Inclusive Cyber Policy Making

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Toolkit by Global Digital Partnership: “Marginalised perspectives, particularly from women and LGBTQ+ communities, are largely absent in current cyber norm discussions. This is a serious issue, as marginalised groups often face elevated and specific threats in cyberspace

Our bespoke toolkit provides policymakers and other stakeholders with a range of resources to address this lack of inclusion, including:

  • A how-to guide on developing an inclusive process to develop a cybernorm or implement existing agreed norms
  • An introduction to key terms and concepts relevant to inclusivity and cybernorms
  • Key questions for facilitating inclusive stakeholder mapping processes
  • A mapping of regional and global cybernorm processes…(More)”.

The Eyewitness Community Survey: An Engaging Citizen Science Tool to Capture Reliable Data while Improving Community Participants’ Environmental Health Knowledge and Attitudes

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Melinda Butsch Kovacic: “Many youths and young adults have variable environmental health knowledge, limited understanding of their local environment’s impact on their health, and poor environmentally friendly behaviors. We sought to develop and test a tool to reliably capture data, increase environmental health knowledge, and engage youths as citizen scientists to examine and take action on their community’s challenges. The Eyewitness Community Survey (ECS) was developed through several iterations of co-design. Herein, we tested its performance. In Phase I, seven youths audited five 360° photographs. In Phase II, 27 participants works as pairs/trios and audited five locations, typically 7 days apart. Inter-rater and intra-rater reliability were determined. Changes in participants’ knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and self-efficacy were surveyed. Feedback was obtained via focus groups. Intra-rater reliability was in the substantial/near-perfect range, with Phase II having greater consistency. Inter-rater reliability was high, with 42% and 63% of Phase I and II Kappa, respectively, in the substantial/near-perfect range. Knowledge scores improved after making observations (p ≤ 0.032). Participants (85%) reported the tool to be easy/very easy to use, with 70% willing to use it again. Thus, the ECS is a mutually beneficial citizen science tool that rigorously captures environmental data and provides engaging experiential learning opportunities…(More)”.

What types of health evidence persuade actors in a complex policy system?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Geoff Bates, Sarah Ayres, Andrew Barnfield, and Charles Larkin: “Good quality urban environments can help to prevent non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, mental health conditions and diabetes that account for three quarters of deaths globally (World Health Organisation, 2022). More commonly however, poor quality living conditions contribute to poor health and widening inequalities (Adlakha & John, 2022). Consequently, many public health advocates hope to convince and bring together the stakeholders who shape urban development to help create healthier places.

Evidence is one tool that can be used to convince these stakeholders from outside the health sector to think more about health outcomes. Most of the literature on the use of evidence in policy environments has focused on the public sector, such as politicians and civil servants (e.g., Crow & Jones, 2018). However, urban development decision-making processes involve many stakeholders across sectors with different needs and agendas (Black et al., 2021). While government sets policy and regulatory frameworks, private sector organisations such as property developers and investors drive urban development and strongly influence policy agendas.

In our article recently published in Policy & Politics, What types of evidence persuade actors in a complex policy system?, we explore the use of evidence to influence different groups across the urban development system to think more about health outcomes in their decisions…

The key findings of the research were that:

  1. Evidence-based narratives have wide appeal. Narratives based on real-world and lived experiences help stakeholders to form an emotional connection with evidence and are effective for drawing attention to health problems. Powerful outcomes such as child health and mortality data are particularly persuasive. This builds on literature promoting the use of storytelling approaches for public sector actors by demonstrating its applicability within the private and third sectors….(More)”

De Gruyter Handbook of Citizens’ Assemblies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Min Reuchamps, Julien Vrydagh and Yanina Welp: “Citizens’ Assemblies (CAs) are flourishing around the world. Quite often composed of randomly selected citizens, CAs, arguably, come as a possible answer to contemporary democratic challenges. Democracies worldwide are indeed confronted with a series of disruptive phenomena such as a widespread perception of distrust and growing polarization as well as low performance. Many actors seek to reinvigorate democracy with citizen participation and deliberation. CAs are expected to have the potential to meet this twofold objective. But, despite deliberative and inclusive qualities of CAs, many questions remain open. The increasing popularity of CAs call for a holistic reflection and evaluation on their origins, current uses and future directions.

