Patrick's De Correspondent article. Published on referendum day.

Patrick wrote this article for the Dutch radical journalism platform, De Correspondent. It sets out the context for the referendum on whether to repeal the 8th amendment to the Irish Constitution. And it describes in detail the machinations of the Citizens' Assembly, whose deliberations led to the referendum.

All Hands On believes that we require radical, systemic changes to our democratic processes if we are to address systemic issues such as climate change and inequality. Citizens' Assemblies and the sortition process by which they are selected are an example of such change.

But we also require fundamental, systemic changes to the media and the role of journalism. De Correspondent is a shining light in this respect. It is an advertising free, participative journalism platform, funded through a membership subscription model. It has over 60,000 paying members at the time of writing. Its manifesto is based on ten principles, which describe its business model, its dedication to journalistic ideals rather than any political ideology, its social aims, and its desire to shift the emphasis from passive readers to active participants. Patrick experienced the latter at first hand as he took part in a live Q&A session in the article's comment thread.

The thread was joined by Citizens' Assembly member, Mike Loughnane. At the time of writing there are 81 comments in the thread. The discussion reflects deep both a dissatisfaction with democracy's status quo, and consequent admiration for what the Irish have achieved with their Assemblies. The quote below is indicative.

“Mistrust and a growing gap between the elected and the electors and as such a distrust in Democracy (democratic elected parties) and malfunctioning of Democracy and agenda setting and decision making is obviously a major issue within the vast majority of EU (and Western) countries.”

— Christophe Rocour

The thread also had an unexpected "guest" appearance from De Correspondent contributor and author of Against Elections, David Van Reybrouck.

“Underlying idea is: a subset of society that is informed can make better decisions than an entire society that is uninformed.

Democracy is not: the majority of gut feelings. It is reasoned debate on a number of options. Ideally, this is what classical representative democracy ought to do, but the electoral dynamics often hamper reasoned debate.”

— David Van Reybrouck

Patrick's article is published in Dutch. An English transcript is shown in full below.

---

Ireland’s immaculate conception – a step forward for democracy?

By Patrick Chalmers

Irish voters will weigh countless women’s stories today in deciding how to balance the rights to life of a mother and her unborn child. These life-and-death dramas have dominated months of impassioned campaigning, years even for some, each one an individual truth about a pregnancy.

They include Sorcha’s, who described travelling to England for a termination she couldn’t have had in Ireland. A mother already, she wanted no further children and also feared a recurrence of severe post-natal depression and possibly having a still-born child. And Tracey’s, who went to Liverpool in England to have her terminally-ill daughter Grace induced early, an illegal act at home. Her baby’s ashes arrived back by courier three weeks later.

On the other side were those of women such as Carina. She first knew her son Benjamin had Down Syndrome after his birth. She fears more liberal laws would have Ireland following the likes of Britain, Denmark and Iceland in aborting most Down Syndrome babies. Or Emma, who says someone like her might abort their unplanned baby, rather than keep it, if abortion were more easily available.

The binary nature of a referendum means only one side will win on an issue that’s far from black and white. For Ireland, abortion pits traditional Catholic morality and rural conservatism against the modernising morals and ethics of its more urbanised, youthful population. It’s not any easy mix.

So there’s a deeper story buried here, one beyond any single woman’s pregnancy experience, however poignant. Its core concerns Ireland’s use of a democratic device inspired by Ancient Greece to resolve this highly contentious question. Not the referendum itself but what made it possible – a randomly selected jury of Irish people whose collective wisdom broke through a decades-long deadlock over abortion.

During dozens of hours those everyday Irish jurors considered the medical, moral and ethical issues involved. Their main recommendations – to repeal a de facto constitutional ban on abortion law to free politicians’ hands on the matter – surprised pretty much everyone. The evident seriousness of the work, and clear-cut conclusions, opened the doors for an all-party committee of politicians to follow the assembly’s lead.

