Wise Democracy Victoria

Public issue conversations and the legitimacy of "we the people"

2012-01-06T10:39:00.000-08:00

Greetings friends -- and happy new year!

The note below from Tom Atlee on the legitimacy of "we the people" offers
meaty issues to consider. Democracy hinges on the legitimacy of "the
people" -- and we don't really have a good handle on what that means!
Especially when every group with a cause claims to represent the views of
the "people."

I agree with Tom's view that "the only practical way to generate a
legitimate voice of We the People is to convene conversations among randomly
selected ordinary citizens who embody the diversity of thepopulace."

I appreciate everyone involved with Wise Democracy Victoria for having taken the time to participate in our experiments with random selection in these "Kitty Hawk" days(as Tom puts it). There's no doubt in my mind that random selection will prove itself to be a key component in representing the legitimate voice of the people. False "majority rule" by a bunch of top-down controlfreaks and corporate yes men is proving to be an excellent motivator as we search for
new and better solutions!

Warm regards to all, and best wishes for a wiser democracy in 2012 and the
years ahead.
Cheers, George

http://tom-atlee.posterous.com/public-issue-conversations-and-the-legitimacy
Short URL: http://post.ly/4htro

Public issue conversations and the legitimacy of "we the people"
by Tom Atlee

WHO IS "WE THE PEOPLE"?

I want to particularly highlight here what I see as a common misuse of the
terms "We the People" and "the People". Aconversation between ideological
partisans or interested, engaged citizens - to say nothing of statements
from a single advocacy group or movement or even an elected politician -
does not legitimately constitute a voice of "the People". Thisis a major
factual error, a specious political fiction, and a strategic mistake of
gigantic proportions.

When we assign the label "We the People" or "The People" toany part of the
whole public, or even to full-spectrum conversation among diverse partisans
on an issue, we are claiming a legitimacy that may not, on examination, be
actually justified. I suggest this criteria applies even to our
majoritarian elections. Although it is convenient and basicallyfunctional
to let any majority decide on a candidate or referendum, there is a factual
legitimacy problem when, for example, only half of the electorate vote: In
this case 51% of those voting constitutes only 25% of the whole electorate -
to say nothing of "the People". So we should be very skepticalabout claims
that "the People" have spoken and seriously consider how we mightcorrect
that potentially enormous flaw.

I suggest that a Citizens Jury of a couple of dozen citizens chosen by
stratified (demographic) random selection may actually constitute a more
legitimate voice of the whole "people" than thousands of partisanvoters who
happen to be motivated to show up for a particular low-turnout election.
(This claim is further legitimized by the campaign strategies of "get out
the vote" and negative ads and electoral restrictions to "suppressthe
vote". When such manipulations of participation are going on, howcan we
say that election results truly represent the will of "the People",the
whole people?)

I strongly believe - and I invite you to consider - that the only practical
way to generate a legitimate voice of We the People is to convene
conversations among randomly selected ordinary citizens who embody the
diversity of the populace. There are many ways to do this and many
legitimate arguments about methodology and what role such citizen councils
should play in our democratic process. But we must be very careful thatany
part (group, conversation, council) that we choose or claim to represent
"the whole" (citizenry, community, country) actually and demonstrablydoes
embody - as fully as possible - the diversity of that whole. I suggestthat
the principle of a "microcosm of the whole" based on random and/or
scientific selection is AT LEAST as vital as elections for establishing
factual legitimacy when we wish to claim the mantle of "The People".

[COMMON TYPES OF POLITICAL CONVERSATION]

I see several diverse but not necessarily mutually exclusive types of
political conversation, and find that differentiating among them helps me
think more clearly about this topic:

1. STAKEHOLDERS: Stakeholder conversations involve people withinterests,
information or power involved with a realm or issue, aiming to work out
their differences (especially conflicts, which are almost intrinsic to the
definition of "stakeholder" and "issue") and contributetheir resources
(especially networks) to promote the good management of that realm or issue.
Watershed Councils, Stakeholder Dialogues, and Consensus Councils are
examples.

2. IDEOLOGICAL PARTISANS: Partisan conversations involvespokespeople for
opposing worldviews (usually two, sometimes 3-5 "sides") talkingabout their
differences and/or their common ground. Many talk show hosts engage"both
sides" in debates about issues. Perhaps the biggest contribution ofthe
transpartisan movement in the evolution of democracy has been to
progressively challenge and break down the hypnotic power of political
archetypes - left/right, liberal/conservative, tea party/occupy - to promote
the possibility that human beings - even such "obvious" enemies asthese -
can actually talk together civilly and work together productively, not just
fight.

3. ENGAGED CITIZENS: Conversations in this category provide a forumfor
whoever shows up to speak their minds. Familiar examples include blogsand
their comment sections, most online forums, letters to the editor, call-in
shows, and public hearings. More productive conversational approaches in
this category include the World Cafe and Conversation Cafe (which can
involve many people in small-group dialogue while tracking the emergent
wisdom of the whole); Study Circles (which also help people learn about an
issue together); and Open Space conferencing (which helps people
self-organize into sub-conversations and work groups according to their
diverse interests in a topic).

4. THE PUBLIC (aka "WE THE PEOPLE"): These forums engagea representative
sample of a larger population - usually done using random and/or scientific
demographic selection. Such ad hoc minipublics or microcosm "citizen
deliberative councils" explore public concerns, issues or proposals.
(Public opinion polls engage people's opinions in a similar way but do not
involve them in interacting with each other.) Citizens Juries, Consensus
Conferences, and Citizen Assemblies do a fairly rigorous job of actually
engaging citizens in serious deliberation, through which they produce public
judgments and policy recommendations. Deliberative Polls and 21st Century
Town Meetings are less rigorous but provide more public spectacle. Wisdom
Councils provide a more open-ended, creative voice for "We thePeople", more
like a citizen-generated "state of the union address" and, by beingdone
regularly, build a communal sense that "We the People!" havecollective
competence and power.

5. EXPERTS: Conversations among - or interviews of, or testimonyfrom -
scientists, academics, etc., are designed to inform the public or officials
of facts, perspectives, causes and consequences involved in an issue and the
various approaches to it. Experts are usually part of stakeholder
deliberations and are usually included as resources for citizen deliberative
councils (in which the experts are said to be "on tap, not on top").
Sometimes officials convene expert conferences to come to conclusive policy
advice for governments or professional organizations, such as the National
Institutes of Health Consensus Development Conferences and
State-of-the-Science Conferences convening medical experts to guide medical
practice and health care policy.

________________________________

Tom Atlee, The Co-Intelligence Institute, POB 493, Eugene, OR 97440
site: http://www.co-intelligence.org/ blog:
http://tom-atlee.posterous.comRead THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY -
http://www.taoofdemocracy.comand REFLECTIONS ON EVOLUTIONARY ACTIVISM -
http://evolutionaryactivism.comPlease support our work. Your donations are
fully tax-deductible.
http://co-intelligence.org/donations.html

Public Participation Manual and Case Studies from Europe

2011-12-04T09:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.partizipation.at/index.php?english

To keep our democracy vigorous, it makes sense to supplement representative democracy with forms of participative democracy. Many people are not content to simply go to the polls every four or five years – they want to play an active part on behalf of the community and the area they live in. Empowering people in participative processes boosts their moral courage, ability to express themselves and verve, thus ultimately leading to more political commitment and interest.

Politicians and administrators have a key role to play here, in setting up suitable frameworks for participation (citizen juries, youth parliaments, mediation or Local Agenda 21 processes, to name but a few). This could definitely make an important contribution to building confidence in political institutions (cf. recent Eurobarometer surveys, for instance).

Public Participation Manual

http://www.partizipation.at/worksheets.html

The Manual gives details of what it takes for participation to succeed, of the necessary preconditions, of the foreseeable costs and of successful case histories.

DISCOURSE ON THE FUTURE

It is already common practice to involve the general public in reaching decisions that affect it. Where conflicts between the various interests are resolved, even-handed, lasting solutions can be achieved, leading in the long term to an environment worth living in, economic success and social cohesion, while strengthening people's trust in decisions relevant to the public and in politicians. In order to establish civic participation more firmly – and above all permanently – as an essential component of democratic decision-making, it is important to evaluate experience so far, to seize on new ideas and to stimulate/intensify a many-sided debate involving various special fields.

A platform for the vital debate about the future of civic participation is provided here. On this menu level you will find:

Scientific studies in which new approaches, methods and instruments are presented, and pioneering case histories and conceptual suggestions for possible or necessary (further) developments in the field of participation are presented;
Personal points of view contributed by experts on participation and intended to stimulate and intensify reflexion and qualified deliberation on particular aspects of civic participation;
international documents on the basis of which international debate in the field of participation can be followed and/or tied in with these (forthcoming).

Emerging Participatory Democracy Movements

2011-10-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

People are rising up against plutocracy and corporate capitalism in growing movements around the world, such as "Yes We Camp" and "Occupy Wall Street." One of the defining characteristics is to establish grassroots participatory democracy as a fundamental organizing principle.

