“How Democracy Should Work” Lesson in Learning, Building Cohesion and Community

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Case study by Marjan Horst Ehsassi: “Something special happened in a small community just north of San Francisco during the summer of 2022. The city of Petaluma decided to do democracy a bit differently. To figure out what to do about a seemingly-intractable local issue, the city of 60,000 decided policymakers and “experts” shouldn’t be the only ones at the decision-making table—residents of Petaluma also ought to have a voice. They would do this by instituting a Citizens’ Assembly—the first of its kind in California.

Citizens’ Assemblies and sortition are not new ideas; in fact, they’ve helped citizens engage in decision-making since Ancient Greece. Yet only recently did they resurge as a possible antidote to a representative democracy that no longer reflects citizens’ preferences and pervasive citizen disengagement from political institutions. Also referred to as lottery-selected panels or citizens’ panels, this deliberative platform has gained popularity in Western Europe but is only just beginning to make inroads in the United States. The Petaluma City Council’s decision to invite Healthy Democracy (healthydemocracy.org), a leading U.S. organization dedicated to designing and implementing deliberative democracy programs, to convene a citizens’ assembly on the future of a large plot of public land, demonstrates unique political vision and will. This decision contributes to a roadmap for innovative ways to engage with citizens.

This case study examines this novel moment of democratic experimentation in California, which became known as the Petaluma Fairgrounds Advisory Panel (PFAP). It begins with a description of the context, a summary of the PFAP’s design, composition, and process, and a discussion of the role of the government-lead or sponsor, the Petaluma City Council. An analysis of the impact of participation on the Panelist using a methodology developed by the author in several other case studies follows. Finally, the last section provides several recommendations to enhance the impact of such processes as well as thoughts on the future of deliberative platforms…(More)”.

Opportunities and Risks of LLMs for Scalable Deliberation with Polis

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Christopher Small et al: “Polis is a platform that leverages machine intelligence to scale up deliberative processes. In this paper, we explore the opportunities and risks associated with applying Large Language Models (LLMs) towards challenges with facilitating, moderating and summarizing the results of Polis engagements. In particular, we demonstrate with pilot experiments using Anthropic’s Claude that LLMs can indeed augment human intelligence to help more efficiently run Polis conversations. In particular, we find that summarization capabilities enable categorically new methods with immense promise to empower the public in collective meaning-making exercises. And notably, LLM context limitations have a significant impact on insight and quality of these results.
However, these opportunities come with risks. We discuss some of these risks, as well as principles and techniques for characterizing and mitigating them, and the implications for other deliberative or political systems that may employ LLMs. Finally, we conclude with several open future research directions for augmenting tools like Polis with LLMs….(More)”.

Why picking citizens at random could be the best way to govern the A.I. revolution

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Hélène Landemore, Andrew Sorota, and Audrey Tang: “Testifying before Congress last month about the risks of artificial intelligence, Sam Altman, the OpenAI CEO behind the massively popular large language model (LLM) ChatGPT, and Gary Marcus, a psychology professor at NYU famous for his positions against A.I. utopianism, both agreed on one point: They called for the creation of a government agency comparable to the FDA to regulate A.I. Marcus also suggested scientific experts should be given early access to new A.I. prototypes to be able to test them before they are released to the public.

Strikingly, however, neither of them mentioned the public, namely the billions of ordinary citizens around the world that the A.I. revolution, in all its uncertainty, is sure to affect. Don’t they also deserve to be included in decisions about the future of this technology?

We believe a global, democratic approach–not an exclusively technocratic one–is the only adequate answer to what is a global political and ethical challenge. Sam Altman himself stated in an earlier interview that in his “dream scenario,” a global deliberation involving all humans would be used to figure out how to govern A.I.

There are already proofs of concept for the various elements that a global, large-scale deliberative process would require in practice. By drawing on these diverse and complementary examples, we can turn this dream into a reality.