Today’s vote is the third leg of this unique process, a mandatory requirement for any change to Ireland’s constitution. It gives all Irish citizens a direct say on abortion law. For all the imperfect bluntness of referendums, let’s not talk about Brexit, the electorate has a bedrock of facts and testimony  on which to decide. Many countries wouldn’t dream of giving citizens a say on abortion still less with such high-quality support materials. A brake on targeted political advertising on social media has also helped keep things more transparent.

That means whatever the outcome, some will quietly celebrate having radically changed the rules for doing democracy.

No Irish joke

So, in a country of renowned story tellers, it’s this one that may endure beyond all others. Its essence is that Ireland has changed the rules for doing democracy – for all of us, everywhere – no joke.

The referendum emerged from a process far closer to original Athenian ideas of power to, or government by, the people. We’ve not seen anything like it in a couple of centuries, when the modern version of government by elections took root. Without the assembly, there might not even have been a referendum, so entrenched had abortion become for Irish people and politicians of all parties.

Ireland’s message for the world is simple enough: that ordinary citizens, given time and the right conditions, show deep, collective wisdom quite unlike what comes from adversarial politics. The implications go way beyond a single referendum, whatever the result, and way beyond one country even.

That’s why I went to Ireland in July last year - to get a close-up look at what seemed like a different way of doing democracy. Inside a North Dublin hotel, nestled by a sea front dotted with sailing boats and other small craft at anchor, I met members of a public jury fresh from five weekends spent pondering their country’s abortion laws.

My trip was the latest step on a journey I’d first thought of more than two decades earlier as a news reporter in Brussels. Back then I’d been shocked at how EU’s leaders had tossed aside, with little evident debate, environment ministers’ attempt to install a European carbon tax. What struck me then was how the leaders guillotined months of negotiations on tackling climate change, telling journalists nothing of their closed-door meeting’s who, why or how.

My thinking had evolved over the years into an all-encompassing critique of elections themselves. Part of that was the skewed outcomes of my native Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral process. Another was the growing body of books unpicking representative democracy’s claims to be either representative or democratic. They included the revelation that Ancient Greeks – think Aristotle – saw democracy as requiring public assemblies and random selection of public office holders. They barely used elections, devices they saw as inevitably oligarchic or aristocratic, meaning they inevitably favoured an elite few.

The Irish jury process I came to see – the Citizens’ Assembly – was firmly in the original democracy camp. Its 99 members comprised randomly chosen citizens intended to represent ordinary Irish people by age, gender, social class and region.

Quiet pride

What struck me most was participants’ quiet pride in what they’d done. That quality shone through on camera, and again in phone interviews I did with other participants for a Guardian newspaper article. These story tellers spoke about personal transformation, how they’d deeply engaged in the jury process and even moved their positions as a result.

David Keogh, a truck driver in his late 40s, was one of them. He couldn’t have been more enthusiastic.

“It’s been the best experience of my life and I mean that genuinely. It’s, what can I say? It’s the inside of the machine – we’re inside the machine.”

A step back from participants I met Dimitri Courant, a French researcher in political science at the Universities of Lausanne and Paris 8. Speaking to him after the Assembly ended, in 2018, he described a process that put Ireland in the front rank of democracy innovation.

“There’s a new standard, a new norm to be taken seriously – and that’s the Irish example.”

Assembly enthusiasts highlight two aspects of the approach that set it apart from electoral politics. The first is to randomly select participants to represent more accurately the views of wider society. That pricks the narrow bubbles of elected politicians, making policies less elitist. The second is to create the necessary conditions required for people to deliberate. That means having balanced panels of experts address participants, presenting different perspectives and arguments, and giving time for reflection and exchanges among members.

Gender bias impacts

The first element certainly matters in Ireland when it comes to questions of women’s reproductive health, not least abortion. That’s because Irish women are chronically under-represented in politics. Despite hitting an all-time high in the 2016 general election, they still hold just one in every five seats in parliament.