The De Gruyter Handbook of Citizens’ Assemblies showcases the state of the art around the study of CAs and opens novel perspectives informed by multidisciplinary research and renewed thinking about deliberative participatory processes. It discusses the latest theoretical, empirical, and methodological scientific developments on CAs and offers a unique resource for scholars, decision-makers, practitioners, and curious citizens to better understand the qualities, purposes, promises but also pitfalls of CAs…(More)”.

The Strategy Room: an innovative approach for involving communities in shaping local net zero pathways

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Nesta: “Between January and March 2023, we piloted a novel digital engagement tool, The Strategy Room, to help local authorities understand their residents’ priorities for net-zero policies on the topics of heat, travel and food.

Twelve local authorities ran 66 public engagement sessions between them, attracting almost 640 participants to make policy recommendations for their local areas. This report presents the preliminary results from the pilot study….

Our results show the value of experimenting with new tools for public engagement on net zero that can combine local specificity and comparisons at a national level. To support other similar initiatives in the future and build public support for the policies that will help the UK to transition to net zero by 2050, decision makers should consider the following.

Change how they commission public engagement

Establishing a Citizen Participation Service in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to coordinate and channel resources to local climate teams would help demonstrate the governments’ commitment to putting people at the centre of net-zero policy.

Change how they frame and communicate net-zero policies

Use creative public engagement that allows people to deliberate and learn about policies through interactive, engaging material. Communicate the wider co-benefits of net-zero policies. In particular, emphasise general benefits related to health as well as incorporating people’s current concerns like energy insecurity into messaging.

Change how they tailor net-zero policy at national and local levels

The UK Government needs to lead by example with strategic commitments to help councils decarbonise the housing stock and food supplies they’re responsible for, if it expects people to change how they heat their homes and the food they eat…(More)”.

Asymmetries: participatory democracy after AI

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Gianluca Sgueo in Grand Continent (FR): “When it comes to AI, the scientific community expresses divergent opinions. Some argue that it could enable democratic governments to develop more effective and possibly more inclusive policies. Policymakers who use AI to analyse and process large volumes of digital data would be in a good position to make decisions that are closer to the needs and expectations of communities of citizens. In the view of those who view ‘government by algorithms’ favourably, AI creates the conditions for more effective and regular democratic interaction between public actors and civil society players. Other authors, on the other hand, emphasise the many critical issues raised by the ‘implantation’ of such a complex technology in political and social systems that are already highly complex and problematic. Some authors believe that AI could undermine even democratic values, by perpetuating and amplifying social inequalities and distrust in democratic institutions – thus weakening the foundations of the social contract. But if everyone is right, is no one right? Not necessarily. These two opposing conceptions give us food for thought about the relationship between algorithms and democracies…(More)”.

Why Citizen-Driven Policy Making Is No Longer A Fringe Idea

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Tatjana Buklijas: “Deliberative democracy is a term that would have been met with blank stares in academic and political circles just a few decades ago.

Yet this approach, which examines ways to directly connect citizens with decision-making processes, has now become central to many calls for government reform across the world. 

This surge in interest was firstly driven by the 2008 financial crisis. After the banking crash, there was a crisis of trust in democratic institutions. In Europe and the United States, populist political movements helped drive public feeling to become increasingly anti-establishment. 

The second was the perceived inability of representative democracy to effectively respond to long-term, intergenerational challenges, such as climate change and environmental decline. 

Within the past few years, hundreds of citizens’ assemblies, juries and other forms of ‘minipublics’ have met to learn, deliberate and produce recommendations on topics from housing shortages and covid-19 policies, to climate action.

One of the most recent assemblies in the United Kingdom was the People’s Plan for Nature that produced a vision for the future of nature, and the actions society must take to protect and renew it. 

When it comes to climate action, experts argue that we need to move beyond showpiece national and international goal-setting, and bring decision-making closer to home. 

Scholars say that that local and regional minipublics should be used much more frequently to produce climate policies, as this is where citizens experience the impact of the changing climate and act to make everyday changes.