“Yes We Camp,” one of the witty twitter hashtags of Spain’s 15 May movement, sums things up well. Inspired by the Arab Spring, galvanized by crisis, unemployment and austerity, fed up with the ineffective, corrupt, and often misanthropic political process, we are leaving our homes and moving to the street. In a blend of last-chance desperation and optimistic empowerment, we are building autonomous, totally democratic camps in city centers across the world. In these camps total inclusive democracy is praxis, everything is shared, and we build revolutionary consciousness everyday.
The camp is fundamentally organized around the principle of the General Assembly. If you’ve been in any kind of leftist meeting you have an idea of how it works: someone volunteers to be meeting facilitator, and people raise their hands to get on the ‘stack’. The facilitator calls on people in the order they volunteered, and only one person speaks at a time. They seek consensus rather than majority rule: all of the meetings I witnessed ended with dissenters agreeing to proposals and accepting the decision of the group. In a majority vote, voters are presented with a yes/no question and 51 percent carries the day, but in General Assembly proposals are built during conversation and debate, and as such actually reflect the desires of the group as a whole.
From the general assembly Los Indignados formed commissions, which focus on specific issues and questions within the camp, such as communication, international press, infrastructure, and food. These commissions set up their own booths and tents, where they work and remain available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to speak with the public walking through the square. Commissions all have their own assemblies, following the same methods. As such, all actions, choices, and movements are formed from the bottom up, not the top down.

The Citizen Legislature (Sortition)

2011-09-12T23:41:00.000-07:00

(selective excerpts from ‘A Citizen Legislature’ by E. Callenbach and M Phillips reproduced with the authors’ permission.)
Many reformers recognise the threat of money in politics, but solutions that only deal with campaign spending have failed to reach the root of the problem. The Citizen Legislature is a scientific way to select legislators so they will be truly representative. This process worked for the ancient Greeks over more than two centuries: selection by lottery. This will yield a more descriptively representative legislature (i.e. one that looks like the society as a whole) and one not beholden to the weight of special interest donations that are having inordinate influence over policy.
A traditionally elected party-based upper house/ senate would remain as house of review.
At the birth of the American republic, as James Madison noted, members of the constitutional convention "wished for vigor in the government, but . . . wished that vigorous authority to flow immediately from the legitimate source of all authority. The government ought to possess not only, first, the force, but secondly, the mind or sense of the people at large. The legislature ought to be the most exact transcript of the whole society."
And John Adams argued that a legislature "should be an exact portrait, in miniature, of the people at large, as it should think, feel, reason, and act like them.” Electoral systems are not achieving this aim.
It is proposed to have a single House of Representatives of approximately 300- 400 randomly selected citizens (drawn from the broadest possible lists), serving three year terms, rotating out one third of representatives each year. On this sample size, the match to the population as a whole would be accurate within a statistical deviation around 2.5%. As such, the democracy would be likely to see teachers, plumbers, entrepreneurs, engineers, women, writers, immigrants, business people, retirees etc at the same ratio you see people in society.
Those drawn would be paid and work full-time as representatives, meeting daily and with the power and impetus to explore every element of the bureaucracy and public expenditures – rather than have a single minister as the point of control.

Read more: http://newdemocracy.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=60&showall=1&Itemid=77

A Randomly Selected Jury to Put the Public Interest First in Britain

2011-08-11T23:56:00.000-07:00

Something is unraveling before our eyes. From bankers to media-barons, private interests have bankrupted and corrupted the public realm. Power, for so long hidden in the pockets of a cosy elite, has been exposed. Those who wield it have been found wanting – in scruples, in morals and in decency.
The current press and political scandal is not an isolated event. It’s the third crisis in quick succession. First, the bankers and their bonuses, then some politicians and their expenses and now there is the press, profiting from peoples’ pain, grief and private lives.
If public organisations and citizens are vigilant, that elite won’t be able to get away with it again. With the right checks and balances we can put the public interest back into the heart of the system.
To work out how to do it we call for a new Public Jury for the British public interest to propose reforms of banking, politics, media and the police. The Jury would be made up of 1,000 citizens drawn as a random sample of the electorate.
The Jury will be funded out of the public purse, with a paid secretariat with the resources to commission research and call witnesses. It will have the power to require attendance where persons will be asked by the public to explain themselves. Reporting within a year of its launch the convention will study and report on:

Media ownership and the public interest
The role of the financial sector in the crash
MP selections and accountability
Policing and public interest
How to apply a ‘public interest first’ test more generally to British political and corporate life

http://www.compassonline.org.uk/news/item.asp?n=13271

Report on Victoria Citizen Insight Councils Now Available

2011-07-17T19:31:00.000-07:00

A new report highlighting our experiences facilitating three Citizen Insight Councils here in Victoria BC is now available online. Click here for the 2 meg PDF file.

In 2010 the City of Victoria undertook an update of its Official Community Plan. The City partnered with Wise Democracy Victoria to convene and facilitate a series of three Citizen Insight Councils (based on Jim Rough's model of Creative Insight Councils). In undertaking the CICs the City of Victoria demonstrated a willingness to engage with citizens at a high level of public participation, by engaging randomly selecting citizens for in-depth conversations.

“This is an exciting initiative,” said Mayor Dean Fortin. “Whether you’re 18 or 85, people have important ideas and insights about our city. The Citizen Insight Councils allow people to come together in a casual setting, hear each other’s ideas and work towards a common goal. The direction set by these groups will benefit the entire community and directly shape Victoria’s future.”

Using a city property database, five-hundred addresses were randomly selected, with letters of invitation sent to the residents. Follow-up phone calls were made to approximately eighty people on the list. This process presented any citizen of Victoria 18 years or older with a chance to be selected to participate, providing a unique opportunity for involvement by a wide cross-section of community members. Simon Nattrass with WDV was the key organizer for all three CICs, working closely with City staff.

Altogether, twenty-one individuals accepted the invitation and took part in two CICs, held on May 28-29 and June 5, 2010. In May 2011, a third CIC was convened by the city, with invitations sent to the original twenty-one individuals to help review the draft OCP. Seven individuals attended and were unanimous in their complements to the city on the success of the draft in addressing their input.

URL for the report:
http://attachments.wetpaintserv.us/EwHBHZcy-h-CaTBYTMaS1A2085495

Iceland Crowdsourcing Constitutional Process from Tom Atlee

2011-06-30T23:51:00.000-07:00

http://tom-atlee.posterous.com/iceland-is-crowdsourcing-their-constitutional

short link - http://bit.ly/iFBAm7

Dear friends,

Here's a truly remarkable piece of news few people seem to have heard about: Iceland is creating its new constitution with mass online participation. The three short articles below give the exciting details.

Iceland's initiative is a very sophisticated form of what is known as "public input" or "consultation", in which ordinary citizens offer individual comments to an appointed or elected entity, who then decides whether or not to respond to or use the comments. We could also say that Iceland's innovation is an exceptional example of transparency and participatory electronic democracy. An added feature is that the online crowdsourcing that is getting most of the attention "follows a national forum last year where 950 randomly selected people spent a day discussing the constitution" and that the draft constitution "will be put to a referendum without any changes imposed by parliament."

In other words, this is a very sophisticated, leading-edge, multi-dimensional process. I'd love to know where the idea came from.

I also want to add some notes for improvement -- not as a critique, but definitely to promote more empowered public wisdom (my particular focus). More could be done in a process like this to ensure that there is in-depth deliberation by randomly selected people representing a legitimate cross-section of the population. For one thing, when you convene 950 people for only one day to address a complex document like writing a new constitution -- or when you invite hundreds of people into online discussions about it -- precious little truly high-quality deliberation is possible. There simply isn't time to take in and process enough information and creatively utilize the diverse ideas of hundreds of people. Furthermore, although the randomly selected group of 950 can be said to fairly represent "we the people", those who happen to show up online do not. Finally, a referendum (which is a true source of citizen power) is only as good at generating public wisdom to the extent that the preceding public discourse on the issue was fair and clean of "spin".

So I wonder: How much simpler and more direct would it have been to convene a publicly visible citizen deliberative council -- a Citizens Jury, Consensus Conference, or Citizens Assembly -- made up of 20-100 randomly selected citizens. This council could have been advised by (or partnered with) the official Constitutional Council. The randomly selected citizen deliberators could have augmented their work with internet searches and crowdsourced input from the broader public. If it had been given a month or two to do its work, this citizen deliberative council could have done some pretty impressive deliberation. Its findings would have truly represented what the whole public would have come up with had the whole public had a chance to thoroughly examine the issues involved with each other. To engage a broader mass of citizens before the referendum, all the deliberators and the Constitutional Council could go out in public forums to talk about the draft constitution, answer questions and participate in mass public engagements -- for example, using World Cafes or Study Circles -- to help citizens get educated on the proposed constitution, to discuss it and to give further input. With good media coverage of the process, you would end up with a popular constitution that had been generated by truly empowered public wisdom.