So, while men may take part directly in most conceptions, they never do gestation and are rarely left holding any baby. Hardly the place of deep knowledge from which to craft women-friendly policies, to put it mildly. That imbalance plays out in serial policy failures.

That’s not to say gender questions led directly to the assembly as their antidote, though they certainly fuelled enthusiasm for it. One of the 2016 intake of new Teachta Dála or TDs – members of the Irish parliament’s lower house –  was Kate O'Connell. Her political ambitions flowed directly out of experiences she’d had after diagnosis of a potentially fatal condition in her unborn son, one that might have required her to have an abortion, in England.

A Citizens’ Assembly was already in prospect for the Fine Gael minority coalition government in 2016, part of an attempt to restore voters’ trust in politics. The idea harks back to something more like original democracy’s meaning of government or rule by the people.

History’s lessons

The Greeks of antiquity understood implicitly the pitfalls of elections. To avoid them, they embedded random selection of citizens and assemblies as their political mainstays. Downgrading elections meant would-be candidates couldn’t lie about their plans, themselves or their opponents. It also prevented the handing of powers to elites, they called them aristocrats or oligarchs then, who usually win most ballots.

Those basic elements, then and now, make for very different political dynamics from what we’re used to. Instead of fractious debates between rival parties or candidates for election, assembly participants are more likely to tackle issues on their merits. That difference certainly jumped out in the style of exchanges witnessed within the Citizens’ Assembly versus those of the joint parliamentary committee that took up its recommendations.

“There was no major arguments or disputes here at the Citizens’ Assembly even though there was serious disagreements, as there would always be on this subject,” said John Long, a 56-year-old electronics technician from the southern Irish city of Cork.

Long was another of the 99 random strangers brought together for the assembly. They spent their first five weekends over five months tackling abortion law, ending in April 2017.

“I would say we probably put a couple of hundred hours of total time into it, which is probably more than any parliamentary party committee would have… So, we're probably the best-informed amateurs in the country on this topic at the moment.”

He, like some others on the assembly who spoke publicly, said his views gradually moved towards liberalising abortion laws.

That’s not to say assemblies alone could solve the pervasive crisis of trust in election-led political systems around the world. They’re fragile entities, needing transparency in their use so as to build public trust in their potential. That means choosing genuinely representative samples of jurors. It means politicians buying into the process, giving the necessary budget and support staff to make things work. They must also commit to act on assembly recommendations, even those they might not agree with. None of this is guaranteed.

The point is to create space for people to grasp complex issues, and perhaps change positions as their opinions evolve. That’s why Ireland’s decision to hold one on abortion and put its core recommendations to politicians and then a referendum, marks a quantum change worldwide for the approach.

While Ireland’s recent efforts may make it the poster boy for those advocating for more assemblies, it’s not an only child. This year saw the launch of Democracy R&D, in Madrid. Its members’ collective focus is to explore ways to do democracy better. Core principles involve using randomly selected juries, so-called sortition, coupled with deliberation.

An Irish “yes” vote would certainly boost case for sortition, vindicating politicians’ choice to use it to test voters’ deliberated thinking. A “no”, rejecting the Assembly’s recommendations, would weaken the idea’s appeal though probably not fatally. British Columbia used a citizens' assembly to consider electoral reform in 2004 but then saw the recommendations rejected in a referendum. Despite the result, the process won praise for the seriousness and quality of members’ thinking, engagement and conclusions. The same would likely be true of Ireland.

Either way, playing the long game looks like any would-be reformers’ best option. That an assembly took place at all in Ireland was thanks to seeds planted during fallout from the global financial crisis of 2007/2008. The credit crunch knocked the stuffing out of several leading Irish banks and burst the local property bubble. Political scientists saw economists digging into the causes and reckoned they should too, arguing Ireland had to change.