While some policymakers are critical of deliberative democracy and see these processes as redundant to the existing deliberative bodies, such a national parliaments, others are more supportive. They view them as a way to get a better understanding of both what the public both thinks, and also how they might choose to implement change, after being given the chance to learn and deliberate on key questions.

Research has shown that the cognitive diversity of minipublics ensure a better quality of decision-making, in comparison to the more experienced, but also more homogenous traditional decision-making bodies…(More)”.

Building the Democracy We Need for the Twenty-First Century

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Toolkit by Hollie Russon Gilman, Grace Levin, and Jessica Tang: “This toolkit situates collaborative governance, also known as “co-governance,” within a framework for building community that sees civic education, relationship building, and leadership development as essential first steps toward an effective and sustained participatory process. It offers key takeaways and best practices from effective, ongoing collaborative governance projects between communities and decision makers. The best of these projects shift decision-making power to the hands of communities to make room for more deliberation, consensus, and lasting change. Building on the lessons of successful case studies from across the United States, including Georgia, Kentucky, New York, and Washington, this toolkit aims to support local leaders inside and outside government as they navigate and execute co-governance models in their communities…(More)”.

Assembly required

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Claudia Chwalsiz: “What is the role of political leadership in a new democratic paradigm defined by citizen participation, representation by lot and deliberation? What is or should be the role and relationship of politicians and political parties with citizens? What does a new approach to activating citizenship (in its broad sense) through practice and education entail? These are some questions that I am grappling with, having worked on democratic innovation and citizens’ assemblies for over a decade, with my views evolving greatly over time.

First, a definition. A citizens’ assembly is a bit like jury duty for policy. It is a broadly representative group of people selected by lottery (sortition) who meet for at least four to six days over a few months to learn about an issue, weigh trade-offs, listen to one another and find common ground on shared recommendations.

To take a recent example, the French Citizens’ Assembly on End of Life comprised 184 members, selected by lot, who deliberated for 27 days over the course of four months. Their mandate was to recommend whether, and if so how, existing legislation about assisted dying, euthanasia and related end-of-life matters should be amended. The assembly heard from more than 60 experts, deliberated with one another, and found 92% consensus on 67 recommendations, which they formulated and delivered to President Emmanuel Macron on 3 April 2023. As of November 2021, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has counted almost 600 citizens’ assemblies for public decision-making around the world, addressing complex issues from drug policy reform to biodiversity loss, urban planning decisions, climate change, infrastructure investment, constitutional issues such as abortion and more.

I believe citizens’ assemblies are a key part of the way forward. I believe the lack of agency people feel to be shaping their lives and their communities is at the root of the democratic crisis – leading to ever-growing numbers of people exiting the formal political system entirely, or else turning to extremes (they often have legitimate analysis of the problems we face, but are not offering genuine solutions, and are often dangerous in their perpetuation of divisiveness and sometimes even violence). This is also related to a feeling of a lack of dignity and belonging, perpetuated in a culture where people look down on others with moral superiority, and humiliation abounds, as Amanda Ripley explains in her work on ‘high conflict’. She distinguishes ‘high conflict’ from ‘good conflict’, which is respectful, necessary, and generative, and occurs in settings where there is openness and curiosity. In this context, our current democratic institutions are fuelling divisions, their legitimacy is weakened, and trust is faltering in all directions (of people in government, of government in people and of people in one another)…(More)”.

Diversity of Expertise is Key to Scientific Impact

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Angelo Salatino, Simone Angioni, Francesco Osborne, Diego Reforgiato Recupero, Enrico Motta: “Understanding the relationship between the composition of a research team and the potential impact of their research papers is crucial as it can steer the development of new science policies for improving the research enterprise. Numerous studies assess how the characteristics and diversity of research teams can influence their performance across several dimensions: ethnicity, internationality, size, and others. In this paper, we explore the impact of diversity in terms of the authors’ expertise. To this purpose, we retrieved 114K papers in the field of Computer Science and analysed how the diversity of research fields within a research team relates to the number of citations their papers received in the upcoming 5 years. The results show that two different metrics we defined, reflecting the diversity of expertise, are significantly associated with the number of citations. This suggests that, at least in Computer Science, diversity of expertise is key to scientific impact…(More)”.