What’s the theory? Why are they useful and good? What role should they play in municipal or state governance? Here are my notes …
Some theory
- Endogenous Constitutions by Ticchi & Vindigni, ties consensual systems with income inequality, not surprisingly consensual systems deliver greater income equality.
- Choosing the Form of Government:-Theory and Evidence from Brazil by Nakaguma, this would seem to disagree with Ticchi.
- Citizens’ Senate – Towards Consensual Presidential Democracy/ by Tony Czarnecki, a précis of his longer paper held at https://sustensis.co.uk/citizens-senate. In the précis he critiques strong government, identifies weak local government as a problem, justifies citizen’s assemblies and pairs them with citizen petitions for legislative initiative.
- Contrasting Styles of democratic Decision Making: Adversarial vs Consensual Politics by Ken McRae, this maybe the first person to define consensus vs majority
- 8 Principles of Direct Democracy, not quite the same thing, but establishes petitions and referenda as key tools in direct democracy. This is posted at the Centre for Global Development.
I wrote this blog article, which looks at the People’s House stunt at #lab22 and mentions a series of Citizen’s assemblies that have been used in the real world.
Somewhere or other my words about term limits, sortition and the need to ensure we don;t create a new class of permanent politicians chosen by lottery and not by election have been lost. Citizen’s assemblies should be seen as an aid to politicians whose constituencies are becoming unmanageably large. I am also of the view that the catchment area of a Citizens; Assembly needs to be small enough that the member’s lived experience is relevant to the problem. I am suspicious of national citizen’s assemblies. I am of the view that citizens’ assemblies should have some say in the topic selection process.
Do they improve democracy?
- Alemanno, Alberto and Organ, James, The Case for Citizen Participation in the European Union: A Theoretical Perspective on EU Participatory Democracy (June 15, 2020). Citizen Participation in Democratic Europe: What next for the EU?, ECPR Press /Rowman & Littlefield, 2021 Forthcoming, HEC Paris Research Paper No. LAW-2020-1376, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3627195 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3627195
- The Radicality of Sunlight Five Pathways to a More Democratic Europe, by Kalypso Nicholadis and others.
I should look for some stuff on credit unions and micro lending, this will also have the community dimension.
The disagreement between Ticchi and Nakaguma may need the two theories to take into account the levels of corruption.
De Tocqueville in “Democracy in America” coined the phrase “Tyranny of the Majority”
Human Rights and guarantees for local democratic autonomy seem key here, The tools can be used to oppress as well as empower.
I wrote about Democracy and Plebiscites on this blog.
In Sept 2022, I was pointed at Brigitte Geissel of Goethe University who has written often on innovative democracy.
See also my diigo list, tagged #citizensassembly
I added the reference to Brigitte-Geissel.
It seems there was a second page called citizens’ assemblies; I merged them here.