“Without radical reform, we are in danger of sleepwalking into a different crisis in 20 years’ time,” they said.

Ireland has certainly moved on since then, not least in the “yes” vote for same-sex marriage in a 2015 referendum that emerged from that very reform process.

For Kate O'Connell, the pharmacist-and­-mother-of-three-turned-politician, just holding a jury had worked wonders for abortion questions, even before May 25.

“I think this issue, in Ireland, could never have gotten to the point we're at today, were it not for the Citizens' Assembly. I think we would have been years getting there, if we ever got there.”

Democracy in the round. London event at Newspeak House.

This way for radical democracy.

The venue was perfect, the reaction to When Citizens Assemble was warm, the panel chat was insightful and provocative, but the group discussion made this London event an evening to remember.

We talked about democracy as a dirty word. We agreed that the idea that ordinary people can't be trusted with political decision making is a fallacy. We lamented the lost belief in the political ability of the everyman. We rallied around the idea that it is not processes that enable true democracy, but a belief in people power. We lambasted a system that causes people to be disconnected from and distrustful of people who are not like them. We collectively yearned for a sustainable collective vision that doesn't get revised in every election cycle. We celebrated participative democracy as a creative act.

Thank you to Patricia Wharton, Ella Whelan, Doreen Grove and Tim Hughes for their expert panel contributions. (As an aside, this was our third screening event and our third majority female panel.)

Thanks also to Ed Saperia for generously allowing us to use his wonderful space at Newspeak House. But mostly thanks to those that came along on what was a balmy London evening to meet and listen and exchange ideas.

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.

The Flatpack Revolution. Patrick and Peter Macfadyen in webinar conversation.

Patrick's webinar conversation with Peter Macfadyen for Globalnet21 is embedded below. Worth looking out for is the section in which Peter talks about the simple values by which Frome Council has been run by 17 independent councillors, in close collaboration with the local community.

No grudges - if you lose a debate or vote, don't let that affect your behaviour in the next one.

Be prepared to change your mind - listen more than talk, receive rather than broadcast, and be open to altering your opinion as a result of respectful deliberation.

Encourage diversity - not just demographic and ethnic diversity, but a diversity of political views. Although all 17 town councillors are independent of any major party, there is a range of political views, from across the spectrum, represented on the council.

Hearing him speak like this was both refreshing and frustrating. It sounds so simple, and so sensible, but it is also so profoundly different from the conflict-based, "pantomime politics" that is the defining characteristic of national (so called) "democracy".

Patrick's interview for the Reinventing Democracy YouTube channel.

It's great sometimes to pause for a moment and reflect on how you've got to where you are. That chance came up for our All Hands On project during a catch up between Patrick and Andy Paice, a London-based democracy activist, vlogger, coach and meditator. They talked about Patrick’s book, Fraudcast News, a critique of conventional journalism and politics, and how its ideas and conclusions evolved into the All Hands On project.

On a personal level, the conversation allowed Patrick to ponder aloud on where his own journalism had got going, back in the 1990s, as a Reuters staff reporter in Brussels, before taking various unexpected turns en route to the present day. That included discovering ideas of solutions-oriented journalism - as practiced and promoted by the likes of the Solutions Journalism Network - and the radical political reform ideas embodied by one of All Hands On's founding partners The newDemocracy Foundation.

Others whose work has influenced the journey, include the authors David Van Reybrouck and Roslyn Fuller, not to mention the inspiring elections hack that is Frome's Flatpack Democracy.

There was plenty more - sorry, you'll have to watch or listen to it - but we'd highlight one last item - the April 23 film screening and Q+A event at London's Newspeak House. You can still get tickets here. Enjoy.

To keep in touch with our project, and with the latest news from the world of radical democracy, please sign up to receive our newsletter. We'd be radically chuffed if you did. Thank you.

