The mood music in the room

“If only you could experience the mood music in that room.”

So said David Farrell, Professor of Politics at University College Dublin, and research leader of the Irish Citizens’ Assembly. David was a panel member at the Shaping Scotland event organised by The Electoral Reform Society Scotland. He was talking about how every participant in the Irish Assembly rose to the occasion to tackle complex political issues, in a toxic political environment, whilst dramatically improving the tone of political discourse.

Change of tone was a common theme of this well attended and actively engaged forum, the purpose of which was to discuss the Scottish Government’s proposal for a Citizens’ Assembly to deliberate on issues of constitution and national values.

“The Citizens Assembly is going to try to change the tone of the debate to one of respectful discussion. We want not just 100 better informed citizens, but a better informed society as a whole.” David Martin MEP

“We need to do better than shallow exchanges. Democracy needs to evolve to meet the challenges of our time.” Dr Oliver Escobar

“We are moving beyond a vote-centred democracy to a voice-centred democracy.” Professor David Farrell

“Politicians allow red lines to kill progress. Party politics is designed to create division where it doesn’t exist.” Lesley Riddoch, Journalist

The mood music in this particular room was one of optimistic curiosity. The questions from the floor examined both general principles and detailed practicalities, but the general subtext appeared to be that people want this to work and were looking to be convinced. This was encouraging given that the assembly has already become a party political football.

Indeed, the panel members were at pains to emphasise the independence of the assembly.

“This is about what can be achieved when we put aside tribal affiliations.” Joanna Cherry MP

David Martin MEP, the Convenor Designate of the Scottish Citizens’ Assemble, suggested that the Assembly could effectively have its cake and eat it. It will benefit from the enhanced status of being sponsored by the Government, whilst operating completely independently from the Government.

This sentiment was echoed by Dr Oliver Escobar, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Edinburgh University. “People criticise these things when they come from the top down for lack of independence. But they also criticise them when they come from the bottom up for lack of influence. You can’t win.”

The mood music in the room was that of citizen empowerment. The most enthusiastic responses, from both panel members and the audience, were reserved for stories of assembly participants rising to the democratic occasion. And there was a strong sense during the questions, and on Twitter, that the presence of the Irish panel members, who “have the deliberative democracy T shirt”, was a huge bonus to the proceedings. Louise Caldwell, who was randomly selected to participate in the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (and who features in our film, When Citizens Assemble), spoke convincingly from first-hand experience in response to some detailed questions of procedure - how facilitation worked, the duty of care shown to participants, how media involvement was sensitively handled, how consensus was arrived at, how ballot decisions were made.

“We were all very proud of the work that we had done. We stepped outside of the black and white to sit in the grey area.” Louise Caldwell

“The power is with people who are actually experiencing life, rather than people who are used to commentating on life. You can see the strength that is in inherent to citizens. It is the averageness of the group that gives it its strength.” Lesley Riddoch

The mood music in the room was one of transparent realism. The panel balanced their conviction about the opportunities for positive change with a willingness to acknowledge and embrace the challenges. These challenges include how to balance protection for participants with a desire for transparency and inclusivity through the media, how facilitation works in practice, how the Assembly will deal with what appear to be relatively broad (vague?) topics and questions, and the various issues of process design and administration.

“There are challenges for citizens, challenges for politicians, and challenges for journalists.” Dr Oliver Escobar

“The magic is in the activity of doing it. If you [the media] wait for consensus, you’re going to miss the point. The point is the process.” Professor David Farrell

“Facilitators must be impartial on content, but they can not be neutral on dynamics.” Dr Oliver Escobar

So the mood music in the room was a combination of optimistic curiosity, citizen empowerment and transparent realism. These three notes should combine to make a pleasing democratic chord change.

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You can watch a video recording of the event here. And thank you to Electoral Reform Society for allowing us to borrow their image to illustrate this post.

"They walk different, they talk different, they think different." Democracy 21 conference.

You can't discuss a reboot of local democracy without discussing both the means to increase citizen participation, and the creation of conducive environments for deliberation. So it was natural for All Hands On to attend the Democracy 21 conference in Glasgow. The organisers also kindly let us screen When Citizens Assemble during the lunch break.

Scotland is a backward nation with respect to local democracy. This is in no way a slur on the attitude or aptitude of Scottish citizens. It is a statistical fact. Scotland has had democratic backwardness thrust upon it via the erosion and demolition of the institutions that make local democracy possible. Several speakers quoted from a litany of statistics demonstrating that, in terms of the number of local democratic entities per capita, and by geographic area, Scotland is "beyond weird", as Lesley Riddoch put it. Switzerland (population 8.5million) has 2,300 Communes. The Faroe Islands (population 49,000) has 34 local municipalities. Scotland (population 5.4 million) has just 32 local councils.

Lesley also made the valid point that the Scottish Government has a tendency to try to bulk itself up, to puff out its plumage to appear bigger to its neighbours and on the international scene. The idea of a more devolved, more granular local democracy is counter-intuitive to that mindset. But the risk of not reinvigorating democracy at a local level is that the nation loses its diversity and authenticity. A reboot is imperative.

Democracy 21 was organised by the Electoral Reform Society Scotland and supported by Common Weal, Nesta, Scottish Rural Parliament, and The Democratic Society, amongst others.

It was attended by roughly 500 concerned citizens and activists. We listened - in fact we mostly listened - but we also discussed ideas for what better local democracy would look like, and the process by which Scotland might get there. "How can power exist at the scale of the community which is affected?" was the overriding question with which we wrestled.

The conference also served as a launch platform for a declaration, co-created by attendees at a series of smaller events leading up to the conference, which is intended to shape the Scottish Government's forthcoming Local Democracy Bill.

