Making Deliberative Polling more relevant —
John Parkinson writes that there's more to deliberative democracy than deliberative polls (DPs). I believe he is correct in writing that a DP like the recent Power2010 initiative in the UK "demonstrates that ordinary people have the capacity to engage seriously with complex issues, and that with a bit of information and deliberation, their knee-jerk reactions to issues change into reflective, informed ones." DPs randomly select participants, which helps legitimise their outcomes.
But a DP is no more than a demonstration that promotes the usefulness of public deliberation itself. DPs are not in themselves deliberative democracy. That's the next step, to embed such processes of public deliberation into the required workings of government. That's already happening in many constituencies, such as local government areas where citizens' juries address more specific issues and are expected to make recommendations that officials are pre-committed to act upon.
I've come to the view that public demonstrations of deliberation like DPs and our Citizens' Parliament should steer clear of big woolly topics like "how to improve our democracy" that even the experts argue about. Instead, they would be a more persuasive promotion of deliberation if they tackled regional and local issues that are more meaningful and relevant to the everyday lives of citizens and their neighbourhoods. Deliberative processes can provide confidence to governments that it is safe to pre-commit to a jury's recommendation.
As the cornerstone of our justice system, juries can inform our legislative and administrative systems well too. They need better mainstream media coverage, though.
Published under a Creative Commons License
Hi Ron,
Thanks for your kind comments over at the Power 2010 site.
I agree with you that big DP events which are cut off from day-to-day life miss much of the promise of deliberation - it's potential to rebuild social ties within a community and offer people working together the chance to make a tangible change to their own lives.
But having seen the Deliberative Poll in Power 2010 it was far from wooly. Thanks to the earlier crowdsourcing stages, the participants had very concrete propositions to work with in the form of 58 specific proposals on democratic reform. While this had some disadvantages - it made the process very evaluative rather than imaginative - it gave participants a very firm basis with which to make considered decisions about which reforms were most desirable.
Incidentally, deliberative consultation seems to be flagging somewhat in the vote. Why not encourage any readers you might have in the UK to go over to Power (http://www.power2010.org.uk/votes/entry/public-consultation-through-a-deliberative-process) and back it?
Stephen Whitehead
Posted by Stephen 19 January 2010 09:47 am | link