Book review: People Power by Richard Askwith

"That single, simple, bold reform could harness the power of populism in a focused, constructive, democracy-friendly way. Instead of merely trying to appease the swelling mass of alienated voters, we could empower them. By giving Westminster a small injection of direct democracy, we could re-emphasise and re-legitimise our commitment to representative democracy."

Richard Askwith wants to replace the House of Lords with a randomly selected People's Chamber. Out with an unrepresentative elite. In with a properly informed, appropriately rewarded assembly of ordinary citizens. That would indeed be a bold reform. It is a fascinating idea, and it would be an exercise in radical common sense were it to happen. But that is its problem. People need to look beyond the radical to see the sense. Proposing a bold idea is relatively easy. Making it seem simple to execute is not. In that respect, People Power is a missed opportunity.

People Power was commissioned and written as a polemic. It is part of Biteback Publishing's series of Provocations, which are, "sharp, intelligent and controversial," and which provide, "insightful contributions to the most vital discussions in society today." 

Richard Askwith is a sharp and intelligent writer. And People Power is based on a big, controversial idea. Given the brief, Biteback must be very happy with it.

But it is the very nature of polemics to rail and rant, with the emphasis more on what the writer is against than what he is for. Richard Askwith is very much for an empowered, well-informed, participative alternative to the House of Lords. And that is great. However, his book is defined less by his heroic idea than by his palpable frustration with the status quo.

"Being objectively right is a consolation prize. The winners are those with the balls to dominate the playground-cum-jungle of unregulated mass debate. Passionate intensity beats self-doubt every time. Those who play dirtiest often seem to do best - and castigating opponents is a far more effective strategy than putting forward a coherent program of your own."

And...

"If your power to influence a policy decision is vanishingly small, why waste time and energy bringing yourself up to speed? At a group level, however, this 'rational ignorance' makes public opinion a dangerously unstable force, ill-informed and capricious - and particularly vulnerable to referendums. We veer wildly but confidently from extreme to extreme as flaws in previously held positions belatedly become clear. Yet the political chancer who snatches a referendum victory when the pendulum of opinion is at its furthest point can claim the people's mandate ever afterwards."

To be sure, a well written polemic is great entertainment, especially when delivered with such passion and eloquence. Mr Askwith has a lovely turn of phrase and he doesn't hold back when the occasion calls for an outspoken point of view. But, in the opinion of this observer, he fails to make an interesting idea compelling. His prosecution of the House of Lords, his exposure of its flaws, is fierce. But his defence of the People's Chamber is thin by comparison. There is too much hearsay. There are too many opportunities for the skeptical reader to object. People Power is heavy on assertion but relatively light on substance. It is a sugar rush, but it lacks protein.

More accurately, and more fairly, People Power does half a job. There are two cases to be made if the idea of a People's Chamber is to gain momentum. Firstly, that we citizens can be trusted with real political power, that direct democracy would not be a disaster. And secondly, that it could be made to work from a practical point of view. If you were marking this book as homework you would award marks for the former but there would be red-pen comments in the margin regarding the latter.

People Power does a fine job of making we citizens look reassuringly competent.

"One frequent outcome (rarely encountered in the Commons or on social media) is that, following thoughtful discussion of the facts, there are statistically significant shifts in the balance of opinion among those taking part."

Indeed the high point of the book is Chapter 7, "The People's Chamber". It is well researched and well argued. The following passage in particular gets to the crux the matter. In terms of a chamber that is more concerned with the pursuit of progress than the maintenance of power, ordinary citizens are likely to do a better job than the Lords.

"The key point for the moment is this: however much our prejudice tells us that the average citizen, given a role in Parliament, would be thoughtless, feckless and ignorant compared with the average ermine-clad peer of the realm, the evidence suggests that, placed in contexts in which it is clear that their judgements matter, members of the public typically rise to the challenge. Studies that go far beyond the realm of politics (for example, by Professor Frank Keil, the Yale psychologist) have reinforced the three underlying points: that most of us, most of the time, are more ignorant than we think; that most of us, faced with a requirement to explain or justify our views, become aware of the gaps in our knowledge and, if the necessary information is available, rectify them; and that most of us, having done so, become less extreme in our views."

