Paper by Matt D. Ryan: “This article provides an account of how innovative participatory governance unfolded in South Australia between 2010 and 2018. In doing so it explores how an ‘interactive’ political leadership style, which scholarship argues is needed in contemporary democracy, played out in practice. Under the leadership of Premier Jay Weatherill this approach to governing, known as ‘debate and decide’, became regarded as one of the most successful examples of democratic innovation globally. Using an archival and media method of analysis the article finds evidence of the successful application of an interactive political leadership style, but one that was so woven into competitive politics that it was abandoned after a change in government in March 2018. To help sustain interactive political leadership styles the article argues for research into how a broader base of politicians perceives the benefits and risks of innovative participatory governance. It also argues for a focus on developing politicians’ collaborative leadership capabilities. However, the article concludes by asking: if political competition is built into our system of government, are we be better off leveraging it, rather than resisting it, in the pursuit of democratic reform?…(More)”.
‘Turning conflicts into co-creation’: Taiwan government harnesses digital policy for democracy
Article by Si Ying Thian: “Assistive intelligence and language models can help facilitate nuanced conversations because the human brain simply cannot process 1,000 different positions, said Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Digital Minister in charge of the Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA).
Tang was speaking at a webinar about policymaking in the digital age, hosted by LSE IDEAS, the think tank of the London School of Economics, on 1 December 2023.
She cited Talk to the City, a large language model that transforms transcripts from a variety of datasets into clusters of similar opinions, as an example of a technology that has helped increase collaboration and diversity without losing the ability to scale…
“The idea is to establish value-based, long-term collaborations based on the idea of public code. This is evident in many of our government websites, which very much look like the UK’s,” said Tang.
Public code is defined by Foundation of Public Code as an open-source software developed by public organisations, together with policy and guidance needed for collaboration and reuse…
The government’s commitment to open source is also evident in its rollout of the Taiwan Employment Gold Card, which integrates a flexible work permit, a residence visa for up to three years, and eligibility for national health insurance and income tax reduction.
According to Tang, the Taiwan government invites anyone with experience of eight years or more in contributing to open source or a Web3 publicly available ledger to enrol in the residency program…(More)”.
Speak Youth To Power
Blog by The National Democratic Institute: “Under the Speak Youth To Power campaign, NDI has emphasized the importance of young people translating their power to sustained action and influence over political decision-making and democratic processes….
In Turkey, Sosyal Iklim aims to develop a culture of dialogue among young people and to ensure their active participation in social and political life. Board Chair, Gaye Tuğrulöz, shared that her organization is, “… trying to create spaces for young people to see themselves as leaders. We are trying to say that we don’t have to be older to become decision-makers. We are not the leaders of the future. We are not living for the future. We are the leaders and decision-makers of today. Any decisions that are relevant to young people, we want to get involved. We want to establish these spaces where we have a voice.”…
In Libya, members of the Dialogue and Debate Association (DDA), a youth-led partner organization, are working to promote democracy, civic engagement and peaceful societies. DDA works to empower young people to participate in the political process, make their voices heard, and build a better future for Libya through civic education and building skills for dialogue and debate….
The New Generation Girls and Women Development Initiative (NIGAWD), a youth and young women-led organization in Nigeria is working on youth advocacy and policy development, good governance and anti-corruption, elections and human rights. NIGAWD described how youth political participation means the government making spaces to listen to the desires and concerns of young people and allowing them to be part of the policy-making process….(More)”.
Making democratic innovations stick
Report by NESTA: “A survey of 52 people working on participation in local government in the UK and the Nordic countries found that:
- a lack of funding and bureaucracy are the biggest barriers to using and scaling democratic innovations
- enabling citizens to influence decision making, building trust and being more inclusive are the most important reasons for using democratic innovations
- tackling climate change and reducing poverty and inequality are seen as the most important challenges to involve the public in.
When we focused on attitudes towards participation in the UK more broadly, and on attitudes to participation in climate change more specifically we found that:
- the public think it is important that they are being involved in how we make decisions on climate change. 71% of the public think it is important they are given a say in how to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions and transition to net zero
- the public doesn’t think the government is doing a good job of involving them – only 12% thought that the government is doing a good job of involving them in making decisions on how we tackle climate change
- not having the ability to influence decision makers and not having the right skills to participate are seen as the biggest barriers by the public….(More)”.
Was vTaiwan such a big flop, after all?
Blog by Beth Noveck: “A recent issue of the Daily Beast featured an article about vTaiwan, Taiwan’s flagship crowdlaw project to engage the public in the legislative process, reporting what I long suspected and feared: early success has not translated into lasting impact or institutionalization of public participation in policymaking.
“The platform hasn’t been used for any major decisions since 2018” said vTaiwan co-creator and former Taiwanese legislator Jason Hsu. He went on to add that: “since the government is not mandated to adopt recommendations coming from vTaiwan, ‘legislators don’t take it seriously.’”
After vTaiwan enabled over two hundred thousand people to participate in crafting 26 pieces of national legislation, advocates for tech and democracy hailed this four-stage online and offline deliberative process as the poster child of tech-enabled public engagement. We celebrated vTaiwan as evidence of the powerful potential for meaningful public participation in governance.
vTaiwan began with a proposal stage, with offline and online discussion of problems using a series of different tools for deliberation and frequent polling.This collaborative problem-definition process, which lasted from a few weeks to a year, helped a large number of people to agree on and define which problems should be tackled.
While disappointing, vTaiwan is not unique in failing to deliver on the promise of tech-enabled participation. As my GovLab colleagues and I reported last year, Madrid’s online engagement platform Decide Madrid attracted almost half a million sign-ups. But of the 28,000 legislative proposals submitted by residents since 2015, only one became policy. Sign-ups have declined dramatically.
