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cii 
Ad hoc, randomly selected, well-informed citizen deliberative councils like Citizens Juries, Citizen Assemblies, and Consensus Conferences have been used hundreds of times around the world to provide policy guidance to public officials and the citizenry. The U.S. lags far behind in their use.

These similar approaches all enable a microcosm of a country or community to generate informed public judgment about specific issues.

They are not legislatures. They are temporary councils, more like juries, but they deliberate on public issues rather than private guilt, and they are far more actively engaged in becoming informed than any jury can be. They get professional help in hearing each other and creatively deliberating.

As with juries, random selection (a) creates greater diversity than one finds in a legislature, (b) makes it much harder for corrupting influences to skew the results, and (c) levels the conversation with an assumption that all participants are peers. Also like a jury, a citizen deliberative council disbands as soon as it completes its work.

These councils can be used for any number of purposes -- to recommend solutions, to evaluate proposed legislation or ballot initiatives, to evaluate the performance of public officials or interview politicians seeking election, and more. They are useful wherever a dependable, informed, reflective non-partisan (or "transpartisan") "voice of the whole" is desired. Their recommendations can be advisory, or a mandate, or they can be put to a vote by the electorate.

A related process, a citizens' Wisdom Council, could serve as an annual "state of the union address" by a group of randomly selected citizens officially convened for the purpose. They would not be assigned an issue to deliberate, but would have a creative conversation for several days and come to consensus conclusions they would then share with the country. Whatever they came up with would certainly stimulate much discussion!

The point I would like to raise in this proposal for discussion is that randomly selected councils of citizens can, under the right conditions, generate far wiser recommendations than vast dialogue and deliberation programs involving thousands or millions of people. Random selection -- sortition -- was the foundation of Athenian Democracy. Well designed microcosms can be more demographically representative of a whole community than a self-selected group or an elected legislature -- although all three forms have their democratic roles. Perhaps most important in these times of tight budgets, government resources -- organizational, informational and facilitation -- can be more focused, resulting in higher quality outcomes at less cost.

This approach can also complement broader community or national dialogues. The special outcomes of citizen deliberative councils can be fed into the more broadly participative dialogues and deliberations proposed here by others. The outcomes of citizen deliberative councils add a totally new voice -- the voice of the whole -- to the usually partisan public discourse we think of as democracy.

For more information on this approach and links to the various related practices, see http://www.co-intelligence.org/CDCUsesAndPotency.html.
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cii 9 months ago
Some responses to your earlier comment, David.

1. Your concern about manipulation or corruption of the process is quite warranted. I have that concern quite broadly -- about Congress, media, online processes, presidential elections, stimulus packages, military budgets, markets, corporate personhood, nano-bio-robotics, and virtually anything else that has power and money attached to it.

Interestingly enough, one of the least corrupted processes among our governing institutions is the one most like citizen deliberative councils: Juries. Not perfect by a long shot, but it is a success story worth studying.

That said, I don't agree that the PROCESS of Citizen Deliberative Councils has "inherent biases and prejudices." Perhaps you meant the process has inherent VULNERABILITIES to manipulation at all those points you identified. THAT I agree with. For you, that may mean the process isn't worth the risk. For me, for whom the process offers us a very high value-added for our democracy, the process' vulnerabilities mean we must institutionalize safeguards to ensure its integrity, just as we do (or try to do) with Congress, elections, etc. (As Jefferson is said to have said, "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.")

2. Re your "blind stab." Most Citizen Deliberative Councils are not public meetings, so none of the public come, aside from the members of the Council and the various experts and staff that inform and support them. Sometimes a complete record is made of the proceedings, sometimes not. I suppose a complete record could be made if and when they are officially established here; given resources, it is not hard to do.

However, I can tell from your comments that I need to remind you and all other readers that there are several different varieties of Citizen Deliberative Council -- Citizens Juries, Consensus Conferences, Citizens Assemblies, and Planning Cells, to name the most prominent. (Citizen Deliberative Council is my coined name for these varied but quite similar processes.) CJs are usually small and not public. Consensus Conferences as practiced in Denmark include private briefing sessions followed by expert testimony held before an announced public gathering (like a Senate hearing) followed by non-public deliberations (like a sequestered jury). The first big Citizen Assembly -- the one in BC on electoral reform -- had briefings (I believe they were not public), followed by collecting white papers from anyone who wanted to submit one and holding public hearings in each legislative district, followed by private deliberations. I'm not sure how German Planning Cells handle the "public access" aspect. So you see, there are a lot of different ways this gets addressed, and the U.S. could create its own variant in consultation with experts with the existing models (for whom manipulation, bias, and adequate representation of the population are all hot topics, with lots of options, opinions, and nuances about how to handle them).