The people part of the equation can be solved. Solving for power is more tricky. The mechanics, the policies, the communication, the cultural shifts, and the infrastructure required to realise this deceptively simple idea are necessarily complex. People Power devotes a chapter to "Sticking Points", but it stops short of robustly addressing them. Maybe Mr Askwith is deliberately sparing with detail and data, lest too much explicit due diligence were to impede the rhetoric. I doubt it. It is more likely that the depth and the variety of expertise required to make the transition from polemic to White Paper is beyond him as a lone proponent of his idea, and beyond the scope of his book.

"But I do not want to get bogged down in the countless possible practical permutations. This is a blue-sky suggestion, not a technical blueprint. The fine details matter little until the broad principle has been agreed - and that will not happen until large numbers of people have been persuaded to think about the idea with an open mind. Could they be?"

Could they be indeed? If the first battle is about opening people's minds to the idea in principle, to what extent is that dependent on them believing in the idea in practice? It is a similar dilemma to that faced by the Yes campaign in the Scottish independence referendum. How to win over the people in the middle, whose hearts and heads come as a package deal? You need a pragmatic foundation on which to build a popular idea.

Maybe Scotland will beat Westminster to it and provide a working, national-scale prototype for a People's Chamber.

Common Weal, the Sortition Foundation and newDemocracy have collaborated to take the practical thinking required to put the theory into practice to the next level.

This review is intended as constructive criticism. People Power advances a great idea. It is a stirring read. Richard Askwith and his proposal for a People's Chamber deserve all the support they can get. The sense of urgency that underpins his prose is not misplaced. Nor is the plaintive coda to his brief acknowledgements.

"I also offer thanks, mostly posthumous, to all members of that generation whose sacrifices in the Second World War ensured that there was a democratic legacy in the UK for my generation to squander."

Amen to that.

To stay in touch with our project please sign up for our newsletter using the GDPR-friendly explicit consent button below. Thank you.

Pilot film screenings (and the wisdom of crowds.)

There was no red carpet and there were no paparazzi. Fittingly, there was not a whiff of elitism about our premiere.

We showed our pilot film - When Citizens Assemble - to audiences in Edinburgh and Glasgow. And we combined these screenings with expert panel sessions to discuss the issues raised. In the process we made some friends and maybe influenced a few people too, in the nicest possible way. We were grateful for the healthy turnout in both locations, we were encouraged by the warm reaction to the film, and we were bowled over by the quality of discourse.

When Citizens Assemble was filmed in Dublin in July 2017. It documents the context, the purpose and the deliberations of the Irish Citizens' Assembly, which was convened to make recommendations on the possible liberalisation of the 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution. The 8th Amendment gives an unborn fetus the same right to life as its mother and, at the time of writing, is effectively a de facto ban on abortion.

The purpose of this film, indeed the purpose of this entire project, is to demonstrate that ordinary citizens, given the opportunity and a conducive environment, are perfectly capable of making well-considered policy decisions. This is a topical issue in Scotland. The introduction of citizens' assemblies to tackle specific issues, and the possibility of a citizens' second chamber to the Scottish Parliament are both live discussions. So Scotland felt like a good place to give our first film its first public airings.

In Edinburgh the film was shown to an audience of civil servants in the Scottish Government building on Victoria Quay, at an event kindly organised by Doreen Grove and Angie Meffan-Main. With the added stimulus of input from panel members, Dr Roslyn Fuller and Maia Almeida-Amir, there was a high-energy discussion about the merits of sortition and assemblies, and the potential to apply these ideas to policy making in Scotland.