Online public engagements fizzle for a variety of reasons…(More)”.
Creating a Citizen Participation Service and other ideas
Paper by Kathy Peach: “…This paper explains how public participation can improve national policy, long-term decision making and increase democratic legitimacy and trust.
Taking a practical approach it examines how the wide range of tools available for harnessing citizen’s collective intelligence and explores how, and in what circumstances, they can best be used.
Examining how public participation can be embedded in climate policy at a national level, it suggests three models for restructuring central government – a Public Participation Secretariat, new public bodies and at most ambitious, a Citizen Participation Service.
Finally, it outlines the contours of a flagship participation programme for climate policy covering digital infrastructure, citizen science, participatory budgeting and other proposals…(More)”.
Hopes over fears: Can democratic deliberation increase positive emotions concerning the future?
Paper by Mikko Leino and Katariina Kulha: “Deliberative mini-publics have often been considered to be a potential way to promote future-oriented thinking. Still, thinking about the future can be hard as it can evoke negative emotions such as stress and anxiety. This article establishes why a more positive outlook towards the future can benefit long-term decision-making. Then, it explores whether and to what extent deliberative mini-publics can facilitate thinking about the future by moderating negative emotions and encouraging positive emotions. We analyzed an online mini-public held in the region of Satakunta, Finland, organized to involve the public in the drafting process of a regional plan extending until the year 2050. In addition to the standard practices related to mini-publics, the Citizens’ Assembly included an imaginary time travel exercise, Future Design, carried out with half of the participants. Our analysis makes use of both survey and qualitative data. We found that democratic deliberation can promote positive emotions, like hopefulness and compassion, and lessen negative emotions, such as fear and confusion, related to the future. There were, however, differences in how emotions developed in the various small groups. Interviews with participants shed further light onto how participants felt during the event and how their sentiments concerning the future changed…(More)”.
Democratic Policy Development using Collective Dialogues and AI
Paper by Andrew Konya, Lisa Schirch, Colin Irwin, Aviv Ovadya: “We design and test an efficient democratic process for developing policies that reflect informed public will. The process combines AI-enabled collective dialogues that make deliberation democratically viable at scale with bridging-based ranking for automated consensus discovery. A GPT4-powered pipeline translates points of consensus into representative policy clauses from which an initial policy is assembled. The initial policy is iteratively refined with the input of experts and the public before a final vote and evaluation. We test the process three times with the US public, developing policy guidelines for AI assistants related to medical advice, vaccine information, and wars & conflicts. We show the process can be run in two weeks with 1500+ participants for around $10,000, and that it generates policy guidelines with strong public support across demographic divides. We measure 75-81% support for the policy guidelines overall, and no less than 70-75% support across demographic splits spanning age, gender, religion, race, education, and political party. Overall, this work demonstrates an end-to-end proof of concept for a process we believe can help AI labs develop common-ground policies, governing bodies break political gridlock, and diplomats accelerate peace deals…(More)”.
Unintended Consequences of Data-driven public participation: How Low-Traffic Neighborhood planning became polarized
Paper by Alison Powell: “This paper examines how data-driven consultation contributes to dynamics of political polarization, using the case of ‘Low-Traffic Neighborhoods’ in London, UK. It explores how data-driven consultation can facilitate participation, including ‘agonistic data practices” (Crooks and Currie, 2022) that challenge the dominant interpretations of digital data. The paper adds empirical detail to previous studies of agonistic data practices, concluding that agonistic data practices require certain normative conditions to be met, otherwise dissenting data practices can contribute to dynamics of polarization. The results of this paper draw on empirical insights from the political context of the UK to explain how ostensibly democratic processes including data-driven consultation establish some kinds of knowledge as more legitimate than others. Apparently ‘objective’ knowledge, or calculable data, is attributed greater legitimacy than strong feelings or affective narratives. This can displace affective responses to policy decisions into insular social media spaces where polarizing dynamics are at play. Affective polarization, where political difference is solidified through appeals to feeling, creates political distance and the dehumanization of ‘others’. This can help to amplify conspiracy theories that pose risks to democracy and to the overall legitimacy of media environments. These tendencies are exacerbated when processes of consultation prescribe narrow or specific contributions, valorize quantifiable or objective data and create limited room for dissent…(More)”
Why Deliberation and Voting Belong Together
Paper by Simone Chambers & Mark E. Warren: “The field of deliberative democracy now generally recognizes the co-dependence of deliberation and voting. The field tends to emphasize what deliberation accomplishes for vote-based decisions. In this paper, we reverse this now common view to ask: In what ways does voting benefit deliberation? We discuss seven ways voting can complement and sometimes enhance deliberation. First, voting furnishes deliberation with a feasible and fair closure mechanism. Second, the power to vote implies equal recognition and status, both morally and strategically, which is a condition of democratic deliberation. Third, voting politicizes deliberation by injecting the strategic features of politics into deliberation—effectively internalizing conflict into deliberative processes, without which they can become detached from their political environments. Fourth, anticipation of voting may induce authenticity by revealing preferences, as what one says will count. Fifth, voting preserves expressions of dissent, helping to push back against socially induced pressures for consensus. Sixth, voting defines the issues, such that deliberation is focused, and thus more likely to be effective. And, seventh, within contexts where votes are public—as in representative contexts, voting can induce accountability, particularly for one’s claims. We then use these points to discuss four general types of institutions—general elections, legislatures, minipublics, and minipublics embedded in referendum processes—that combine talking and voting, with the aim of identifying designs that do a better or worse job of capitalizing upon the strengths of each…(More)”.