It is unfortunate that more people are not aware of citizen deliberative councils. But I strongly suspect that approach would have been cheaper in the long run, and produced even better results. I hope this perspective reaches the eyes and ears of the next country to decide to take a leap into collective intelligence and wisdom when they create or revise their constitution.

Blessings on the Journey! It is certainly generating surprises!

Coheartedly,

Tom

PS: Here are two other interesting notes about Iceland's process:

1. The official Constitutional Council's 25 members were originally elected in November 2010, but Iceland's Supreme Court invalidated their elections in January 2011 due to improprieties. So a committee convened by Iceland's Prime Minister to study the matter recommended in February 2011 that the government offer each of those elected a legislative appointment to the Constitutional Council. This was done and they apparently accepted. So they were sort of elected and sort of appointed. Strange, but it worked, but it could raise some questions...

(Source: http://stjornlagarad.is/english/)

2. Consider this fascinating pair of facts: "Meetings of the council are open to the public and streamed live on to the website and Facebook page. The latter has more than 1,300 likes in a country of 320,000 people." Pretty impressive, no? Now hear this: "Iceland's population [is] among the world's most computer-literate. Two-thirds of its people are on Facebook." That's impressive, too. But wait a minute: These three facts together -- a population of 320,000 of whom about 200,000 are on Facebook, of whom 1,300 "liked" the constitutional process -- mean that considerably less than 1% of Iceland's Facebook population -- and only about half a percent of the whole population -- "liked" the constitution process that was set up!! So far I've seen no one else comment on this. It definitely raises questions about "public participation". It seems to me that use of a citizen deliberative council would help counter potential challenges to the legitimacy of the process.

(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/09/iceland-crowdsourcing-constitution-facebook)

(short link: http://bit.ly/ja6dE)

============

http://www.good.is/post/iceland-is-crowdsourcing-its-new-constitution/?utm_source=supr

short link: http://bit.ly/kF7Z7N

Iceland Is Crowdsourcing Its New Constitution

by Andrew Price

Vikings. They're the vanguard of 21st-century democracy.

In the wake of the devastating collapse of Iceland's commercial banks, the country is drawing up a new constitution, and it's doing things a little differently: It's crowdsourcing the process. For real.

The country's 25-member constitutional council is posting draft clauses on its website and inviting the public to comment on them there or on its Facebook page. And their comments are actually being incorporated into the document. The council also has Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr accounts and is streaming all of its meetings live. It's perhaps the most open and participatory constitutional process in modern history (the Greeks were pretty good at democracy in their time).

The draft Human Rights section currently contains an expansive clause barring discrimination for just about any reason (including "genotype" and "social origin") but also guarantees universal mental and physical healthcare, academic freedom, and the protection of natural resources. It's shaping up to be a pretty awesome document from what we can tell.

The council's Facebook page is full of comments, not only from Icelanders, but also well-wishers from all over the globe. If you think this is as inspiring an experiment as we do, drop by and tell them so.

LINKS

The draft constitution (English translation)
http://bit.ly/kFqZed

Their Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/Stjornlagarad

Iceland crowdsources its next constitution

2011-06-13T00:40:00.000-07:00

Country recovering from collapse of its banks and government is using social media to get citizens to share their ideas

The new constitution will include checks and responsibilities for Iceland's parliament (the althing). Photograph: Brynjar Gauti/AP

It is not the way the scribes of yore would have done it but Iceland is tearing up the rulebook by drawing up its new constitution through crowdsourcing.As the country recovers from the financial crisis that saw the collapse of its banks and government, it is using social media to get its citizens to share their ideas as to what the new document should contain."I believe this is the first time a constitution is being drafted basically on the internet," said Thorvaldur Gylfason, member of Iceland's constitutional council."The public sees the constitution come into being before their eyes … This is very different from old times where constitution makers sometimes found it better to find themselves a remote spot out of sight, out of touch."Iceland's existing constitution dates back to when it gained independence from Denmark in 1944. It simply took the Danish constitution and made a few minor adjustments, such as substituting the word "president" for "king".In creating the new document, the council has been posting draft clauses on its website every week since the project launched in April. The public can comment underneath or join a discussion on the council's Facebook page.The council also has a Twitter account, a YouTube page where interviews with its members are regularly posted, and a Flickr account containing pictures of the 25 members at work, all intended to maximise interaction with citizens.Meetings of the council are open to the public and streamed live on to the website and Facebook page. The latter has more than 1,300 likes in a country of 320,000 people.The crowdsourcing follows a national forum last year where 950 randomly selected people spent a day discussing the constitution. If the committee has its way the draft bill, due to be ready at the end of July, will be put to a referendum without any changes imposed by parliament – so it will genuinely be a document by the people, for the people.Given that it was intended to go to a referendum, Gylfason said, the idea was that the public should be involved from the start of the process and not just at the end. Social media is seen as a way of making that happen with Iceland's population among the world's most computer-literate. Two-thirds of its people are on Facebook.Gylfason said he had been pleasantly surprised by the level of discussion. "There's been a lot of goodwill for what we are trying to do. The public have added much to our debate. Their comments have been quite helpful and they have had a positive effect on the outcome."Gylfason, an economics professor at the University of Iceland, said the draft bill would include checks and responsibilities for parliament and provisions for separation of powers intended to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis. It would also contain significant changes in the way MPs are elected and judges appointed.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/09/iceland-crowdsourcing-constitution-facebook

Wisdom of the Crowds

2011-05-25T13:47:00.000-07:00

Report from Caspar Davis:

I have recently finished reading James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds ... a good read (Surowiecki is a staff wrier at the New Yorker) and a very interesting book.

Of course, I was interested to see how the book meshes with the work of Jim Rough and Tom Atlee.

Although Surowiecki gives no sign of having heard of either of those people, or of their work, The Wisdom of Crowds explains very clearly how Co-intelligence works, why Dynamic Facilitation is such a powerful technique, and even why random selection is a brilliant way of choosing an effective deliberative group.

Surowiecki's book is based almost entirely on experiments conducted by academics. The main conclusions he draws are: (1) diverse groups are almost miraculously "smart". Collectively, they can find lost ships, or determine the number of beans in a jar or the weight of an ox, far more accurately than any expert; (2) not only are they smarter than their smartest members, but they actually get smarter when some of their members are not-so-smart; (3) the keys to collective intelligence are cognitive diversity, willingness to express opinions different from those already voiced, and a means of aggregating the different opinions.

These three points are all brilliantly addressed by Jim Rough's Dynamic Facilitation. See http://www.tobe.net/. See also Tom Atlee's comprehensive website, http://www.co-intelligence.org/

I think that The Wisdom of Crowds is one of the most important books I have read, in large part because of the main stream academic foundation it builds for Co-intelligence and Dynamic Facilitation. There is a good description of the book at http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/Q&A.html

Here are some quotes that capture some of the book's most important points:

Diversity helps [groups distinguish good solutions from bad ones] in two ways. Diversity helps because it actually adds perspectives that would otherwise be absent and because it takes away, or at least weakens, some of the distractive characteristics of group decision-making. (p.29) [In the course of the book, Surowiecki makes it clear that he means cognitive diversity, not sociological diversity (although of course they often go hand-in-hand) - cwd]

...

[A] group made up of some smart agents and some not-so-smart agents almost always did better than a group made up just of smart agents. You could do as well or better by selecting a group randomly and letting it solve the problem as by spending a lot of time trying to find the smart agents and then putting them alone on the problem... Adding in a few people who know less, but have different skills, actually improves the group's performance. (p.30) ...

Legendary organizational theorist James G.

March... puts it like this: "The development of knowledge may depend on maintaining an influx of the naive and the ignorant and... competitive victory does not reliably go to the properly educated."... Homogeneous groups are great at doing what they do well, but they become progressively less able to investigate alternatives... Bringing new members into the organization, even if there are less experienced and less capable, actually makes the group smarter simply because what little the new members do know is not redundant with what everyone else knows. As March wrote, "[The] effect does not come from the superior knowledge of the average new recruit. Recruits are, on average, less knowledgeable than the individuals they replace. The gains come from their diversity." (p.31) ...

One obvious cost of homogeneity is... that it fosters the palpable pressures toward conformity that groups often bring to bear on their members… When the pressure to conform is at work, a person changes his opinion not because he actually believes something different but because it's easier to change his opinion them to challenge the group. (p.38) ...

Having even one other person in the group who felt as they did made the subject happy to announce their thoughts, and the rate of conformity plummeted.

Ultimately diversity contributes not just by adding different perspectives to the group but also by making it easier for individuals to say what they really think… [I]ndependence of opinion is both a crucial ingredient in collectively wise decisions and one of the hardest things to keep intact. Because diversity helps preserve that independence, it's hard to have a collectively wise group without it. (p.39) ...

