Citizens’ Assemblies in Los Angeles Could Be The Art Of The Possible

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Susana F. Molina: “At the end of his career, the physician and playwright Wayne Liebman has painstakingly entered a strategic race to advocate for citizens’ assemblies – “throwing spaghetti to the wall, and waiting to see what sticks. If something sticks, it’s where I go” as he describes it. His frequent use of metaphors filled a spirited conversation over Zoom last week.

Liebman hadn’t been an activist to his core – the last time he was that active was during the anti-war movement – but the 2016 election left him with no other choice, he says. He retired from medicine and became a full-time activist. Nothing that he had anticipated. 

He began to get involved, in a partisan way, to help regain some political power, at least, in Congress. But, in the midst of the storming of the US capitol, “as I felt like I had thrown a ladder at the castle wall,” he continues, “what I realized is that I have thrown it to the wrong wall.” Liebman’s deep exposure to elections and politicians made him realize that he couldn’t trust the system anymore, “in fact it was the system that had gotten us to the point where we were at,” he says.

According to RepresentUs, America’s leading anti-corruption organization, only 4% of Americans currently have a great deal of confidence in Congress. Significantly, a growing number of democracy advocate organizations are sprouting out around the country to fix, what they call, a broken political system. “Unfortunately what they mean by that, is to try to fix how elections work,” says Liebman. “But this is like lipstick on a pig.” Australia has already instituted all kinds of reforms and still Australians are completely dissatisfied with how politicians run their country.

Liebman started to read about direct democracy, citizens’ assemblies and lottery selected panels. While in representative democracies like in the US people vote for representatives who execute policies and laws, direct democracy models allocate more power to people because they include citizens’ recommendations into the policy-making decision process.

“I quickly became a convert,” he admits. In 2020 Liebman founded the nonpartisan nonprofit organization Public Access Democracy in Los Angeles to educate the public about democratic lotteries and advocate for the implementation of citizens’ assemblies. Currently, one minute at the microphone at an open City Council Meeting depicts a bizarre moment in a bleak democracy landscape. Introducing citizens’ assemblies — where a randomly selected group of citizens hears expert evidence then deliberates — would boost participation on difficult issues and solutions that people have already embraced voluntarily and have built consensus…(More)”.

Thinking About Thinking

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book excerpt of the book “Problem Solver: Maximizing Your Strengths to Make Better Decision” by Cheryl Strauss Einhorn: How could knowing about ourselves as decision-makers impact, for example, the 200-plus food-related decisions we make daily? What happens when you check into a hotel and are greeted with a fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookie? If you’re an Adventurer, who likes to make decisions quickly and instinctively, you’ll likely grab the snack. But by recognizing that you tend to make decisions without caution—and that that’s not always the best way to make decisions—you might more easily say no to the sweet snack sitting on the hotel lobby counter. If you’re a Listener, who tends to heavily weigh others’ opinions, you might hear those other voices and skip the cookie, especially if what you’ve been hearing is that you could shed a few pounds. But that may not be what you want—or even should—do. Understanding your Listener blind spots might help you learn to quiet those outside voices, better channel your own inner voice—and enjoy a delicious cookie!    

The consequences of grabbing the sweet treat at the hotel check-in counter may be minimal, but to decide on your next car purchase—or which hospital to go to for surgery—with the same “go from the gut” attitude has much greater consequences.

In our lives we face many high stakes decisions—ones where the outcome is unknown, the decision is likely to have a long-term impact on our lives and the price for getting it wrong could be costly. Knowing more about our decision tendencies can be life-changing.

Do we want to do what we’ve done before? That’s the basic question we face for almost every decision because that is how our minds operate, from the reel of our past experiences. It’s all our mind knows and so it uses those memories to guide our future. Yet to answer that fundamental question about whether we want to repeat a prior decision requires several pieces of knowledge: How do we engage with our decisions? How have those decisions turned out? What can we do to make them better?    