But I want to be clear that a CDC is NOT a legislature or a public meeting. As I've said before, it is more like a jury -- it is temporary, it is made up of a specific number of selected random ordinary people (not public officials or stakeholders or whoever wants to come), its deliberations are usually private, and its findings are public. (You can read many examples in two chapters in my TAO OF DEMOCRACY, "Citizens deliberate about public issues" and "Citizen deliberative councils" -- both active links in the online table of contents at http://taoofdemocracy.com/toc.html.

The only similar council I've seen where the deliberations were public was Maclean's Magazine's "The People's Verdict" project in 1991 which was subsequently publicized in detail in both TV and print media. Full data on it is linked to the main URL given in my original proposal and is described in some detail in chapter 12 of my TAO OF DEMOCRACY; the chapter is posted online at http://tinyurl.com/hz4f. I always think of it as one of the most remarkable democratic media exercises ever, but there are probably lessons there for making a national citizen deliberative council fully public, as well.

3. The Maclean's Magazine effort also highlights a function also highlighted by Citizen Wisdom Councils -- stimulating public conversation. CDCs can be used to make recommendations to voters or public officials. But they can also be used to stimulate public dialogue about their findings. Furthermore, your idea of having citizen commentary before and/or during the CDC deliberation is excellent. I was earlier confused that you wanted online participation in the CDC's deliberations. That could be messy. But an online deliberation on the CDC's topic could be going on in parallel, with the CDC panel able to access it and/or participate in it. A "televote panel" is another public participatory option, described in the "Citizen Deliberative Councils" chapter of my book, linked above.

I've also wanted to see CDCs use the Web much more for research -- e.g., they could receive their briefings and expert testimony and then divide into several groups to surf the Web for hot data and options on their issue, returning together to share what they found. This would mitigate against too tight control of their access to information by the organizers. Currently I've heard of no CDCs using the Web as an information source. There are obviously all sorts of possibilities there.

4. I'm afraid your suggestion re how to do Dynamic Facilitation online has nothing to do with Dynamic Facilitation. It's like trying to do gardening online. Apples and oranges. Doesn't work. You'd have to study up on DF before we could talk more about it. DF involves a very in-person dynamic. For example, the facilitator reflects back to each speaker what they heard, with emotional intonation and all the rest, in a way that is an art that simply doesn't translate into writing. There is a slim chance it could be done by video, but even then I'm not sure. So much of DF has to do with the energy of the group as a whole, which the facilitator and others sense "in the air." Trust me on this one. At least until you've experienced DF for yourself. If you want to take a DF training or just read more about it, check out http://dynamicfacilitation.com. (There's an entire training manual online, if you want to go deep without a training.) (Also, FYI, there's a comparison of DF, Consensus process, and Roberts Rules at http://www.co-intelligence.org/I-comparisonRR-CC-DF.html.

5. Re choosing panelists for a randomly selected citizen panel: Wikipedia has a good short article on random sampling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_selection. There's even a book RANDOM SELECTION IN POLITICS p://www.greenwood.com/catalog/C6702.aspx -- and it turns out random selection (sortition) was a major foundation of Athenian democracy. I know that most Citizen Juries use stratified sampling (described in Wikipedia). The BC Citizens Assembly sent out a letter to voters and those who volunteered in each legislative district ("riding") gathered in a community meeting in the district and a man and woman from among them was chosen by lot -- from each legislative district. A Wisdom Council in Ashland, OR, used a random number generator online to pick people out of the voter rolls (which are publicly available on CD). So there are a variety of approaches -- and various critiques of each one.

I hope this is helpful.
cii 9 months ago
Re: "At present, I have seen very little literature from the links provided acknowledging this issue, let alone addressing it." Read the article at the link I provided and follow the many links contained in it. Visit the Jefferson Center, the home of Citizens Juries (which is linked to that article), which contains a complete manual for running Citizens Juries. Use Google to research consensus conferences or the amazing Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform held in British Columbia several years ago? I wrote a book THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY and posted its chapters on citizen deliberative councils online at http://taoofdemocracy.com/toc.html.

