Guide to involving citizens in constitutional reform
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Unlock Democracy produce a Guide to Involving Citizens in Constitutional Reform
The report looks at the ways in which citizens can be involved in constitutional reform, particularly through the use of citizens’ assemblies. It addresses the question of why citizens should be involved in deliberating constitutional reform and looks at exactly how the citizen’s assembly process works. The report draws on evidence of citizens assemblies from around the world, paying particular attention to the example of the British Columbia Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform. It points out that citizens’ assemblies can be used to restore public trust in politics, but this is only the case where the assemblies are autonomous and have real power to effect change, rather than being simply consultative.
Reasons to involve the public
Charter 88 has always argued that the process of constitutional change is as important as the outcome and that citizens need to feel that they own their constitution. The report points out that
- Members of the public have valuable ‘real-life’ experience of how policies work in practice and this could be extremely useful in ensuring that public policy does not become rarefied and cut off from the real world.
- Participants themselves can gain enormously by learning about the issues and becoming more proactive.
- Involving the public in such a process helps challenge the idea that to participate fully in a democracy just voting every 4 or 5 years is enough.
- Having an assembly would meet citizens’ expectations that their views should be considered and rebuild trust in a system where citizens often feel that politicians only try to engage with them during election campaigns.
- The public are keen to be involved more and want ordinary people to have a greater say in important decisions. A recent opinion poll found that 70% of respondents thought a jury of the general public should make decisions on issues such as how to reform the House of Lords and how to reform party funding.
Key issues to consider before involving the public
The report argues that involving the public in deliberating and decision making can be a positive and productive thing to do, but it points out that it is also a costly and time consuming business. It has to be a well thought out process. The questions that need to be asked are:
- What is the public going to get out of the process? They will have to give up time and effort; they need to feel that what they are doing is useful.
- Who do you want to involve? You may want to involve representative groups, just particular groups in society or individual citizens.
- What are you going to do with the response? Unless you are genuinely interested in and open to the responses you get from the public a token consultation will only be damaging in the long run. If you already have detailed policy on the subject that you are committed to enacting don’t involve the public.
How a Citizens Assembly works
There are usually 4 phases to a citizens’ assembly:
- The selection phase This needs to consider the number of assembly members, the eligibility of different citizens, (for example should people who work for the government or for political parties be excluded?), the method used for the selection process (it needs to be clear that it is not rigged), and how the selection process will ensure the representation of different geographical regions and different groups in society.
- The learning phase It is important to recognise that participants may have different levels of formal education and it needs to be assumed that most participants will have no knowledge of the issue being explored. There needs to be a ‘facilitated discussion’ where participants hear evidence form experts, but crucially, they also have the opportunity to develop there own views and deliberate ideas with each other.
- The public hearings or consultation phase It is very important that people not chosen to be part of the assembly can participate as well. There needs to be a serious of meetings held around the country, at different times, so that as many people who wish to do so can attend. Members of the public and interest groups also need the opportunity to submit written evidence to the Assembly in the same way as they do for select committee inquiries.
- The deliberation phase Here the assembly members come to a conclusion by considering what they have learnt both through the formal sessions and the public hearings.
What next?
The report explains that what happens to the result of the citizens’ assembly is crucial because the assembly will only fuel disillusionment if participants feel that their findings are ignored. There are different approaches that can be taken. For example, the findings could be reported to Parliament and then debated there, or they could be put straight to the people in a referendum. The report argues strongly in favour of going straight to a popular referendum and points out that this was one of the strengths of the British Columbia model.
