As The Canary noted in an article in the last couple of days, there is a Citizens' Assembly taking place in London at the beginning of next week and I am one of a number of topic experts who have been asked to address groups of those attending so that agendas on contentious issues might be proposed. Th full details are in the link.
I admit that I have, over a considerable period of time, had reservations about Citizens' Assemblies and what they are intended to achieve. I have always wondered whether they can really be considered representative, and therefore capable of delivering an authoritative voice on subjects in which the participants are not themselves experts. I did, as a result, raise a considerable range of questions with organisers of this particular event when invited to speak, because I had to be satisfied that those who were attending had been selected on a reasonable basis, and had been provided with support to do so if they needed it, and that the procedures in place for selecting questions and experts were also appropriate.
I am not sure whether the organisers had expected to be quizzed in quite such depth, but to their credit, they rose to the challenge and provided me with answers that made me think that my attendance was worthwhile to satisfy my curiosity on the subject. I am, therefore, attending to discuss issues surrounding the taxation of wealth in a spirit of open-mindedness.
Then, when I had accepted the invitation, I discovered that the other presenter on this issue is someone called Steve Keen. It will be good to catch up with him again.
There will be an early start on Monday, but I am hoping it will be worth it.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
Direct democracy is the only way we can keep power flowing from the bottom up.
Representative democracy is too easily captured by corporate interests and anyway “experts” never know as well as the people who are directly involved in the situations.
The Zapatistas in Mexico and the people of Rojava in Syria have managed to make direct local democracies work for them — in those places the people command and the government obeys 🙂
“anyway “experts” never know as well as the people who are directly involved in the situations.”
That is a bit of a sweeping statement isn’t it, A bit redolent of the Reform and Conservative claim that we don’t need experts.
Surely the best outcome is when experts and lived experience collaborate?
Good point, thanks. I should have been clear that by “experts” I meant “representative politicians” rather than academics.
And this kind of collaboration is exactly what citizens’ assemblies are designed to facilitate. I watched the climate assemblies which were readily available (although not widely promoted) and was impressed by the breadth of information presented to the participants and by the intelligent quesioning and comments made by those participants. As far as I’m aware, the outcomes of their delibarations have contributed little, if anything, to climate policy, although I would love to be proved wrong on this.
With “lived experience” I am an expert. I do not have the means to enact solutions.
A person with “expert” solutions is not an “expert” if they do not understand my expertise.
We need both, but the “expert” is less likely to find the correct solution if they choose to work alone.
Accepted
Ireland seems to have used Citizens Assemblies to good effect on potentially contentious issues
I’m very pleased that you are going and look forward to your critical analysis and to the outcome/report.
The UK held a Climate Assembly in 2019 and reported in 2020. I’ll leave readers to judge whether it resulted in significant governmental action! See https://www.climateassembly.uk/about/index.html
For information on countries where citizens assemblies are used see https://chatgpt.com/share/687b553a-f1a8-8002-9bfa-640f2c71ae72
Thanks
My view is that they should be used as feedback loops alongside voting; that their output should be widely available and transparent and they should work along the lines of PR in terms of creating equal weight on issues so that they are all heard. They should not be used to create consensus – their job is provoke a response form MPs/policy makers and that response should be/must be equitable.
Chairmanship should be rotated through issue subjects (it does not need a set hierarchy of its own, weighing down contributors with process that they have to manage) and like the suggestion to nationalise party funding, they should be financially supported by the State.
That is (very quickly) how I would run them.
Noted…
I was pleased to see your name among the line up of experts supporting this first sitting of House of the People.
Our democracy is broken. Times have changed and our democratic processes need to evolve to rebuild trust, increase engagement and improve representation.
Some new tools are required. Citizens Assemblies are one.
Too much policy is decided top-down by elite groups of individuals behind doors closed even to most MP’s or councillors of the ruling party. Sound science goes unheard or ignored. Well organised lobbies wield way too much power. At a local level decisions are ‘nodded through’ by elected representatives with poorly informed discussion and debate, if any. Local government scrutiny committee can lack genuine independence from the executive and lack impact.
I’m impressed with the methodologies used to manage Citizen Assemblies and the quality of the outcomes and the ability to navigate difficult subjects from the abortion law reform in Ireland to the response to Climate Change. National and regional assemblies seem to be equally as effective.
Politicians have lost trust. Politics needs to change. Policy made by a set of randomly selected citizens, representatives of a population as a whole, informed by experts and given time to deliberate looks to be a useful ‘tool’ if we are to rebuild democracy from the grass-roots.