The truth is, our decisions are the only thing that we really have control over: how we choose matters. Yet we often end up with choices that are made by others, because we’ve—knowingly or unknowingly—abdicated the control over a decision. And frequently, we simply didn’t notice that a decision is before us…(More)”.

Artificial Intelligence, Climate Change and Innovative Democratic Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Florian Cortez: “This policy-oriented article explores the sustainability dimension of digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI). While AI can contribute to halting climate change via targeted applications in specific domains, AI technology in general could also have detrimental effects for climate policy goals. Moreover, digitalisation and AI can have an indirect effect on climate policy via their impact on political processes. It will be argued that, if certain conditions are fulfilled, AI-facilitated digital tools could help with setting up frameworks for bottom-up citizen participation that could generate the legitimacy and popular buy-in required for speedy transformations needed to reach net zero such as radically revamping the energy infrastructure among other crucial elements of the green transition. This could help with ameliorating a potential dilemma of voice versus speed regarding the green transition. The article will further address the nexus between digital applications such as AI and climate justice. Finally, the article will consider whether innovative governance methods could instil new dynamism into the multi-level global climate regime, such as by facilitating interlinkages and integration between different levels. Before implementing innovative governance arrangements, it is crucial to assess whether they do not exacerbate old or even generate new inequalities of access and participation…(More)”

Citizens call for sufficiency and regulation — A comparison of European citizen assemblies and National Energy and Climate Plans

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jonas Lage et al: “There is a growing body of scientific evidence supporting sufficiency as an inevitable strategy for mitigating climate change. Despite this, sufficiency plays a minor role in existing climate and energy policies. Following previous work on the National Energy and Climate Plans of EU countries, we conduct a similar content analysis of the recommendations made by citizen assemblies on climate change mitigation in ten European countries and the EU, and compare the results of these studies. Citizen assemblies are representative mini-publics and enjoy a high level of legitimacy.

We identify a total of 860 mitigation policy recommendations in the citizen assemblies’ documents, of which 332 (39 %) include sufficiency. Most of the sufficiency policies relate to the mobility sector, the least relate to the buildings sector. Regulatory instruments are the most often proposed means for achieving sufficiency, followed by fiscal and economic instruments. The average approval rate of sufficiency policies is high (93 %), with the highest rates for regulatory policies.

Compared to National Energy and Climate Plans, the citizen assembly recommendations include a significantly higher share of sufficiency policies (factor three to six) with a stronger focus on regulatory policies. Consequently, the recommendations can be interpreted as a call for a sufficiency turn and a regulatory turn in climate mitigation politics. These results suggest that the observed lack of sufficiency in climate policy making is not due to a lack of legitimacy, but rather reflects a reluctance to implement sufficiency policies, the constitution of the policy making process and competing interests…(More)”.

EU Parliament pushes for more participatory tools for Europeans

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Silvia Ellena: “A majority of EU lawmakers adopted a report on Thursday (14 September) calling for more participatory tools at EU level. The report, which has no direct legislative impact, passed with 316 votes in favour, 137 against and 47 abstentions.

“We send a clear message to upgrade our democracy, a new EU Agora that involves citizens in European democratic life,” said Alin Mituța (Renew), co-rapporteur on the file, following the adoption of the report.

In the report, the Parliament called for the creation of a European Agora, an annual “structured participation mechanism” composed of citizens, who would deliberate on the EU’s priorities for the year ahead, providing input for the Commission work plan.

Moreover, EU lawmakers called for the creation of a one-stop-shop for all the existing instruments to make sure citizens have easier access to them.

The report also encourages increased use of mini-publics as well as the institutionalisation of other deliberative processes, such as the European Citizens’ Panels, which were set up by the Commission as a follow-up to the EU-wide democratic experiment known as the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE).

These panels, made of randomly selected citizens, were called to deliberate on upcoming legislation earlier this year.

Other participatory tools suggested in the report include EU-wide referendums on key EU policies as well as pan-European online citizens’ consultations to increase citizens’ knowledge of the EU as well as their trust in EU decision-making.