This post is not intended as a comprehensive write-up of the Democracy 21 event, but we did want to record some conceptual highlights from the perspective of our project, which is concerned with all things relating to participatory democracy.

What does progress look like?

Democracy is about people having the power to make progress. At a local level it can be difficult to obtain the necessary power to make progress, and there may be debate over the prioritisation of options for progress, but progress itself tends to be practical, easy to identify, and unequivocally good. We citizens focus our efforts on securing the democratic means, but we seldom question the democratic ends.

Katherine Trebeck did just that.

She set the scene for the conference by arguing for a wellbeing economy. In so doing she railed against the narrow conceptual bandwidth that defines the economic progress that we seek to achieve through democratic means. Our slavish acceptance of the economic orthodoxy, and the "hegemonic common sense" of GDP growth and competitiveness are, in her view, as big a democratic failure as the Iraq War.

Whilst we're aiming for better democracy, we should also be aiming that democracy at better, more imaginative definitions of progress.

Bottom up and top down

Fixing the machinery of local democracy requires the striking of an appropriate balance between the bottom up and the top down. This applies to the flow of power, to the flow of money and other resources, and to the provision of services. At Democracy 21 several philosophies were espoused as to how this balance can be best achieved.

This included support for the principle of subsidiarity, whereby the top, or the centre, of the system plays a subsidiary role, only performing tasks and providing services that can not be delivered at a local level.

Willie Sullivan of Electoral Reform Society Scotland used a telephony metaphor. What local democracy in Scotland needs, he argued, is a bottom-up smartphone. What we have is a top-down, Bakelite, rotary-dial relic.

Elena Tarifa Herrero from Barcelona en Comú described the "unimaginable" political change that is being wrought in major Spanish cities via the bottom-up process of "municipalism". She talked about the citizens' platform that underpins the activism, she talked passionately about the feminisation of politics, and she described the resulting "democratic revolution from below". Of all the speakers and panelists she best epitomised the rallying call of the conference to "act as if we own the place".

The challenges, consequences and addictiveness of participation

Lots of good stuff under this heading. And lots of that good stuff from the mouth of Common Weal's Robin McAlpine.

There was a discussion about the practical challenges to participation in rural Scotland, arising from a lack of access to transport and/or a lack of access to appropriate technology.

Robin highlighted the need to manage the tension between, on the one hand, the intimacy and intensity required for good deliberation, and, on the other, the desire to be as inclusive as possible to as many people as possible.

He also floated the idea of getting comfortable with asymmetry. Getting comfortable with the notion that empowered Community A will make different decisions in similar circumstances to empowered Community B.

There was a comment from the audience to the effect that ordinary people, given political agency, tend to rise to the challenge of participation with the confidence and the innate skills to make good political decisions. Robin ran with this idea, drawing on his observation of participatory democratic processes and the effect of participation on the participants. "They walk different, they talk different, they think different."

From the perspective of All Hands On, that was a fitting conclusion. Radical, participatory democracy doesn't just transform politics, it transforms people.

Act as if we own the place. Local democracy workshop.

“Scotland is one of the least democratic countries in Europe.”

— Andy Wightman, MSP

This statement from Green local democracy spokesperson, Andy Wightman, set the tone for a forthright and illuminating Our Democracy workshop in Edinburgh. The session, attended by Phil, had the brilliantly evocative title, "Act As If We Own The Place". And the event was imbued with a suitable sense of urgency and a palpable collective frustration, but also with a desire to channel these emotions into constructive principles and policies.

Our Democracy is a coalition between the Electoral Reform Society, Common Weal, the Scottish Rural Parliament and the Scottish Community Alliance. And this event, one of several, set out to generate a series of proposals for radical reform to be included in the Scottish Government's forthcoming Local Democracy Bill.

The event consisted of scene-setting addresses from a distinguished panel, a Q&A session with the audience, and a workshop session in which attendees and facilitators co-created a series of local democracy principles around the themes of scale, process and structure.

The output from the panel session is summarised in the graphic below. It is fitting that, at its heart, is the idea of a more 'intimate economy'. Much of the discussion was about the means by which the scale of local democracy in Scotland can be reduced to levels that are more consistent with those across Europe, thereby increasing participation, relevance and empowerment.

And here are a selection of observations from the panel members, all of whom gave good quote. Apologies if any of these are paraphrased rather than verbatim quotes. Every attempt was made to ensure the latter, and the intended meaning has definitely been preserved in each case.

Andy Wightman, MSP

The state of local democracy in Scotland? Short story - not good.

We have a history of rampant municipal corruption.

It is difficult to talk about issues such as structure, process and the allocation of political power at election time, when politicians are more concerned with offering 'tasty apples'.

Local democracy should not be confused with community empowerment. 

We need hard-wired, statutory, universal powers for communities without the funds or motivations to make things happen.

Lesley Riddoch - Journalist, broadcaster, PhD student.

The collapse of democracy in Scotland is the collapse of small town democracy.

I love watching people change when they can have ideas and see them realised in their lifetime.

We need to flush the system through with real democracy.

The formal and informal systems operate in parallel universes. The formal system is large, funded, anonymous and unlovely.

Mette Gundersen - Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities

Citizen participation in political decision making is essential to the functioning of the democratic process.

We have three values for local democracy. Free and open elections. Citizen involvement and debate, both person to person and via critical media. Trustful and transparent decision making.

Neil McInroy - Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES)

The economy is a social construct, but we are detached from it.

We need to democratise wealth, and not just through the process of getting a job. 

We need a 'new municipalism', participative as well as representative, relational as well as transactional.

This is an age of experiments, and the form of our structures should follow their function.