Independence is important to intelligent decision making for two reasons. First, it keeps the mistakes that people make from becoming correlated. Errors in individual judgment won't wreck the group's collective judgment as long as those errors aren't systematically pointing in the same direction. One of the quickest ways to make people's judgements systematically biased is to make them dependent on each other for information. Second, independent individuals are more likely to have new information rather than the same old data everyone is already familiar with. The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence doesn't imply rationality or impartiality, though. You can be biased and irrational, but as long as you're independent, you won't make the group any dumber. (p.41) ...

[I]ndependence is hard to come by. We are autonomous beings, but we are also social beings.

We want to learn from each other, and learning is a social progress. The neighborhoods where we live, the schools we attend, and the corporations where we work shape the way we think and feel...

[T]he more influence a group's members exert on each other, the less likely it is that the group's decisions will be wise ones. The more influence we exert on each other, the more likely it is that we will believe the same things and make the same mistakes. That means it's possible that we could become individually smarter but collectively dumber. The question we have to ask in thinking about collective wisdom, then, is:

Can people make collectively intelligent decisions even when they are in constant, if erratic, interaction with each other? (pp.42-43) ...

If a group of autonomous individuals tries to solve a problem without any means of putting their judgments together, then the best solution they can hope for is the solution that the smartest person in the group produces, and there's no guarantee they'll get that. If that same group, though, has a means of aggregating all those different opinions, the group's collective solution may well be smarter than even the smartest person's solution. Aggregation which could be seen as a curious form of centralization is therefore paradoxically important to the success of decentralization. (p.75) ...

One of the consistent findings from decades of small group research is that group deliberations are more successful when they have a clear agenda and when leaders take an active role in making sure that everyone gets a chance to speak. (p.182) ...

[I]n small groups, diversity of opinion is the single best guarantee that the group will reap benefits from face-to-face discussion... (p.183) ...

[I]f a majority of the group already supports one position, then most of the arguments that will be made will be in support of that position. So the uncertain people are likely to be swayed in that direction, in part simply because that's more of what they'll hear. Similarly, people who have more extreme positions are more likely to have strong, coherent arguments in favor of their positions and are also more likely to voice them.

This matters because all the evidence suggests that the order in which people speak has a profound effect on the course of the discussion.

Earlier comments are more influential, and they tend to provide a framework within which the discussion occurs. As in an information cascade, once that framework is in place, it's difficult for a dissenter to break it down. This wouldn't be a problem if the people who spoke earliest were also more likely to know what they were talking about. But the truth is that, especially when it comes to problems where there is no obvious right answer, there's no guarantee that the most informed speakers will also be the most influential... (p.186)

Talkativeness may seem like a curious thing to worry about, but in fact talkativeness has a major impact on the kinds of decisions small groups reach. If you talk a lot in a group, people will tend to think of you as influential almost by default. Talkative people are not necessarily well liked by other members of the group, but they are listened to. And talkativeness feeds on itself. Studies of group dynamics almost always show that the more someone talks, the more he is talked to by others in the group. So people at the center of the group tend to become more important over the course of the discussion.

This might be okay if people only spoke when they have expertise in a particular matter. And in many cases, if someone's talking a lot it's a good sign that they have something valuable to add. But the truth is that there's no clear correlation between talkativeness and expertise... And since, as political scientists Brock Blomberg and Joseph Harrington suggest, extremists tend to be more rigid and more convinced of their own rightness than moderates, discussion tends to pull groups away from the middle. Of course sometimes truth lies at the extreme. And if the people who spoke first and most often were consistently the people with the best information on the keenest analysis, then polarization might not be much of a problem. But it is.

The obvious temptation is to do away with or at least minimize the role that small groups play in shaping policy or making decisions. Better to entrust one reliable person who at least we know will not become more extreme in his views with responsibility than trust a group of ten or twelve people who at any moment, it seems, may suddenly decide to run off a cliff. It would be a mistake to succumb to that temptation. First of all, groups can be, as it were, depolarized. In a study that divided people into groups of six while making sure that each group composed two smaller groups of three who had strongly opposed views, it was found that discussion moved the groups from the extremes and toward each other.

That same study found that as groups became less polarized, they also became more accurate when they were tested on matters of fact.

More important, as solid as the evidence demonstrating group polarization is, so too is the evidence demonstrating that nonpolarized groups consistently make better decisions and come up with better answers than most of their members, and surprisingly often the group outperforms even its best member. What makes this surprising is that one would think that in a small group, one or two confused people could skew the group's collective verdict in the wrong direction. (The small group can't, in that sense, rely on errors canceling themselves out.) But there's little evidence of that happening. (pp.188-189)

Most strikingly, there [is] no correlation between the performance of the smartest person in the group and the performance of out of the group and other. In other words, the groups were not just piggybacking on really smart individuals.

They genuinely were smarter than the smartest people within them.(p.190)

[In two experiments conducted by Princeton economists, it was found that] small groups made better decisions than individuals... and made them as quickly as the individuals. Most strikingly, there was no correlation between the performance of the smartest person in the group and the performance of that group. In other words, the groups were not just piggybacking on really smart individuals. They genuinely were smarter than the smartest people within them... (p.190)

Given what we've already seen, this is not shocking news. But there are two important things about these studies. The first is that the group decisions are not inherently inefficient. This suggests deliberation can be valuable when done well, even if after a certain point it's marginal benefits are outweighed by the costs. The second point is probably obvious, although a surprising number of groups ignore it, and that is that there is no point in making small groups part of the leadership structure if you do not give the group a method of aggregating the opinions of its members. If small groups are included in the decision-making process, then they should be allowed to make decisions. If an organization sets up teams and then uses them for purely advisory purposes, it loses the true advantage that it team has: namely, collective wisdom. (p.190)

Obviously, it economies and societies depend on, and thrive on, the disclosure of public information. What Andreassons and Treyner's experiments suggest, though, is that the best way to disclose public information is without hype or even commentary from people in positions of power... (p.255)

Groups are only smart when there is a balance between the information that everyone in the group shares and the information that each of the members of the group holds privately. It's the combination of all those pieces of independent information, some of them right, some of them wrong, that keeps the group wise. In the stock market, as we've seen, other people's expectations affect your own definition of value.

Much of the time that matters only a little, because the expectations themselves are competing. But what happens in a bubble or what happens when the bubble bursts is that expectations converge... It's already hard enough, as we've seen, for investors to be independent of each other. During a bubble, it becomes practically impossible. A market, in other words, turns into a mob. (p.256)

'We the Citizens' of Ireland plan national assembly of randomly selected citizens

2011-05-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

‘We the Citizens’ is an independent national initiative with a clear and simple idea. We want to show how our Republic could benefit by citizens coming together in new ways of public decision-making. www.wethecitizens.ie
We believe this could help to renew trust in politics at this time of social and economic crisis in Ireland. We want to speak up for Ireland.
So what are we about? We’re inviting fellow citizens to come together to share views on how to make our country better. ‘We the Citizens’ want you to participate in one of our seven citizens’ events around Ireland. We need to engage with each other on the future of our country.
The political scientists on our team – a group of young people who also want to help their country – will be at the events to hear and take note of the messages coming from each one of them. The views expressed will inform the agenda for the next big step in our plans.

A national citizens’assembly.
The assembly will be made up of a cross-section of Irish people selected randomly. This is a model that’s been tried and tested with great success in other parts of the world. It shows that citizens are more than able to make considered and practical recommendations on political reform to their fellow-citizens and to government.
‘We the Citizens’ see this as a moment which gives Irish people the chance to help renew our Republic and to contribute to new models of citizen engagement.

How Canadians Can Move Towards Genuine Democracy - Starting Today

2011-05-05T22:04:00.000-07:00

As a result of the Federal election on May 2nd, we Canadians are facing four years of “rule” under a false majority representing only 40% of the people who voted. Across Canada 7,867,870 people voted Liberal, NDP or Green. 5,832,401 voted Conservative. This is a difference of over 2 million who voted against this government. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that this election has touched a nerve across the land; awakening the grass-roots and kick-starting a wave of organized opposition to autocratic rule. There are several websites dedicated to capturing this energy and moving forward in spite of the fundamental flaws inherent in our first-past-the-post electoral system, including: www.leadnow.ca, www.projectdemocracy.ca and www.fairvote.ca. More good news – Elizabeth May, our first elected Green MP is committed to using her national profile in working towards true democracy, including electoral reform.

How do Canadians move forward given these results?? One of the best things we can do at this time to deepen democracy is to convene randomly-selected Citizens’ Councils at all levels, including the National level (see www.wisedemocracyvictoria.org, www.wisedemocracyvictoria.wetpaint.com & www.wisedemocracy.org).

In my experience, one of the biggest criticisms of any initiative designed to influence public policy is the claim “that the results simply represent the views of another squeaky special interest or corporate lobby group.” Since this accusation is accurate 9 times out of 10 given Canadian politics as-usual, it is very difficult to provide a reasonable counter argument.

The key to acceptance of results designed to influence policy is to genuinely represent the views of the Canadian people. How can this be done? The best technique I’m aware of to enhance the legitimacy of any such endeavour is random selection. A cycle of randomly selected councils provides a statistically valid and very powerful mechanism for achieving a representative cross-section of any particular population, whether it is at the municipal, provincial, or federal level.

