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Democracy Matters: Lessons from the 2015 Citizens’ Assemblies on English Devolution
Abstract
The Citizens’ Assembly pilots on local democracy and devolution were the first of their kind in the United Kingdom. Organised by Democracy Matters — an alliance of university researchers and civil society organisations led by Professor Matthew Flinders — and funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, the Assemblies took place in Southampton and Sheffield towards the end of 2015.
... Valgkanalen er den av de etablerte demokratiske institusjonene som mest åpenbart utfordres her. Alternative og supplerende måter å involvere og skape medvirkning på er derfor et viktig tema i både politiske og faglige diskurser (Boulianne, 2018;Flinders et al., 2016;Fung, 2003;van Reybrouck, 2014). «Mini-publics» er altså én type demokratitiltak som har vaert prøvd ut i relativt stor skala i så vel USA og Australia som i Europa Fishkin, 1995Fishkin, , 2018Fung, 2003;Goodin & Dryzek, 2008). ...
... Kjønnsbalansen er om lag lik blant inviterte, men gapet mellom menn og kvinner øker til 14 prosentpoeng når vi ser på dem som faktisk deltok. Dette siste er motsatt av det vi oftest ser i utenlandske paneler (Flinders et al., 2016). Også i norske besluttende organer på lokalt plan, som kommunestyrer og formannskap, er kvinner underrepresentert. ...
... Fra denne basen ble 430 invitasjonsbrev sendt ut i posten -også her ble tilfeldighetsprinsippet lagt til grunn. Med utgangspunkt i utfordringer knyttet til rekruttering rapportert fra utenlandske paneler (bl.a.Flinders et al., 2016;Boulianne, 2018) besluttet kommunen at deltakerne i panelet skulle honoreres som om de var medlemmer i «ordinaere politiske utvalg». Honoraret ble satt til 2000 kroner for oppmøte. ...
Why do some citizens trust in local political actors and institutions while others do not? With data from the Norwegian Local Election Survey 2019, we examine characteristics of citizens with high and low local political trust. The analyses indicate that trust in the different political actors and institutions is closely linked. For example, those who report high trust in the mayor also report high trust in politicians in general, in the municipal council, and in the municipal administration. In other words, people tend to have either high or low trust in the entire local political system. Furthermore, we find that trust in local political systems and actors is associated with a number of individual and contextual factors including the sense of belonging to the municipality, the use of municipal services, and political participation. Trust also seems to be linked to being on the winning team: those who voted for parties that won the election are more trustful than those who voted for parties that that did not win the election.
... Different terms have been used to describe processes in which randomlyselected citizens deliberate directlyw ith elected officials in ap articular forum. In their work on the Irish Convention on the Constitution, Arnold et al. (2019) talk of a "hybrid sortition chamber".Others refer to them as "mixed".F or instance, Flinders et al. (2016) differentiate between pure and mixed assemblies wherep ure assemblies consists olelyo f citizens and mixed assemblies include citizens and politicians. Strandberg et al. (2021a) and Vandamme et al. (2019) speak of "mixed deliberation" and a "mixed chamber" respectively.Yet,these terms are not sufficientlyc omprehensive.M ixed deliberation could be interpreted broadlytoinclude processes that involvethe wider citizenry, elected officials, stakeholders,a nd others in system wide deliberations as opposed to deliberations between citizens and politicians in ad iscreted eliberative forum as is the objective of this chapter.Intheir most recent work on the Irish Convention, Farrell et al. (2020) identify it as amixed-member deliberative forum (MMDF). ...
... In our real-world examples, differences have been observed in levels of politician and citizen members deliberative quality.Politicians,insome processes have achieved higher levelso fd eliberative quality than citizens (Flinders et al. 2016;S trandberge t al. 2021b). Yet, Grönlund et al. (2020) observen os uch differencei nt he Turku panels.⁴ ...
... However, the recommendations produced in CAJs often have an advisory role and compete with advice from other groups, making their impact on policymaking difficult to identify (Bryant & Hall, 2017;Flinders et al., 2015). In most cases, commissioning bodies respond to the recommendations in reference to current policies and claim they will inform an upcoming climate plan. ...
... However, CAJs are not a panacea for solving issues with public participation and climate policymaking (Smith & Wales, 2000;Devaney et al., 2020;Flinders et al., 2015). CAJs only represent one form of public engagement and deliberation on climate change, and there are a variety of other communications, education and engagement initiatives available (Devaney et al., 2020). ...
This open access book brings together a collection of cutting-edge insights into how action can and is already being taken against climate change at multiple levels of our societies, amidst growing calls for transformative and inclusive climate action. In an era of increasing recognition regarding climate and ecological breakdown, this book offers hope, inspiration and analyses for multi-level climate action, spanning varied communities, places, spaces, agents and disciplines, demonstrating how the energy and dynamism of local scales are a powerful resource in turning the tide. Interconnected yet conceptually distinct, the book’s three sections span multiple levels of analysis, interrogating diverse perspectives and practices inherent to the vivid tapestry of climate action emerging locally, nationally and internationally. Delivered in collaboration with the UK’s ‘Place-Based Climate Action Network’, chapters are drawn from a wide range of authors with varying backgrounds spread across academia, policy and practice.