Finally, the Parliament called for an increased focus on the impact of EU policies on youth, suggesting the use of the ‘youth check’, a monitoring tool which has been promoted by the European Youth Forum and included in the CoFoE recommendations.

Other European institutions are already experimenting with the youth check, such as the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), whose recently appointed president included a youth test among the priorities for his mandate…

According to EU lawmakers, citizens’ participation plays a key role in strengthening democracy and the EU Commission should develop a “comprehensive European strategy to enhance citizenship competences in the EU”…(More)”.

The planet is too important to be left to activists: The guiding philosophy of the Climate Majority Project

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Jadzia Tedeschi and Rupert Read: “Increasing numbers of people around the world are convinced that human civilisation is teetering on the brink, but that our political “leaders” aren’t levelling with us about just how dire the climate outlook is. Quite a few of us are beginning to imagine collapse. And yet, for the most part, the responses available to individuals who want to take action seem to be limited to either consumer choices (minimising the amount of plastics we buy, using reusable coffee cups, recycling, and so on) or radical protests (such as gluing oneself to roads at busy intersections, disrupting sports matches, splashing soup on priceless art works, and risking imprisonment).

But there must be a space for action between these two alternatives. While the radical tactics of the Extinction Rebellion movement (XR) did succeed in nudging the public conversation concerning the climate and biodiversity crisis toward a new degree of seriousness, these same tactics also alienated people who would otherwise be sympathetic to XR’s cause and managed to give “climate activists” a bad name in the process. To put it simply, the radical tactics of XR could never achieve the kind of broad-based consensus that is needed to meaningfully respond to the current crisis.

We need a coordinated, collective effort at scale, which entails collaborating across social boundaries and political battlelines. If we are to prevent irrecoverable civilisational collapse, we need to demonstrate that taking care of the natural world is in everybody’s interest.

The Climate Majority Project works to inspire, fund, connect, coordinate, and scale citizen-led initiatives in workplaces, local communities, and strategic professional networks to reach beyond the boundaries of activism-as-usual. It is our endeavour to instantiate the kind of ambitious, moderate flank to XR that Rupert Read has previously called for. The plan is to prove the concept in the UK and then go global — albeit at a slower pace; after all, moderation is rarely adorned with fireworks…(More)”.

Assembling an Assembly Guide

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Guide prepared by DemocracyNext: :The Assembling an Assembly Guide is a resource for any institution, organisation, city administration, or policy maker interested in running a Citizens’ Assembly. It is also a useful tool for citizens and activists wishing to learn more about what a Citizens’ Assembly is and how it works, in order to strengthen their advocacy efforts.

This 3-stage guide will accompany you through the different steps of designing, running, and acting on the results of a Citizens’ Assembly. It draws on and points to a curated selection of the best available resources. From deciding how to choose and define an issue, to setting the budget, timeline, and which people to involve, this guide aims to make it a simple and clear process…(More)”.

A Blueprint for the EU Citizens’ Assembly

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Carsten Berg, Claudia Chwalisz, Kalypso Nicolaidis, and Yves Sintomer: “The European Union has recognised that citizens are not sufficiently involved or empowered in its governance—how can we solve this problem?

Today, ahead of President Von Der Leyen’s 2023 State of the Union address on 13 September, we’re proud to co-publish a paper with the European University Institute written by four leading experts. The paper offers a blueprint for a solution: establishing the EU Citizens’ Assembly (EUCA) to share power with the other three institutions of the European Council, Commission, and Parliament.

After all, “a new push for democracy” is one of the European Commission’s self-declared top priorities for this coming year. This needs to be more than lip service. Unless citizens are given genuine agency and voice in deciding the big issues facing us in this age of turbulence, the authors argue, we will have lost the global battle in defence of democracy. The foundation has been laid for the EUCA with the success of lottery-selected EU Citizens’ Panels during the Conference on the Future of Europe, as well as those initiated by the European Commission over the past year, but more work must be done. 

In the paper, the authors explain why such an Assembly is needed, then suggest how it could be designed in an iterative fashion, operated, and what powers it could have in the EU system.