The political leverage for what progressives are trying to achieve would be greatly magnified if we conducted a randomized sample (similar to what a polling firm would undertake) and invited 100 Canadians to participate in face-to-face facilitated sessions. The aim would be to convene at least one council of 12 randomly-selected individuals; but even more powerful would be to have three such councils. With sufficient profile and publicity this is certainly achievable and the results would be certainly news worthy. I’m certain the media would become fascinated with the process and outcomes.

The other key point is facilitation. I know from personal experience that a particular type of facilitation (Dynamic Facilitation) can create a conversation that will allow 12 strangers to reach a unanimous perspective on the key issues in a matter of hours (see www.tobe.net).

Our most recent work has been with the City of Victoria, to help the city in revising the Official Community Plan. We have facilitated two randomly selected councils for the City with excellent results and have been asked to facilitate a follow-up session with the original participants (www.ShapeYourFutureVictoria.ca).

There’s growing support at the municipal level – now it is time to ramp-up this approach and to convene Citizens' Councils at the Provincial and National Level. Supporters of Leadnow, ProjectDemocracy, etc can help by promoting this idea on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

George Sranko

gsranko 'at' shaw.ca

Sign the Declaration for Change - LeadNow.ca

2011-04-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

Leadnow.ca has posted a "Declaration for Change" based on input from Canadians, and they're asking for your signature of support. This is a good opportunity to promote a progressive vision for Canada in time for the May 2nd Federal Election. See http://www.leadnow.ca/en/declaration.

Declaration for Change:

We commit to support action on the following key priorities and vote for the politicians who will:

Create an open government plan to increase transparency and accountability
Initiate a citizen-led process for a referendum on electoral reform
Make it easier for people to participate directly in government decision-making

Establish a plan with clear targets to reduce poverty and provide affordable housing
Improve access to high quality post-secondary education and reduce student debt
Ensure access to affordable quality child care and early childhood education

Establish climate legislation to meet international and science-based targets
Invest in renewable energy, energy efficiency and home retrofits
End subsidies to fossil fuel companies

Ensure universal access to high quality and publicly administered health care
Invest in programs that prevent illness and promote wellness
Create a national strategy to increase mental health support

Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale

2011-03-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze

The Berkana Institute

What is Emergence?

Emergence violates so many of our Western assumptions of how change happens that it often takes quite a while to understand it. In nature, change never happens as a result of top-down, pre-conceived strategic plans, or from the mandate of any single individual or boss. Change begins as local actions spring up simultaneously in many different areas. If these changes remain disconnected, nothing happens beyond each locale. However, when they become connected, local actions can emerge as a powerful system with influence at a more global or comprehensive level. (Global here means a larger scale, not necessarily the entire planet.)

These powerful emergent phenomena appear suddenly and surprisingly. Think about how the Berlin Wall suddenly came down, how the Soviet Union ended, how corporate power quickly came to dominate globally. In each case, there were many local actions and decisions, most of which were invisible and unknown to each other, and none of which was powerful enough by itself to create change. But when these local changes coalesced, new power emerged. What could not be accomplished by diplomacy, politics, protests, or strategy suddenly happened. And when each materialized, most of us were surprised. Emergent phenomena always have these characteristics: They exert much more power than the sum of their parts; they always possess new capacities different from the local actions that engendered them; they always surprise us by their appearance.

It is important to note that emergence always results in a powerful system that has many more capacities than could ever be predicted by analyzing the individual parts. We see this in the behavior of hive insects such as bees and termites. Individual ants possess none of the intelligence or skills that are in the hive. No matter how intently scientists study the behavior of individual ants, they can never see the behavior of the hive. Yet once the hive forms, each ant acts with the intelligence and skillfulness of the whole.

This aspect of emergence has profound implications for social entrepreneurs. Instead of developing them individually as leaders and skillful practitioners, we would do better to connect them to like-minded others and create the conditions for emergence. The skills and capacities needed by them will be found in the system that emerges, not in better training programs.

Because emergence only happens through connections, Berkana has developed a four-stage model that catalyzes connections as the means to achieve large-scale change: Name, Connect, Nourish, Illuminate (see Appendix). We focus on discovering pioneering efforts and naming them as such. We then connect these efforts to other similar work globally. We nourish this network in many ways, but most essentially through creating opportunities for learning and sharing experiences and shifting into communities of practice. We also illuminate these pioneering efforts so that many more people will learn from them. We are attempting to work intentionally with emergence so that small, local efforts can become a global force for change.

(see complete article: www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/emergence.html)

Leadnow.ca to Create Online Declaration for Change

2011-03-08T09:38:00.000-08:00

There is a new kind of organization that uses technology as tool to help people organize themselves for change. The organization that pioneered this strategy was MoveOn.org, which launched as an online petition directed at the American Congress in 1998. Now, their five-million strong member base has organized over 100 thousand local events and contributed $200 million to progressive candidates, including over $88 million and 20 million volunteer hours to Barack Obama's presidential campaign. GetUp! then repeated MoveOn's success in Australia by attracting more members than all the political parties combined and achieving many electoral and issue-based wins within a mere five years of launch. 38Degrees, the UK-based version, launched in 2009 and already has over half a million members.

Leadnow.ca is the first step in a process that will create a Declaration for Change. The process will bring Canadians together online, and in local get-togethers, to find the values and priorities that can become the foundation for federal political cooperation. The Declaration for Change will challenge federal politicians to cooperate for progress on major issues identified and chosen by the participants. Leadnow.ca will then ask Canadians to back the Declaration for Change with a commitment to vote for the politicians who will rise to the challenge. Our goal is to create a strong incentive for political cooperation that can shift the election results in a few key ridings around the country.

See http://leadnow.ca/en/media

From Cairo to Madison: Hope and Solidarity are Alive

2011-02-22T10:28:00.000-08:00

by Medea Benjamin

Here in Madison, Wisconsin, where protesters have occupied the State Capitol Building to stop the pending bill that would eliminate workers’ right to collective bargaining, echoes of Cairo are everywhere. Protesters here were elated by the photo of an Egyptian engineer named Muhammad Saladin Nusair holding a sign in Tahrir Square saying “Egypt Supports Wisconsin Workers—One World, One Pain.” The signs by protesters in Madison include “Welcome to Wiscairo”, “From Egypt to Wisconsin: We Rise Up”, and “Government Walker: Our Mubarak.” The banner I brought directly from Tahrir Square saying “Solidarity with Egyptian Workers” has been hanging from the balcony of the Capitol alongside solidarity messages from around the country.

My travels from Cairo to Madison seem like one seamless web. After camping out with the students and workers in the Capitol Building, I gave an early morning seminar on what it was like to be an eyewitness to the Egyptian revolution, and the struggles that are taking place right now in places like Libya, Bahrain and Yemen. Folks told me all day how inspiring it was to hear about the uprisings in the Arab world.

Some took the lessons from Cairo literally. Looking around at the capitol building that was starting to show the wear and tear from housing thousands of protesters, I had mentioned that in Cairo the activists were constantly scrubbing the square, determined to show how much they loved the space they had liberated. A few hours later, in Madison’s rotunda, people were on their hands and knees scrubbing the marble floor. “We’re quick learners,” one of the high school students told me, smiling as she picked at the remains of oreo cookies sticking to the floor.

I heard echoes of Cairo in the Capitol hearing room where a nonstop line of people had gathered all week to give testimonies. The Democratic Assemblymembers have been giving folks a chance to voice their concerns about the governor’s pending bill. In this endless stream of heartfelt testimonies, people talk about the impact this bill will have on their own families—their take-home pay, their healthcare, their pensions. They talk about the governor manufacturing the budget crisis to break the unions. They talk about the history of workers’ struggles to earn living wages and have decent benefits. And time and again, I heard people say “I saw how the Egyptian people were able to rise up and overthrow a 30-year dictatorship, and that inspired me to rise up and fight this bill.”

Solidarity is, indeed, a beautiful thing. It is a way we show our oneness with all of humanity; it is a way to reaffirm our own humanity. CODEPINK sent flowers to the people in Tahrir Square—a gesture that was received with kisses, hugs and tears from the Egyptians. The campers in Madison erupted in cheer when they heard that an Egyptian had called the local pizza place, Ians Pizza, and placed a huge order to feed the protesters. “Pizza never tasted so good,” a Wisconsin fireman commented when he was told that the garlic pizza he was eating had come from supporters in Cairo.

Egyptian engineer Muhammad Saladin Nusair, the one whose photo supporting Wisconsin workers went viral, now has thousands of new American Facebook friends. He wrote in his blog that many of his new friends were surprised by his gesture of solidarity, but he was taught that “we live in ONE world and under the same sky.”

“If a human being doesn’t feel the pain of his fellow human beings, then everything we’ve created and established since the very beginning of existence is in great danger,” Muhammad wrote. “We shouldn’t let borders and differences separate us. We were made different to complete each other, to integrate and live together. One world, one pain, one humanity, one hope.”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/02/21-11

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org) and CODEPINK: Women for Peace (www.codepinkalert.org). She is author of Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart.