The web is overflowing with information about citizen deliberative councils of all forms. Use it to find out more about what thousands of researchers and practitioners have been doing in this area. As you say "I think perhaps a few experts would be advisable here". Ask them how certain issues you are concerned about are being addressed.

One fact is very obvious to deliberation practitioners -- at least face-to-face onesL Very few issues actually have only two opposing views. Unfortunately and unnecessarily, political discourse is often framed in polarized ways to mobilize emotional support in a majoritarian system (only two choices makes it easier to get 51% than if there are three or more choices...) But the vast majority of issues have multiple (often overlapping) viewpoints associated with them, each with their related base of supportive argumentation (data and logic), values, solutions, framings of the problem, etc.

From all I've seen, the most powerful methods for addressing social issues don't deal with A versus B dynamics, but with bringing forth the full gifts of each perspective and creatively weaving them into something that works for the vast majority of those involved. A broad range of diverse perspectives can be included through engaging diverse information, diverse expertise, and/or diverse participants. To the extent this is done -- AND to the extent we use processes that enable the creative use of diverse gifts AND the dissonance among them -- we get powerful (wise) results.

Examples of this include (but are not limited to)

(a) "framing an issue for deliberation" (creating "issue books" that have detailed arguments for and against 3-5 leading perspectives, as produced by National Issues Forums http://nifi.org/) and many others.

(b) engaging an advisory panel of diverse partisans to oversee the provision of briefing materials and experts to a citizen deliberative council. (The selection of participants is usually done with NO attention to what they know or think about the issue, but rather to other kinds of demographics, as described in my earlier comment. The idea of opposing advocates choosing participants is not part of citizen deliberative council procedures.)

(c) using powerful co-creative processes like Dynamic Facilitation which deeply hear all perspectives and translate violent disagreements into concerns that are then well heard. (I have a hard time imagining how this would be done online, but that's another subject...)

There is a different logic and dynamic at work in deliberation than in THE WISDOM OF CROWDS. Suroweicki clearly is unfamiliar with today's powerful dialogue and deliberation methods; his critiques belong to more primitive forms of public discourse. However, his descriptions of the use of crowds in prediction markets and in identifying the correct answer to questions that HAVE one correct answer, are very compelling. His version of the wisdom of crowds breaks down, however, when the question being addressed doesn't have a right or wrong answer, but involves the complex "choice work" of trade-offs, delving into each other's diverse values, and transformational co-creativity.

Helene Landemore researches collective intelligence and democracy at MIT (she's moving to Yale in the fall). She seeks to integrate decision-markets and deliberative processes, both in theory and in practice, in order to increase the overall wisdom of democracy. THAT'S the kind of creative engagement that we urgently need with these different approaches. We need to figure out how to synergize online approaches with face-to-face sources of collective intelligence and wisdom, to make them more powerful together than they can possibly be separately. Precisely because I share David's sense that we don't have much time, I urge him and others here to help us all find ways to do this.

Tom Atlee
cii = Co-Intelligence Institute

PS: And yes, CDC random selection often uses random selection of a large group of people from the phone book or voter registration lists, or social security records, and then a smaller demographic selection from that large group to DEMOGRAPHICALLY represent the diversity of the community/country. The only time I've heard of anyone asking prospective selectees what they thought of the issue being deliberated was during several Danish Consensus Conferences where selectees were disqualified if they knew anything much about the issue at all! Thus those panelists were all at the same starting point, without bias, learning about the issue together. The BALANCING of biases then goes on in the selection of briefing materials and experts to testify. The selection of both participants and sources of information is a hot topic within the field of deliberation.
cii 9 months ago
I'm surprised, David, that your language is so dismissive of the hundreds of Citizen Deliberative Councils (CDC) held around the world as "at best, a distraction, a deception at worse."

A CDC is not made up of 15 "decision-makers" (in any official sense), but of ordinary citizens, and they seldom take testimony form 150 experts and 10,000 public comments, any more than a jury does. They are, rather, ordinary citizens practicing a sort of ideal form of citizenship, with access to far more -- and more diverse -- facts and opinions and expert-interactions -- to say nothing of quality interactions with diverse fellow citizens -- than most people ever have access to. They make extremely informed recommendations. How much they should be empowered as a legitimate voice for "We the People" is a matter for both research and diverse opinion. But they do add a collective voice that currently is not very present in political discourse.

