will be uninteresting for a mainstream media used to reporting traditional political ‘stories', so getting public interestalso demands a special effort.
Dickson, whose job on the NIHRC was made all but impossible by the five year hiatus necessitated when Stormont was closed, had specific concerns about the proposed summit on a British Statement of Values. Whitehall has already demonstrated this year its ability to forget completely about Belfast, when it became apparent that the new e-borders system would create a united Ireland almost by default, and Dickson pointed out how provocative a "British" statement of values will be seen in Northern Ireland - a factor which those from Justice did not seem to take on board. But he had four clear, positive suggestions for making the process relevant and engaging public interest:
- Cascading - identifying people to carry the word, hold events and take views
- Piggy-backing - Going to other organisations and getting them to take the issues on board, and make it part of their agenda
- Entertaining - make it fun and attractive, publishing material for schools, using the web and even have submissions in the form of works of art.
- Hob-Nobbing - bringing in the great and the good, using famous people to do this, bringing in glamour as well as those with public profile and influence.
However hard it may be to bring in the public in a way that is popular but not populist, both Dickson and Medelsohn were for it. Mendelsohn summed up their view neatly. Deliberation in large societies is very difficult. But the alternative is a disengaged consumerist society where citizens and politicians permanently distrust each other. The question, which the two representatives from the Ministry of Justice really answered (Stephen Hesford MP and Peter Thompson, a senior civil servant), is this - are the government really aware of the scale of the task facing them, if this is to be made a success?