NewDemocracy: Exciting Group Working to Improve Democracy in Australia

2011-02-04T09:50:00.000-08:00

Today’s challenge is to rework democracy, so that it operates as it was first conceived.

In Australia and elsewhere, electoral systems promote petty partisan politics, where adversarial debate for its own sake overwhelms deliberation and good government.

We need to reconsider the way our democracy works so that we put people back into politics and good sense back into government.

We need to move away from celebrity campaigning and populist politics; we need to reinvent our parliaments, so that trust and deliberation are the norm, rather than the exception.

Help newdemocracy put people back into politics and good sense back into government. Send us your ideas and work with us to find ways for fairer deliberation on issues.

Let’s work together for a Better Government.

Visit the NewDemocracy website.

Lot and Democratic Representation: A Modest Proposal by Alex Zakaras

2011-02-04T09:29:00.000-08:00

Here's a short excerpt from an excellent article by Alex Zakaras examining the potential for random selection in modernizing democracy:

Far too little attention, however, has been paid to alternative methods of candidate selection. Lot (or lottery), especially, deserves more serious consideration as a way of correcting some of the democratic deficiencies of election. Lot, of course, simply means random selection from a pool of candidates, each of whom has an equal chance of being chosen. Lot was widely used in early democracies and republics: in classical Athens and in the Renaissance city-states of Florence and Venice. And although modern, mass democracies have used it very sparingly (for jury selection, for instance), several political theorists have recently suggested
that we consider using lot much more widely, as a way of rendering our political institutions more democratic.

In a 2006 article in the American Political Science Review, John McCormick outlines a tentative proposal for a “tribunate assembly” of 51 citizens, each of whom be chosen by lot from the adult population and would serve a year-long term. Political and economic elites would be “excluded from eligibility.”16 The tribunes could veto “one piece of congressional legislation, one executive order, and one Supreme Court decision” in the course of their term.17 They could also call one (binding) national referendum on an issue of their choice, and initiate impeachment proceedings against one federal official. Kevin O’Leary has advanced a much more detailed plan in his book Saving Democracy for a system of 435 100-person citizen assemblies – one in each congressional district. Members would be chosen by lot, and as a group, these 43,500 citizens would discuss and assess federal legislation, first in a strictly advisory function but eventually with full veto power.18

GRS: For an invigorating discussion on the merits of random selection see the entire article here (PDF format)

Deep Democracy and Community Wisdom by Tom Atlee

2011-01-30T23:43:00.000-08:00

A wise person has perspective. They can see the big picture without losing sight of the small. They can see the part without losing sight of the whole. They understand the partnerships of day and night, good and bad, the known and the unknown. They have observed how it all fits together, including their own limitations and immense ignorance - and that realization makes them humble, insightful and flexible. They are free to creatively see and respond to what's actually around them.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference." This famous "Serenity Prayer" arises out of, and nurtures, wisdom.

Can communities be wise? Interestingly, a community of people (whether a group, a company, a town or a nation) is better equipped to be wise than an individual. This is true despite the fact most of the communities we live in or with are clearly foolish, small-minded, unconscious and/or destructive. Truly wise communities (some of which operate on millennia-old traditions) are seldom seen or publicized by our civilization, preoccupied as it is with bustling off to its own demise.
As individuals, we are inherently more limited than a community. Although we can consult books and friends and critics, in the end we are limited to our own single perspective. We are, alas, only one person, looking at the world from one place, one history, one pattern of knowing.

A community, on the other hand, can see things through many eyes, many histories, many ways of knowing. The question is whether it dismisses or creatively utilizes and integrates that diversity.

Communities are wise to the extent they use diversity well. The wisest know that every viewpoint represents a part of the truth, and that it is through the cooperative, creative interplay of viewpoints that the wisest, most comprehensive and powerful truths emerge. So they engage in that interplay, that dialogue - a creative controversy or consensus process that winds its way to wise public judgment.

The best government is that government which enables communities to do this - to nurture and utilize their wisdom and resources - especially their diversity - in such a way that they require less and less government.

A community that can manage itself in a wise and sustainable manner is one that has mastered democracy. They know they can't depend on leaders (from dictators to saviours, from representatives to experts) to do things for them. They know that democratic citizens and leaders work best in partnership with each other, co-creating each other's power. They know that leaders must be seen as living extensions of their own will and wisdom, which must be kept active. They know that passive "followership" abandons leaders, deprives them of the wisdom and creativity of the community, and opens them up to the corruptions of alienated power.

A democratic community grows beyond dependence and paternalism. In a sense, the more democratic a society is, the more it has "come of age." Movements for democracy might even be seen as the maturation process of a culture. A mature society knows how to handle itself in dynamic context with others, drawing on its inner resources (its diverse members) and relating responsively and creatively with its environment.

The more it knows how to nurture and use the rich diversity of individual views and capabilities within it, the more wise (and democratic) a society will be. It will resist small-minded leadership and even the dictatorship of the majority. It will cherish dissent as a wise individual cherishes doubt - as a door to deeper understanding.
read the entire article...

Well-Fed Neighbor Alliance

2011-01-01T21:45:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting and inspirational online forum of activists who collaborate in the interests of sustainability.
The Well-Fed Neighbor Alliance, LTD is an alliance of individuals dedicated to the re-localization of our food supply, our fuel supply and our economy. The Well-Fed Neighbor Alliance, LTD, represents an unavoidable vision, plan and timetable for local sustainability. The Alliance owes no allegiance to any political party, religion, or belief system. Rather, the Alliance is open to all as long as their vision, mission and actions are peaceful, non-violent and aligned with that of the Alliance.

Grow Local! Buy Local! Eat Local!

Us Now - Excellent online documentary about collaboration and participative governance

2010-12-31T00:19:00.000-08:00

Us Now is a documentary film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the Internet.

Us Now tells the stories of online networks that are challenging the existing notion of hierarchy. For the first time, it brings together the fore-most thinkers in the field of participative governance to describe the future of government.

"There's a whole new model emerging where we become part of the government" - Don Tapscott

http://www.banyak.co.uk

The Rise of Collaboration

2010-12-27T10:53:00.000-08:00

Ted.com is an incredible online resource! For example, you can view an entire series of presentations on The Rise of Collaboration.
Yochai Benkler dubs it 'the wealth of networks." Howard Rheingold's term is "smart mobs." It's the idea of technology-enabled collaboration … and it's making us all smarter.
The open-source movement embodies this spirit of collaboration. Jimmy Wales tells the story of perhaps the movement's most famous example, Wikipedia -- while Richard Baraniuk envisions a free global education system to which thousands of teachers could contribute. Charles Leadbeater gives examples of collaborative innovation that predate the Web. And 2006 TED Prize winner Cameron Sinclair wants to shelter the world -- by providing an online platform for open-source architecture.
Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.
Deborah Gordon shows us the inspiration for all this: the desert anthill.

Collaborative Democracy Involves the Public

2010-12-26T09:14:00.000-08:00

This is the original, slightly longer version of my article in today's Times Colonist Newspaper on collaborative democracy.

When Democracy Falters Who You Gonna’ Call??
Public anger and resentment is growing worldwide against the political elite. Politicians and corporate leaders have been unable to resolve global economic crises and spreading unemployment. Hundreds of billions in public tax dollars continue to pour into private banks and corporate bailouts. Billions more go into questionable military adventures with only minority public support.
Many people are questioning whether democracy as-we-know-it is up to dealing with these modern day challenges. There’s a creeping malaise in Western liberal democracies. The hyper-partisan politics of today is creating a party-focused system with politicians consistently putting the interests of their parties ahead of the interests of their constituents and the public trust.
Consider the disrepute the BC Liberals have engineered for themselves with their shady HST tactics and BC rail cover-up. Look at the recent shenanigans by the unelected Senate as they killed Bill C-311 in a surprise vote without debate; a move that many Canadians consider an affront to democracy.
Fortunately, wiser forms of democracy are beginning to emerge, providing citizens with meaningful opportunities to participate in political decision-making. For example, the government of Iceland has initiated a constitutional assembly that is considering suggestions put forward by 1,000 randomly chosen citizens. The expectation is that the assembly will radically alter the current contract between citizen and state.