The Glasgow event was organised and supported by our friends at Common Weal. And we were grateful once again to Maia and Roslyn who joined our own Patrick for the panel session, which was chaired by Isobel Lindsay.

The conversation was notable not just for the quality of the contributions from both audience members and the panel, but also for the quality of the listening and a universal willingness to consider alternative points of view. It was all a far cry from the adversarial politics that we have come to know and loathe. Finding consensus in the pursuit of progress is a refreshing change from conflict in the pursuit of power.

There was a lively discussion about suitable issues to be addressed by citizen assemblies - including universal basic income, a second chamber to parliament, and "hot potato" issues where career politicians fear to tread. There were questions about how the principles of random selection and citizen participation can work at scale, which drew an informed response from Roslyn. Maia talked from first-hand experience about the case for over-representing minority groups in order for their views to be adequately represented. Echoing one of the Irish Assembly participants featured in our film, Maia also challenged the idea that young people lack the appetite and sophistication to tackle complex political issues - witness the social media savvy of Parkland students in Florida. And there was much talk of the need for genuine political authority to be given to assemblies, alongside the tools and environment for deliberation. Amen to that.

Patrick described these screenings as being akin to planting acorns. Judging by the reaction to the film, and the constructive, forward-leaning responses of both audiences, those acorns have been planted in fertile soil.

---

Dr Roslyn Fuller is a renowned democracy academic and author of Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Purpose.

Maia Almeida-Amir is an intersectional feminist activist who also took part in the Citizens' Assembly on Brexit. She is completing an MA in Philosophy and Politics at the University of Edinburgh.

Common Weal is a 'think and do tank' campaigning for social and economic equality in Scotland.

To stay in touch with this project and the most interesting developments in the world of radical democracy, please add yourself to our newsletter mailing list by clicking the button below.

99 strangers in a Dublin hotel: Patrick's Guardian article about Ireland's abortion referendum.

Ireland's Citizens' Assembly, which is the subject of the All Hands On pilot film - When Citizens Assemble - is also the subject of an article by Patrick in The Guardian. The Citizens' Assembly is chosen by lot and is an excellent example of participative, deliberative democracy in action. Patrick's piece tells the story of how a randomly selected, representative sample of 99 citizens has brought about a national referendum.

The article is "part of a series on possible solutions to some of the world’s most stubborn problems". This could hardly be more apposite to our project. The Citizens' Assembly has allowed Ireland to make progress on the abortion issue after 34 years of deadlock, during which conventional politics has failed to make progress. Several commentators have suggested that, for this reason alone, randomly selected citizen juries can act as a useful bolt-on to conventional government to address challenging political issues.

Book review: Beasts And Gods by Roslyn Fuller

"The problem is not that democracy is broken. The problem is that what we are engaged in is not democracy. This wouldn't really matter so much, if we were happy with the results we are getting. But we aren't."

Democracy as we experience it is not democracy as it was meant to be. Democracy, in the Ancient Greek from which the word is derived, literally means people power. And we have been conditioned to unquestioningly accept that voting in elections every four years, plus the odd referendum, is as much power as the people need. We believe we have a voice. We think that our views and concerns and aspirations are duly represented. But we've been had. In Beasts And Gods, Roslyn Fuller drops that penny for you. She drops it resoundingly, with writing that is clear and compelling. This is a non-fiction page turner.

All Hands On has a deep fondness for this book, and for its author. By way of disclosure, Roslyn kindly agreed to be interviewed for our pilot film - When Citizens Assemble - and she also took part in the expert panel that addressed audience questions at public screenings of the film in Edinburgh and Glasgow. She is a friend of our project. And our project is a friend of her. But she did not ask us to post this review. Indeed, we asked her to participate because we loved the book. We're not giving the book some love just because she agreed to participate.

Roslyn's preferred title for the book was The Democracy Delusion. And it delivers on that unmade promise.

