Deliberative democracy is one of my favorite ideas for how we might govern ourselves in the future, and I believe that we’ll see universal basic income and deliberative democracy happen in some countries in our lifetimes. I think deliberative democracy could find a real home in the Maldives when we’ve gotten our politics back to a reasonable place, so I’m going to do a series on it [guest post]

About deliberative democracy and how it might be a perfect fit for the Maldives

Deliberative democracy is a form of direct democracy that has learnt from the pitfalls of earlier experiments in direct democracy. A common leftist goal, it has only taken place in a few limited situations so far around the world.

A selection of constituents is randomly drawn for a citizens’ jury. The selection is designed to reflect the actual demographics of the region in factors such as gender and age. The citizens’ jury sees stakeholders from all sides and experts on the area to be fully informed on the issue at question. They then deliberate among themselves and come to a conclusion.

In direct models, this decision is a binding vote on the matter. In other models, this decision is seen as a strong recommendation for the elected representative on how to vote. This is also known as deliberative polling and creates a very strong norm for the candidate to vote accordingly, even though it isn’t officially binding.

Candidates that promise to vote according to deliberative polling of their citizens essentially promise to act as a conduit to direct democracy by their constituents.  Even if these candidates don’t win, introducing and normalizing the idea of deliberative democracy to the wider public contributes greatly to its likelihood of success in the future. This is the most likely path to eventually achieving full, binding deliberative democracy.

Deliberative democracy is merely our traditions over hundreds of years, brought back and updated for modern times. The core idea of deliberative democracy is much more natural to Maldivians that it would be in many other countries. Traditionally, Maldivian islands have held island meetings of elders and stakeholders to discuss among themselves and come to a conclusion.

The advantages of deliberative democracy

Deliberative democracy models allow for greater participation by citizens in the democratic process as it reflects the entire constituency.

Citizens’ juries are short-term, randomly drawn, and disbanded after meetings. This means that corruption is extremely unlikely, unlike with elected politicians who can be nudged or bribed by powerful interests. Members of citizens’ juries also have no career political power to try hold on to.

Most voters are not very knowledgeable about policies they vote for. Citizens’ juries get to make informed decisions based on a strong understanding of the issues, not just what politicians say.

It keeps citizens politically engaged. Case studies show deliberative democracy reducing voter turnoff. With the current state of Maldivian politics keeping most citizens disillusioned with the political process altogether, this is important.

Often, the most active or committed citizens or those with the most resources get the biggest say. Citizens’ juries reflect the views of the majority of ordinary citizens.

Citizens’ juries have very high accountability. Written notes of the deliberations of citizens’ juries are made available online, and are often recorded or livestreamed. This lets anyone in the public see the reasoning and evidence supporting their decisions, which means the reasoning has to stand up to scrutiny.

It removes sole decision-making ability from people with power, avoiding the inherently corrupting nature of power over those who wield it. Since citizens’ juries convene, deliberate, and then un-convene with a new set of participants every instance, decisions are not made by career politicians but by ordinary citizens. Decision-making authority being vested purely to career politicians means that our lives are governed by people self-selected to be willing to devote their careers to gaining power, and who need to worry about keeping other power-brokers happy to remain in power. Deliberative democracy is a first step towards dismantling this flaw.

A grassroots plan of action

Ideally, we would be able to establish a deliberative democratic model as part of our system of government. One way that could work would be for an upper house run deliberatively as a branch of government. A biannual council of citizens, drawn randomly but to match population demographics, would meet anew for days of deliberating over a variety of issues with the model outlined above: stakeholders, experts, information, discussion, and so on. After each biannual selection, the council will be dissolved and a new random but representative group of citizens will be selected for the next council. We should call for our political leadership to implement a similar system. But until then, we have to work at the grassroots level. Some goals we might have are:

To create a community of enthusiastic supporters of deliberative democracy to organize, discuss, and promote the idea to as many people as possible: through local organizing, media appearances, direct campaigning, convincing public figures, social media, and so on.

To hold one or two small pilot programs as proof of concept, by being able to have one deliberation meeting run and some results chosen successfully.

To recruit candidates, no matter how unlikely, to run on a platform of deliberative democracy.

In doing so, to raise the profile of deliberative democracy and introduce the idea of establishing it in the grassroots through candidates instead of waiting for it to be implemented top-down in a distant, unlikely future.

Someday, to elect a candidate that has successfully run on a deliberative democracy platform.

Deliberative democracy around the world

Some of the earliest examples of democracy such as in Ancient Athens had a very similar model of sortition, where an assembly of randomly chosen citizens that convened regularly had governing power. Sortition was considered a crucial aspect of true democracy, and seen as necessary to prevent leaders from succumbing to the corrupting nature of power.

Because officially instating deliberative democracy would mean massive changes to the political system, there has only been a few instances in modern times.

Denmark has a variation on deliberative democracy known as Consensus Conferences. A detailed manual of how they carry out consensus conferences is available. Consensus conferences aren’t the same, but share many similarities. South Australia has also recently held a deliberative democracy program on the state’s nuclear power policy.Here is a timeline of deliberative democratic events in recent years.

Top-down change towards deliberative democracy anywhere around the world is unlikely. The most feasible path towards a future of deliberative democracy is for candidates to run on the promise to vote according to citizens’ juries of their constituents. This would raise public awareness of the concept of deliberative democracy and raise support for the policy.

If such a candidate wins a seat, they would hold regular deliberative democracy meetings and vote according to the decisions of their citizens’ juries as a way for their citizens to vote directly could inspire more support as people in the Maldives and around the world see the advantages of deliberative democracy. But a candidate doesn’t have to win to make a change: just running, introducing the idea to the public and normalizing it, could be a huge boost to its acceptance among the public both locally and internationally.

More information on deliberative democracy

An introduction is here. An article on the topic is here. Some studies are here, here, here and here. Some books are here, here, here, here, here.