Deliberations based on random selection have grown in popularity on the local and national levels, with close to 600 cases documented by the OECD in the last 20 years. Their appeal lies in capturing a unique array of voices and lived experiences, thereby generating policy recommendations that better track the preferences of the larger population and are more likely to be accepted. Famous examples include the 2012 and 2016 Irish citizens’ assemblies on marriage equality and abortion, which led to successful referendums and constitutional change, as well as the 2019 and 2022 French citizens’ conventions on climate justice and end-of-life issues.

Taiwan has successfully experimented with mass consultations through digital platforms like Pol.is, which employs machine learning to identify consensus among vast numbers of participants. Digitally engaged participation has helped aggregate public opinion on hundreds of polarizing issues in Taiwan–such as regulating Uber–involving half of its 23.5 million people. Digital participation can also augment other smaller-scale forms of citizen deliberations, such as those taking place in person or based on random selection…(More)”.

Engaging citizens in innovation policy. Why, when and how?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “Innovation policies need to be socially embedded for them to effectively contribute to addressing major societal challenges. Engaging citizens in innovation policymaking can help define long-term policy priorities, enhance the quality and legitimacy of policy decisions, and increase the visibility of innovation in society. However, engaging all groups in society and effectively integrating citizens’ inputs in policy processes is challenging. This paper discusses why, when and how to engage citizens in innovation policy making. It also addresses practical considerations for organising these processes, such as reaching out to diverse publics and selecting the optimal mix of methods and tools…(More)”.

Brazil launches participatory national planning process

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Tarson Núñez and Luiza Jardim: “At a time when signs of a crisis in democracy are prevalent around the world, the Brazilian government is seeking to expand and deepen the active participation of citizens in its decisions. The new administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva believes that more democracy is needed to rebuild citizens’ trust in political processes. And it just launched one of its main initiatives, the Participatory Pluriannual Plan (PPA Participativo). The PPA sets the goals and objectives for Brazil over the following four years, and Lula is determined to not only allow but facilitate public participation in its development. 

On May 11, the federal government held the first state plenary for the Participatory PPA, an assembly open to all citizens, social movements and civil society organizations. Participants at the state plenaries are able to discuss proposals and deliberate on the government’s public policies. Over the next two months, government officials will travel to the capitals of the country’s 26 states as well as the federal district (the capital of Brazil) to listen to people present their priorities. If they prefer, people can also submit their suggestions through a digital platform (Decidim, accessible only to people in Brazil) or the Interconselhos Forum, which brings together various councils and civil society groups…(More)”.

The Platformization of Public Participation: Considerations for Urban Planners Navigating New Engagement Tools

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Pamela Robinson & Peter Johnson: “Professional urban planners have an ethical obligation to work in the public interest. Public input and critique gathered at public meetings and other channels are used to inform planning recommendations to elected officials. Pre-pandemic, the planning profession worked with digital tools, but in-person meetings were the dominant form of public participation. The pandemic imposed a shift to digital channels and tools, with the result that planners’ use of technology risks unitizing public participation. As the use of new platforms for public participation expands, we argue it has the potential to fundamentally change participation, a process we call platformization. We frame this as a subset of the broader emergence of platform urbanism. This chapter evaluates six public participation platforms, identifying how the tools they provide map onto key participation frameworks from Arnstein (1969), Fung (2006), and IAP2 (2018). Through this analysis, we examine how the platformization of public participation poses ethical and scholarly challenges to the work of professional planners…(More)”.