In Austria, the Office of Future Related Issues has introduced an innovative public participation strategy whereby councils of randomly selected citizens are being convened on a regular basis to address key issues. In the city of Bregenz twelve citizens were randomly selected to consider a controversial development proposal. The dynamically facilitated group achieved a breakthrough and realized that the project offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to link the city more closely with the lakefront, enhancing the city and saving the developers money. When the citizens’ council made their presentation, everyone was surprised by the elegance of the solution. The principal investor who had been working on the project for two years said, “We had been looking at the trees and had not seen the forest.”
Here in Victoria, a group of citizen-volunteers under the banner of Wise Democracy Victoria (WDV) have convened three councils of randomly-selected members since 2007. In each case council members achieved a unanimous “public interest” perspective, rather than one pre-determined by government or special interests. In 2010, WDV assisted the City of Victoria in convening two such councils to provide citizen input on revisions to the Official Community Plan. Participants indicate that their experience was transforming and energizing because they felt that their voices could actually make a difference!
Underlying each of these councils and assemblies is a fundamental premise; in our modern world of increasingly diverse interests, well-funded lobbyists, and hyper-partisan politics the best way to achieve a legitimate reading of the public interest is to involve citizens directly in meaningful way.
We desperately need new and innovative tools and traditions to enhance and leverage our existing democratic systems and institutions.
Fortunately, such innovations already exist. We have the skills and techniques to facilitate breakthrough conversations that go beyond traditional dialogue and deliberation. There are two key ingredients: 1. direct involvement by a representative cross-section of the entire community, province, or nation through random selection of citizens, and 2. dynamic facilitation that empowers the group to reach a unified perspective via creative shifts and breakthroughs, rather than through the usual back and forth negotiation.
Exercises in collaborative democracy are underway around the globe demonstrating the capacity of randomly-selected citizen councils to provide breakthrough solutions that are up to the task of addressing the difficult challenges we face. In Vorarlberg, Austria, for example, a state-wide citizens’ council is planned for March 2011 to consider the controversial and divisive issue of migrants and their integration. Imagine the creative possibilities and fiscal choices that may have emerged regarding Victoria’s Blue Bridge if only we had received input from a randomly selected citizens’ council early in the process.
When democracy falters who should you call?? The people, of course!

Interesting Publication on Random Selection

2010-12-24T09:34:00.000-08:00

In our experience with Wisdom Councils, random selection is a key mechanism for taking democracy beyond our current system which is gridlocked by big money, partisan interests, fundamentalist ideologies, etc., etc. Ran across this excellent booklet exploring some of the history and application of random selection ... also known as sortition. A digital copy is available for free download.

Sorted: Civic lotteries and the Future of Public Participation
Oliver Dowlen
http://www.masslbp.com/publications.php
In 2004 and 2006, two major democratic experiments took place in Canada's first and third most populous provinces. Two years later, this pamphlet explores the impact of Ontario and British Columbia's first Citizens' Assemblies by examining the premise on which each assembly was based: the use of sortition, or a "civic lottery" to select citizens to participate in a binding public process.

By examining the use of civic lotteries through history - a tradition that remains at the core of our judicial system - this pamphlet explains how sortition can lower the barrier to political participation and extend a meaningful new franchise to citizens wishing to serve their communities. Against a backdrop of institutional and political stagnation, Sorted: Civic lotteries and the future of public participation makes the case for reviving a neglected democratic tradition - one that works in partnership with existing institutions and elected legislators to create a more powerful and direct role for citizens.

Participedia - online tool for strengthening democracy

2010-12-19T19:45:00.000-08:00

Received a link today for www.Participedia.net:
Participedia is a tool for strengthening democracy. Based on a wiki platform, its main content consists of user-generated articles which describe and assess participatory governance throughout the world. For instance, there will be articles on the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly of 2004, consensus conferences in Denmark, participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre and other cities, local school council governance in Chicago, municipal evaluation meetings in China, and the People’s Campaign for Democratic Decentralization (under the Panchayati Raj reforms) in Kerala, India. In addition, there will be articles on participatory methods, such as deliberative polling, citizens' assemblies, and participatory budgeting, as well as articles about the organizations that sponsor, implement, and study participatory governance. Over time, we hope Participedia will garner hundreds and perhaps thousands of such articles.

City of Victoria Citizen Insight Council #2 - notes

2010-06-05T14:33:00.001-07:00

Need all of the major amenities in neighbourhoods, need to start forming a vision for people to live, work and play in their village centres.

- Better public transit between municipalities. Light rail. Generally discouraging single-person vehicle use so that people don’t move outside of the city, live in smaller areas.

- Can’t expand too far outward, no space. Need to maintain wild space, farmland.

- Amalgamation? Emergency response amalgamation? Would be nice to have by 2040, but maybe not going to happen now.

- Visions for Victoria:

- Be able to afford to live here, rent space. People’s children should be able to stay and work. Densification. Want to be able to walk around and see green. Preserving heritage buildings.

- Close off some of the downtown roads for cafes, pedestrian use. Younger population needs affordable housing in order to stay.

- Waterfront areas need to be protected, not obscured by high-rises. Available for public use.

- People no longer feel the need for gas transit. Parking outside the city, better public transit. Free bike (blue bike program).

- Maintain view of sky downtown. Density good, but make less visible. Design buildings to allow a view of sky.

- Need high density, have sunlight reach the streets, have the street be the place where people interact, not in buildings – keep streets as an active public place.

- Island should be more sustainable for food. Green roofs, growing food. Community gardens.

- Community-based waste disposal system. Dumpsters for whole neighbourhoods centralized, makes disposal easier.

- Road blocks make it difficult for emergency response. Roundabouts get in the way.

- Services for homeless as well as housing. Adequate housing and services for all.

- Greater use of heritage conservation areas, general respect for heritage. Match density zoning with existing density of heritage buildings.

- Need a place for people to go to discuss ideas on an ongoing basis. Opportunities for seniors, youths. Iterative engagement methods, building on previous discussion. “come with a problem but be part of the solution”.

- Community work space, drop-in workshop on ongoing basis for community to debate, led by someone. Could use community centres. Not issue-focused, free for people to come and present new ideas and issues. Purpose could be served by pubs, cafes.

- Online version of same.

- Remove parking lot at end of Fort St. and open a festival ground or something.

- Could have had a designated camping spot. Need more creative housing solutions for homeless.

CIC #2 Update 2

2010-06-05T13:19:00.000-07:00

The end of part 1, my notes:

- Flow of information between citizens and Council/City and issue, needs improvement.

- There is a lack of easily-identifiable liaisons between city and citizens, need a visible representative of the community at city level.

- What about a ward system? Might increase access to city hall, but might increase partisanship/NIMBY as well. Maybe instead just increase awareness, communication from Council/City. Information is searchable, but does not come to you (need to be able to passively receive information). Might lead to competition amongst neighbourhoods for staff time. Would require cooperation between neighbourhoods though.

- Neighbourhood web sites/sections of city web site where residents can get information related to their neighbourhoods, important contacts, events, planning, etc.

- Linking City, CRD, Neighbourhoods websites so that information is easy to find and jump around from.

- Good example: engagement process for Jubilee extension was very well done, comprehensive.

- Need greater awareness of the roles of community assoc. How do they deal with the city? How can I contact them? Where do my questions go when I call my neighbourhood assoc?

- People often disagree/conflict in neighbourhood context, how do we reach and find common ground and agreement within neighbourhoods? Need an organic process, flexible, not a rigid schedule. An open, civil forum where people know they will be heard, can provide their opinions and disagree/discuss without conflict. Respectful environment. Need unbiased facilitator for important discussions.

- Involve people from the beginning. Problems occur when people don’t feel like part of the process. Involve people in pre-planning rather than post-planning consultation, be transparent about what the city is looking at.

- City should take an active mediation role in conflicts between neighbourhood assoc. Also proactive role in organizing neighbourhoods, creating conversation/cohesion. Could be a concern of Council Liaisons.

- Do we need to focus more on the city as a whole rather than individual neighbourhoods?

- Approach: City says here is the broad plan (OCP), how do you the communities feel things should look on the ground.

- OCP should not decide details, but be very clear on what needs to happen generally. “We need services for the homeless” is an OCP statement, neighbourhoods decide where these things should go.

- Increase fines for developers for destroying protected trees, and have responsibility go two or three years into the future in case of long-term damage done during development.

- City should revisit neighbourhood boundaries. Increase neighbourhood identity, people would get more involved because they would feel it’s their neighbourhood. Need to ask what is a neighbourhood, how do we define it?

- Big ideas: Communication, making information available. Creating a portal for neighbourhood issues.

- Not only informing, but providing bottom-up opportunities.

- Ensuring that people feel truly engaged THROUGHOUT THE PROCESS.

CIC #2 Update 1

2010-06-05T11:30:00.000-07:00

On community engagement:

- Flow of information between citizens and Council/City and issue, needs improvement.

- There is a lack of easily-identifiable liaisons between city and citizens, need a visible representative of the community at city level.

- Neighbourhood web sites/sections of city web site where residents can get information related to their neighbourhoods, important contacts, events, planning, etc.

- Linking City, CRD, Neighbourhoods websites so that information is easy to find and jump around from.

- Good example: engagement process for Jubilee extension was very well done, comprehensive.

- Need greater awareness of the roles of community assoc. How do they deal with the city? How can I contact them? Where do my questions go when I call my neighbourhood assoc?

Citizen Insight Council #2 Begins!

2010-06-05T10:38:00.000-07:00

So begins this session of live blogging from Victoria's second ever Citizen Insight Council.