Candice Howarth is Senior Policy Fellow at the LSE Grantham Research Institute and Co-director of the Place-based Climate Action Network (PCAN). She has an interdisciplinary background in climate policy, communication and pro-environmental behaviour with degrees in meteorology (BSc), climate change (MSc) and a Ph.D. in climate policy and pro-environmental behaviour.
Matthew Lane is Researcher in Sustainable Urban Governance at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on how city and regional governments are coping with an increased responsibility to act on crises of sustainability despite having limited legal, institutional, political and economic capacity to do so. He has undertaken fieldwork in the UK, Zambia, China and the United States of America.
Amanda Slevin is Environmental Sociologist with 20+ years’ experience in community development, adult and community education. Co-Director of QUB’s Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action, Amanda works with the Place-based Climate Action Network through which she co-founded Belfast Climate Commission and chairs its Community Climate Action Working Group.
... However, the recommendations produced in CAJs often have an advisory role and compete with advice from other groups, making their impact on policymaking difficult to identify (Bryant & Hall, 2017;Flinders et al., 2015). In most cases, commissioning bodies respond to the recommendations in reference to current policies and claim they will inform an upcoming climate plan. ...
... However, CAJs are not a panacea for solving issues with public participation and climate policymaking (Smith & Wales, 2000;Devaney et al., 2020;Flinders et al., 2015). CAJs only represent one form of public engagement and deliberation on climate change, and there are a variety of other communications, education and engagement initiatives available (Devaney et al., 2020). ...
Highlights
Citizen assemblies and juries (CAJs) must meet generally accepted standards and be citizen-led to genuinely and credibly engage citizens. Agreed implementation and follow-up procedures should be established to ensure CAJs legitimately inform policymaking. CAJs are not a panacea to public participation on climate change and much more needs to be done beyond them.
... Although citizens' assemblies are relatively rare, experimentation with their use is growing, and they have been utilised by national governments to garner public input into topics like electoral reform (the Netherlands, British Columbia, Ontario), abortion (Ireland), long term care (UK) and climate change (e.g., in France, UK and Ireland). There has been some, although more limited, use by local public authorities, for instance Vancouver's assembly on municipal planning (Beauvais, 2018), as well as by teams involving academics and civil society organisations on constitutional and multi-level governance issues (Flinders et al., 2016;Renwick et al., 2018). Thus citizens' assemblies are not novel, but their application to the challenge of climate change is a more recent phenomenon. ...
It has been argued that a ‘new climate politics’ has emerged in recent years, in the wake of global climate change protest movements. One part of the new climate politics entails experimentation with citizen-centric input into policy development, via mechanisms of deliberative democracy such as citizens’ assemblies. Yet relatively little is known about the motivations and aspirations of those commissioning climate assemblies or about general public perceptions of these institutions. Addressing these issues is important for increasing understanding of what these deliberative mechanisms represent in the context of climate change, how legitimate, credible and useful they are perceived to be by those involved, and whether they represent a radical way of doing politics differently or a more incremental change. This article addresses these gaps by presenting findings from mixed method research on prior expectations of the Devon Climate Assembly, proposed following the declaration of a climate emergency in 2019. The research compares and contrasts the views of those commissioning and administering the citizens’ assembly, with those of the wider public. Findings indicate widespread support, yet also considerable risk and uncertainty associated with holding the assembly. Enabling input into policy of a broad array of public voices was seen as necessary for effective climate response, yet there was scepticism about the practical challenges involved in ensuring citizen representation, and about whether politicians, and society more generally, would embrace the ‘hard choices’ required. The assembly was diversely represented as a means to unlock structural change, and as an instrumental tool to achieve behaviour change at scale. The Devon Climate Assembly appears to indicate ‘cautious experimentation’ where democratic innovation is widely embraced yet carefully constrained, offering only a modest example of a ‘new climate politics,’ with minimal challenges to the authority of existing institutions.
One of the main criticisms of agonistic democracy (and of post-structuralism more generally) is that it fails to get beyond a purely negative assessment of alternative theories. The article takes up this challenge. First, it seeks to specify the core commitments of agonistic democracy, focusing on the concepts of contestation, contingency and interdependence. Second, it analyses how these commitments might be institutionalised through models of perfectionism, adversarialism and inclusivism. Third, it considers how agonistic principles can suffuse broader processes of democratic design, drawing on insights from critical institutionalism. The article argues that agonism can become more than a thought experiment or critique. An agonistic design process is possible. Such a process has five key characteristics: it is processual, collective, contextual, contestable and always provisional.
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