The messy politics of local climate assemblies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Pancho Lewis,  Jacob Ainscough,  Rachel Coxcoon &  Rebecca Willis: “In recent years, many local authorities in the UK have run local climate assemblies (LCAs) such as citizens’ assemblies or juries, with the goal of developing citizen-led solutions to the climate crisis. In this essay, we argue that a ‘convenient fiction’ often underpins the way local authority actors explain the rationale for running LCAs. This convenient fiction runs as follows: LCAs are commissioned as a response to the climate threat, and local decision-makers work through LCA recommendations to implement appropriate policies in their locality. We suggest that this narrative smooths over and presents as linear a process that is in fact messy and political. LCAs emerge as a result of political pressure and bargaining. Once LCAs have run their course, the extent to which their recommendations are implemented is dependent on power dynamics and institutional capacities. We argue that it is important to surface the messiness and political tensions that underpin the origins and aftermath of local climate assemblies. This achieves three things. First, it helps manage expectations about the impact LCAs are likely to have on the policy process. Second, it broadens understandings of how LCAs can contribute to change. Third, it provides a complex model that actors can use to understand how they can help deliver climate action through politics. We conclude that LCAs are important — if as yet unproven — new interventions in local climate politics, when assessed against this more complex picture…(More)”

Citizens’ juries can help fix democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Martin Wolf: “…our democratic processes do not work very well. Adding referendums to elections does not solve the problem. But adding citizens’ assemblies might.

In his farewell address, George Washington warned against the spirit of faction. He argued that the “alternate domination of one faction over another . . . is itself a frightful despotism. But . . . The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual”. If one looks at the US today, that peril is evident. In current electoral politics, manipulation of the emotions of a rationally ill-informed electorate is the path to power. The outcome is likely to be rule by those with the greatest talent for demagogy.

Elections are necessary. But unbridled majoritarianism is a disaster. A successful liberal democracy requires constraining institutions: independent oversight over elections, an independent judiciary and an independent bureaucracy. But are they enough? No. In my book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, I follow the Australian economist Nicholas Gruen in arguing for the addition of citizens’ assemblies or citizens’ juries. These would insert an important element of ancient Greek democracy into the parliamentary tradition.

There are two arguments for introducing sortition (lottery) into the political process. First, these assemblies would be more representative than professional politicians can ever be. Second, it would temper the impact of political campaigning, nowadays made more distorting by the arts of advertising and the algorithms of social media…(More)”.

Civic Participation in the Datafied Society

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction to Special Issue by Arne Hintz, Lina Dencik, Joanna Redden, Emiliano Trere: “As data collection and analysis are increasingly deployed for a variety of both commercial and public services, state–citizen relations are becoming infused by algorithmic and automated decision making. Yet as citizens, we have few possibilities to understand and intervene into the roll-out of data systems, and to participate in policy and decision making about uses of data and artificial intelligence (AI). This introductory article unpacks the nexus of datafication and participation, reviews some of the editors’ own research on this subject, and provides an overview of the contents of the Special Section “Civic Participation in the Datafied Society.”… (More)”.

Citizens’ Assemblies Could Be Democracy’s Best Hope

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Hugh Pope: “…According to the OECD, nearly 600 citizens’ assemblies had taken place globally by 2021, almost all in the preceding decade. The number has expanded exponentially since then. In addition to high-profile assemblies that take on major issues, like the one in Paris, they include small citizens’ juries making local planning decisions, experiments that mix elected politicians with citizens chosen by lot, and permanent chambers in city or community governance whose members are randomly selected, usually on an annual basis from the relevant population.

Sortition, also known as democracy by lot, has been used to randomly select citizens’ assemblies in the Philippines, Malawi and Mexico. Citizens’ assemblies were used in the U.S. in 2021 to debate the climate crisis in Washington state and to determine the fate of a fairground in Petaluma, California. Indeed, whereas few people had heard of a citizens’ assembly a few years ago, a late 2020 Pew Research poll found that in the U.S., Germany, France and Britain, three-quarters or more of respondents thought it either somewhat or very important for their countries to convene them.

Though a global phenomenon, the trend is finding the most traction in Europe. Citizens’ assemblies in Germany are “booming,” with over 60 in the past year alone, according to a German radio documentary. A headline in Britain’s Guardian newspaper wondered if they are “the Future of Democracy.” The Dutch newspaper Trouw suggested they may be “the way we can win back trust in politics.” And in France, an editorial in Le Monde called for a greater embrace of “this new way of exercising power and drawing on collective intelligence.”…(More)”.