The format if flexible. In the North East, a new challenger party, Majority, is running a People’s Assembly to inform its manifesto ahead of next year’s council elections in Newcastle.
I love the fact that both you and Steve Keen will be there making presentations, a good opportunity for you both to enlighten attendees to the garbage that is neoclassical economics. It’d have been great to see Stephanie Kelton in attendance too – a brilliant triumvirate!
Looking forward to the outcome report to be shared.
Thanks
Richard – who’s organising and hosting the event? Will there be a live video/audio broadcast of at least the presentations being delivered?
Also would you please ensure that if they use any participatory methodologies and practices such as World Cafe and Open Space, that they do is properly and not their own adaptations. For the cafe conversations a maximum of 5 people per table, no table facilitators or scribes – let the participants self organise and harvest their conversations. For Open Space only use the practices that Harrison Owen (the inventor) determined should be used.
Enjoy yourselves!
https://www.houseofthepeople.uk/
More on what happened in Ireland
https://citizensassembly.ie/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Assembly_(Ireland)
Thanks
The NHS equivalent I take to be Healthwatch. The government has just got rid of them.
Be interesting to know where all the experts in the group come from, because I always assumed that citizens assemblies were to be based in geographical area, a bit like Majority does now.
Prof. Alan Renwick of UCL is one of the principal academics leading research into citizen’s assemblies
Healthwatch was – IMO- sadly always designed to be a tame dog which barely barked under the Lansley 2012 Act. Activists were encouraged to participate. Personally, Keep Our NHS Public encouraged me to apply to be a community rep NED , embedded in the structure. And I was able to make a tiny difference, largely because I was fortunate in the people who took the contract as a bunch of local 3rd sector, led by a committed band of leaders of long standing local 3rd sector bodies. But did it help? I became reinforced in my opinion( already biased, as I freely admit) that Healthwatch was always intended , fundamentally, to be a toothless dog. Whatever good effects may have been had through good people of totally good intent I admit are there( though as with so much 3rd sector activity , much time is taken up with grant application etc), what difference do they make stopping the rising tide of destruction? And can they bite the hand that feeds them (LAs placing the contracts, at diminishing contract prices) as Local authorities’ money reduces and the contracts
diminish and, in some cases, the multiple providers step in to provide the same service. Apologies, as above. I know good people do their very best and I carp from now the ( angry, doubtless ignorant) outside..
Thanks for sharing
One of the statements you had to agree with on signing up to be a member of Healthwatch was that you agreed with what the government wanted to do with the NHS.
I’m looking forward to that too Richard!
🙂
I don’t think that’s right. The contract with the LA was already entered into when the community “members” or whatever we were labelled in our local form did not include such sign up. I still have the papers, sad person that I am. Nowhere was there any obligation to “sign up to do whatever the government wanted to do with the NHS”. I cannot imagine how any such obligation could have been incorporated, even had Healthwatch had any real “teeth”. In addition, not all forms of Healthwatch had “members”, and their “corporate” forms as far as I recall from national meetings, differed.where local Healthwatchs really showed their independence was over care.data, when the national crew came to tell us “nothing to see here”, and we’re roundly told where they were wrong. But, coming back to your point of co.mitting oneself by any formal involvement with Healthwatch to sign up for patsy of government, that is, OK only in my experience, wrong . It also minimises some of te early work of people who were not as cynical as I and others I knew. But I didn’t last beyond the first contract, as the committed women I worked with felt they could not make any difference for the restricted funds and contractual terms that followed.
How are citizens’assemblies selected? By whom? Who selects the selectors?
Who selects the questions put to the assemblies? Who chairs the discussions?
Could someone who has participated report on the process please?
I have not sought permission to share the replies I got in this case.
What’s the point of telling us about it if you are not going to share the results?
A secret citizen’s assembly?
Doesn’t make sense.
I will ask them, but I haven’t.
And I will be taking about what I learn, you can be sure.
Mary – have a look at https://www.climateassembly.uk/detail/recruitment/index.html which may answer some of your questions. But my fundamental questions relate to the timescale for discussion by the citizens and then whether their deliberations, conclusions and report are acted on by the government or organisation initiating the assembly.
As far as I know from the assemblies held in Scotland the 100 or so participants are selected as a careful selected representation of the whole population – geography, age, gender, class, etc. It does reflect the population as a whole.
That is being attempted tomorrow
Looks like Community Councils reinvented.
Grass roots organisations are a good thing.
Joining your local Community Council (you can be co-opted) and dealing with local authorities is an eye opener on what you can get done and the access you get to those authorities, who must deal with their Community Councils.