“In a broader context of democratic crisis and green, digital, and geopolitical transitions, we need to open up our imaginations to radical political change,” the authors say. “Political and technocratic elites must start giving up some control and allow for a modicum of self-determination by citizens.”..(More)”

Crafting the future: involving young people in urban design

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Alastair Bailey: “About 60 per cent of urban populations will be under 18 years of age by 2030, according to UN Habitat, but attempts to involve young people in the design of their cities remain in their infancy. Efforts to enlist this generation have often floundered due to a range of problems — not least an unwillingness to listen to their needs.

“The actual involvement of young people in planning is negligible” says Simeon Shtebunaev, a Birmingham City University doctoral researcher in youth and town planning and researcher at urban social enterprise Social Life. However, new technologies offer a way forward. Digitisation has come to be seen as a “panacea to youth engagement” in many cities, notes Shtebunaev.

Hargeisa, the largest city of Somaliland in the Horn of Africa and home to 1.5mn people, has already been demonstrating what can be achieved by digitally engaging with young people — notably through the Minecraft video game. This enables users to design and build structures in a manner similar to expensive 3D modelling software.

Despite large-scale reconstruction, the city still bears the scars of the 1981-91 civil war, during which former Somalian dictator Said Barre sought to wipe out members of the city’s dominant Isaaq clan to enforce his own rule. Up to an estimated 200,000 Isaaq died.

In September 2019, though, “Urban Visioning Week” brought Hargeisa residents together over five days to discuss the city’s future as part of the UN’s Joint Programme on Local Governance. The aim was for residents to identify the city’s problems and what improvements they felt were needed…(More)”.

Protests

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Davide Cantoni, Andrew Kao, David Y. Yang & Noam Yuchtman: “Citizens have long taken to the streets to demand change, expressing political views that may otherwise be suppressed. Protests have produced change at local, national, and international scales, including spectacular moments of political and social transformation. We document five new empirical patterns describing 1.2 million protest events across 218 countries between 1980 and 2020. First, autocracies and weak democracies experienced a trend break in protests during the Arab Spring. Second, protest movements also rose in importance following the Arab Spring. Third, protest movements geographically diffuse over time, spiking to their peak, before falling off. Fourth, a country’s year-to-year economic performance is not strongly correlated with protests; individual values are predictive of protest participation. Fifth, the US, China, and Russia are the most over-represented countries by their share of academic studies. We discuss each pattern’s connections to the existing literature and anticipate paths for future work.Citizens have long taken to the streets to demand change, expressing political views that may otherwise be suppressed. Protests have produced change at local, national, and international scales, including spectacular moments of political and social transformation. We document five new empirical patterns describing 1.2 million protest events across 218 countries between 1980 and 2020. First, autocracies and weak democracies experienced a trend break in protests during the Arab Spring. Second, protest movements also rose in importance following the Arab Spring. Third, protest movements geographically diffuse over time, spiking to their peak, before falling off. Fourth, a country’s year-to-year economic performance is not strongly correlated with protests; individual values are predictive of protest participation. Fifth, the US, China, and Russia are the most over-represented countries by their share of academic studies. We discuss each pattern’s connections to the existing literature and anticipate paths for future work.Citizens have long taken to the streets to demand change, expressing political views that may otherwise be suppressed. Protests have produced change at local, national, and international scales, including spectacular moments of political and social transformation. We document five new empirical patterns describing 1.2 million protest events across 218 countries between 1980 and 2020. First, autocracies and weak democracies experienced a trend break in protests during the Arab Spring. Second, protest movements also rose in importance following the Arab Spring. Third, protest movements geographically diffuse over time, spiking to their peak, before falling off. Fourth, a country’s year-to-year economic performance is not strongly correlated with protests; individual values are predictive of protest participation. Fifth, the US, China, and Russia are the most over-represented countries by their share of academic studies. We discuss each pattern’s connections to the existing literature and anticipate paths for future work…(More)”.