The question we begin with is: How can planning for neighbourhoods be made effective, sustainable, and meaningful for citizens?

There are 13 neighbourhoods in Victoria with a population of 80,000. Compared to other cities, these are smaller than you would expect, but the variety of micro-cultures and neighbourhood personalities makes this question all the more important.

Neighbourhood plans are available at:
http://www.victoria.ca/cityhall/departments_plnpub_nghbrh.shtml

WDV out.

CIC #1 Update 8

2010-05-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

Thoughts from the CIC on Density, both high and low:
- Focus density downtown, old Bay building should be far edge.
- Don't want to block view corridors.
- Keep height further back, not huge.
- Go for a European feeling.
- Build where the land is lowest so as not to ruin skyline.
- Rock bay could be like False Creek, Yaletown without towers, need to work on Selkirk.
- Humboldt valley is good.
- Douglas/Belleville bus depot should be moved.
- Focus medum density around commercial nodes (villages), would help improve amenities in places like Quadra Village, Cook St., etc.
- Want to walk downtown.
- City should be clear on where high rises can go and be strict.
- City could have guidelines for environmental features in new buildings.
- Density reduces the need for personal vehicles, and increases need for good transit, things like car co-ops.
- What about rooftop gardens, parks, geothermal heat, fuel cells, reuse of greywater, on-site sewage treatment, and beautification for new development?
- Vision over profit.
- Worry about leaky condos, need quality development. What was the city's role there?
- Sewage treatment needs to be more efficient with increased density.
- Aesthetic quality should be considered with new buildings.
- Creating communal space with new development, allowing for community.

WDV out.

Holy priorities, city-man!

2010-05-29T14:07:00.000-07:00

Infrastructure, Livability, Transportation, Waterfront, Social Services, Diverse/Holistic Community, Governance/Engagement, Growth/Economy.

More on these later.

WDV out.

CIC #1 Update 7

2010-05-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

It's solution time.

- To improve bike lane safety, build a traffic meridian between cars and bikes, create exclusive bike-only lanes.
- Fisherman's wharf - secure it.
- Marina alternatives: Don't allow it! OR: Allow it but with smaller boats. OR: Think Macro, it's just a small port (allow it). OR: Put it in a different place, more out of the way.
- Secure a percentage of revenue from new development for affordable housing.
- Increase density, more tax per sq. ft.
- Get light rapid transit!
- Celebrations should be... Secure and safe, modeled after Montreal/Quebec, done in larger areas (blocked off from cars), more like Luminara, change police training (Vancouver?), need mroe cultural festivals, entertainment-based instead of drinking-based.
- More street lighting.
- Pandora Green, more of that, less parking lots/pavement.

WDV out.

CIC #1 Update 6

2010-05-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

What are our problem statements from page 2? Now you'll know!

- What is the truth about amalgamation?
- What about sense of community vs. efficiencies that come with a larger town?
- How to balance adult-oriented events with family events?
- How would you like to be engaged?

Solutions to come after lunch!

WDV out.

CIC #1 Update 5

2010-05-29T12:22:00.000-07:00

Concerns from today are...
- The Marina. Victoria vs. Monaco - we're different.
- Why do I live here? Approach from this angle.
- Road work. How is it coordinated? Same streets are torn up over and over, is this the best use of taxes?
- Online voting and info about city?
- Homelessness, sleeping in doorways. In USA sidewalks are leased by businesses as private property, could help empower business owners. Some prefer to sleep outside, we should provide facilities for them.
- Need to tailor services to different people.
- Do I feel safe in my city?
- Downtown shelter - Only lip service to public input.
- Police seem to not care about illegal activity, only reactive not proactive. Need a rapid response team.
- Need to view homeless community as members of our community.
- Police chief should advocate for increased services for homeless community.
- Need more funding for homeless services - where to find?
- Need to shift our thinking from short-term to long-term and preventative ideas.
- The law and the city need to protect citizen's interests.

WDV out.

CIC #1 Update 4

2010-05-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

The day begins with conversation about policing, homelessness, and safety on the streets.

From yesterday, concerns continued:
- Social services are cut as we grow more, money going to one group, million goes to bank, rent goes up after renovations.
- Need more affordable housing, rentals.
- Some people live here and don't get into the community.
- Homelessness and mental health.
- Rising property taxes but fewer services, cutting back beacon hill, less flowers, more bark.
- Maintain heritage value, jewel of ocean and the need for sight lines and perspective to preserve what we have.
- Do we need amalgamation? Victorians are paying for services to visitors.
- Do we have enough density for LRT?
- Density = traffic, how do we deal with this?
- Johnson St. bridge public vote.
- We need composting, what are we doing with our soil?
- Green space should be a priority.
- North Shore traffic.
- Need more city celebrations that don't involve alcohol. Need better policing for major events, they are in a difficult position, have to be reactive not proactive, too much drunkenness.
- Police spend too much time in their cars.
- Police are overly gruff.

That's pages 2, 3, and 4 of concerns. CIC number one continues with briefing and questions about the OCP.

WDV out.

CIC #1 Update 3

2010-05-28T21:03:00.000-07:00

Wrapping up for 9:00, gearing up for tomorrow, when we will be live blogging from 10:00 am until 5:00 pm.

Final thoughts:
- At the highest level, it's about how decisions are made. Does it match the aesthetic value and need of the city. For example, the Save on Foods arena, ugly public art, and the Songhees. Uptown the gray box, Victoria could learn. Are the right people informing the City? Are they hiring the right people? Are those people enabled to do good work, or blocked by politics? Why are decisions taking so long, are they made hastily just to save too much talking?
- Victoria needs pedestrian corridors, open developments/landscaping.
- More off-leash dog areas.
- More availability of pet-friendly rentals, kid-friendly rentals.
- What is the plan for commercial nodes? Villages? More downtown density?
- Childcare is hard to find. Is that a planning issue? Working people need their kids near work?
- Protection of wildlife/habitat.
- Harm reduction services.
- Sewage treatment!

The End (for tonight)

WDV out.

CIC #1 Update 2

2010-05-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

So far we have 5 full flip chart pages of conversation! Things are just getting started.

Our problem statements (Page 1) are:
- How do we balance service to $elite and keep it affordable for for others (tourists too).
- What does CRD have to do with marina? A = CRD is not involved in zoning or water regulation (in harbour). Parties involved are proponent, transport Canada (federal) and the Province.
- Where will Marina revenues go? What are the legal issues, really?
- What is the city doing about affordable housing for people who LIVE here?
- How do we balance local affordable living with landlords rights to make money, also other services and inflation (personal control).
- What is the truth re: density?

More to come!

WDV out.

Live update from CIC #1

2010-05-28T20:03:00.000-07:00

10 People are attending tonight, the conversation is surging on, the ideas are great.

Our "Concerns" flip chart (page 1) says:

- How can we plan for the City of Victoria when we still haven't amalgamated?
- Lots of 55+ housing, where are the kids?
- Need safe bike lanes, separators, Shelbourne street is too narrow to be safe.
- Marina, owner has threatened a lawsuit, means money for a few, do we need another one, do we need a parking lot for wealthy people from out of province, takes away from beauty, already lots of condos (not attractive), doesn't serve Victorians, illusion of two sides to debate.
- We have to live with decisions from previous Councils (threat of lawsuit).
- Waterfront is poorly developed, given all our water, is it that bad?, need balance of bike/walk/water, Rock bay needs work like False Creek.

Ideas are flowing like water through a marina! Stay tuned for more...

WDV out.

CFAX Radio

2010-05-18T10:05:00.000-07:00

Wise Democracy had an interview with Murray Langdon on CFAX radio this morning. We covered the importance of meaningful engagement, a citizen's role in the OCP, and all of the great stuff happening in Austria!

This interview brings to mind the importance of getting ourselves and this project out into the open for the success of these two Citizen Insight Councils. The more people hear about this project, the easier it is for the results of these Councils to ripple out and really affect perceptions and ideas jostling around in this great city. So if you like this process, get the word out! Know somebody who got a letter? Tell them how important you think that is, and what a unique opportunity this is for them to have their voice heard as part of the community.

As always, you can help us get the word out by following us on Twitter or joining us on Facebook and encouraging others to do the same. Social networking need not be passive!

Sincerely,
Wise Democracy

In the News

2010-05-10T12:59:00.000-07:00

We're getting ready to do a press release, so keep an eye out for us in the papers or on your favorite local news radio show!

WDV International!

2010-05-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

Wise Democracy Victoria has been sending info about our work on the Victoria OCP to our allies in the U.S., Ireland, and Austria. All eyes are on Victoria in the coming weeks to see what becomes of this public engagement pioneering.

How can you learn more and keep up to date?

Follow us, wdvictoria, on twitter!

Join us, Wise Democracy Victoria, on Facebook!

Check our blog for news, information, links to similar projects, and notes on the process.

We are coming online...

2010-05-03T20:47:00.000-07:00

Wise Democracy is moving into the 21st century! Facebook, twitter, and now a blog! Stay tuned for some real live updates from the WDV crew!