Perhaps most importantly, I cannot agree with your absolute standard of "inviting We, the People, to participate". I assume you are speaking of creating an internet forum that anyone can join. This is fine, but it functions on very different assumptions than a CDC. Just as a jury isn't made up of "anyone who wants to be on the jury", but rather of a random cross-section of the community, so is a CDC. Most CDCs use some form of "stratified sampling", in which a large pool of citizens is picked at random and then individuals are scientifically selected from that pool to collectively embody or reflect the demographic diversity of the community (age, gender, socio-economic status, education, race, etc.). That's who become members of the CDC. Any forum which invites whoever wants to show up -- whether in person or online -- is very unlikely to reflect a true cross-section of the community, especially since experience shows that considerable effort and special arrangements are needed to enable various kinds of marginalized people to participate in citizen deliberations.

So while I do believe there is tremendous value in having forums in which "anyone" can participate, I want to make it clear that that is no substitute for a true microcosm deliberation.

What I hope is that the very different values of such diverse forums can be more deeply understood, so that powerful synergistic forms of citizen deliberation can be created. Imagine (for example) if there was a Wikipedia-like resource on public issues that created "argument maps" of the different perspectives and their various bodies of supporting evidence. Combine that with your deliberative groupware with Roberts Rules. Then imagine a stakeholder council -- made up of the various interest groups and partisans -- who are brought to some common ground using powerful negotiation or consensus processes like those used by the Harvard Negotiation Project or Search for Common Ground. Then imagine all that being at the fingertips of a CDC which, in the middle of its deliberations tests out its tentative findings with the public in an open online forum...

I mean, we have barely begun to create the tools we actually need. Model T, indeed!!!

Tom Atlee
www.co-intelligence.org
cii 9 months ago
The face to face Citizen Deliberative Councils described here don't use Roberts Rules of Order, but I can imagine that Roberts Rules might well be a useful tool for online deliberations. What we really need is to compare the results of a number and variety of face-to-face citizen deliberative approaches with a number and variety of online deliberative approaches (all convened around the same topic) and explore the differences and similarities. Right now what we have are a lot of advocates for this or that favorite approach(es) -- and we need to move beyond that. Some balanced, thorough research seems to be called for, given that we are trying to identify what approach(es) will best provide us with a deliberative voice of "We the People", collectively. Doesn't that seem important enough to warrant some real research? -- Tom Atlee, Co-Intelligence Institute http://co-intelligence.org
cii 10 months ago
Interesting, Nicholas. My assumption is that if it becomes official policy of the Obama Administration that that would constitute "an interace with the existing policy-making system that ensures the outcomes will go somewhere". Re "statistically representative", I would suggest that with deliberation we are in a different ballpark than with public opinion polling, in which the component people are static sources of opinion rather than interactive co-creators of public judgment. I think this is a matter of "requisite diversity" rather than full demographic representation.

I have an article about this at
http://www.co-intelligence.org/CDCsLegitimacy.html.

I also suspect that a higher standard of decision-making (consensus or supermajority rather than majority vote) creates interactive dynamics that evoke special respect for diverse voices (in order to reach a collective decision), further reducing the need for quantitative breakdowns of diversity rather than simply the presence of diversity. If the one farmer in the group can block a consensus, there is no need to have 50 farmers. Citizens juries tend to use majority or super-majority voting. Danish Consensus Conferences use consensus. This is rich territory for research!
cii 10 months ago
This is more like it! It isn't a legislature, but more like a jury. In fact, there are smaller (and thus cheaper) versions than this -- namely Citizens Juries and Consensus Conferences which just have a couple of dozen randomly selected citizens -- which follow much the same guidelines. The qualitative impulse to help us get to thoughtful, wise solutions and policies by tapping the latent wisdom of the people will serve us far better than the quantitative impulse to "get everyone involved". I'd love to see some determined research on the best ways to do that. When it is clear we've got a hot approach, then give it some power.
cii 10 months ago
My only concern with this is the focus on millions of people. We need high quality, wise decisions that take into account a wide variety of perspectives and options.

Smaller, longer, more focused and informed methods such as Citizens Juries and Consensus Conferences use a few dozen randomly selected citizens who take the time (several days to a week or more) to learn about an issue and interview diverse experts and then deliberate deeply to a real public judgment on the issue.

If we want to involve more people, why don't we do 20 or 100 separate Citizens Juries on the same topic and compare the results. The differences and similarities would be VERY interesting -- and the results would be MUCH more significant than a million self-selected people tossing up ideas onto the internet after a few hours or an afternoon of conversation.