The short story is that the ancient Athenians developed and enacted democracy in its truest sense. Demos (people of a nation) + kratos (power) = demokratia. Athenian democracy was based on mass-scale direct participation, intense deliberation and statistically significant citizen representation. But our modern democracies do not follow the Athenian model. The founding fathers of the United States modeled a system based on Roman republicanism instead. And, in perhaps the greatest political con trick ever pulled, they called it democracy. The label has stuck. In the process, as the book's subtitle lays bare, democracy changed its meaning and lost its purpose.

The system that we call democracy, the system that we hold so dear, has served only (and ironically) to take power further and further away from the people, and concentrate it in the hands of an elite few. Around 15% of the eligible Athenian population took part in its Assembly every two weeks. By contrast only 0.0003% of the Roman voting population were members of its Senate, a level which is spookily similar to the proportion of American voters in the House Of Congress. No system can be truly representative of the will of its citizens when power is concentrated in the hands of so few. No system which concentrates power in that way can be immune from corruption.

Roslyn lectures in International law and her book is as gripping as any courtroom drama. Like any good lawyer she has left no stone unturned. The level of primary research is impressive, as is her data analysis. She has questioned the witnesses, and she has anticipated all counter-arguments. She prosecutes her case with a potent combination of passion, logic and forensic evidence.

"The way I see it, there are really only two possible explanations [for why we keep voting for parties and policies that have obviously bad consequences]; either we are all so phenomenally stupid that we simply cannot help but consistently vote in our own worst interests, or something is fundamentally wrong with the system we use to convert public opinion into policy decisions."

As this book makes crystal clear, there are many things fundamentally wrong with our so-called democratic system. Beasts And Gods consists of a string of "the king is in the altogether moments" for the way that we are governed. Here are a few examples.

• We have confused elections with democracy.
• In fact elections are inherently undemocratic.
• The Athenians knew this and deliberately developed a system (true democracy) that avoided elections and their inevitable problems.
• Elections have always been bought and sold by corporations and powerful interest groups. Roslyn's data analysis shows a direct and disturbing correlation between election spending and election outcomes. In the United States when one side outspends the other by a factor of 2:1 there is a 90% chance of victory. When that ratio increases to 5:1, victory has historically been guaranteed.
• We associate voting with freedom. So it is somewhat disorientating when the penny drops regarding the extent to which voting outcomes are manufactured by those with most to gain.
• Under the first past the post election system we almost invariably end up with a government that the majority of voters voted against. This sounds counter-intuitive but this book unpicks the mathematics by which this comes to pass. The disparity between the mandate afforded to the victors and the level of popular support that underpins that mandate is often huge.

Roslyn Fuller is passionate about her subject, but she is no zealot. Because she has done the primary research, because of the rigour of her data analysis, she has earned the right to be forthright. She does not need to hedge, fudge, beat around the bush, pull punches, or sit on any fences. So whilst her tone is confrontational, her arguments also come across as entirely reasonable.

"If national democracies are increasingly looking like oligarchies, the international system is already there. The explicit inequalities in voting rights as well as the use of 'representation' to whittle down those entitled to participate to a minuscule number of powerful politicians and financiers effectively annihilates any residual content of democracy that might have theoretically survived the distorting effects of bribery and vote-skewing already present on the national level."

Most of the book is devoted to laying out the problems with the thing that we call democracy, which isn't. But the latter sections are concerned with an operating system for a modern approach to democracy that can replicate the defining characteristics of the Athenian approach - genuine representation, deep deliberation, and direct participation.

This is not without its challenges. Roslyn tackles these challenges head on but the tone of the book inevitably changes when it is suggesting solutions rather than defining the problems. She is speculating rather than demonstrating. Whereas she was preemptively over-ruling any objections earlier on, here there is reasonable doubt. Can Athenian-style radical democracy be made to work in the 21st Century?

All Hands On believes it can. Our project is about providing a moving picture document of record to show that it can. And it is no exaggeration to say that this book has been an inspiration.