(I am back from some time at the beach, ready to resume my reporting about the latest commons developments, of which there are many. More to come!)
Dutch legal scholar Femke Wijdekop of the Institute for Environmental Security has tackled an urgent question for anyone concerned with planetary environment. She writes:
How can we construct a right to a healthy and clean environment that is enforceable in today’s complex international legal order? What legal construct would be visionary and ambitious enough to meet the urgent need for environmental justice and protection and at the same time be enforceable in court rather than fall into the category of ‘soft law’?
Wijdekop’s piece draws upon some of the ideas in my book with Burns Weston, Green Governance in arguing for “procedural environmental rights to establish, maintain, participate in, be informed about and seek redress for ecological commons.” She has presented these ideas to international lawyers and constitutional scholars in The Hague, and is now reaching out to environmentally minded lawyers.
I am pasting excerpts of a press release below, because I am excited about what it announces and I have been involved as a consultant on the project. It is an example of the kind of strategy we recommended in the report of the Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge, entitled “All Together Now: Collaboration and Innovation for Youth Engagement” (2013):
Sacramento, Calif., August 5, 2014 – California Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torklakson today received the Final Report of the California Task Force on K-12 Civic Learning. The report is the culmination of a year-long process of assessing the state of civic learning in California schools, receiving input at regional meetings, and crafting research-based recommendations to ensure that all California K-12 students gain the knowledge, skills and values they need to succeed in college, career and civic life. Both the executive summary and the full report are available online.
Members of the California Task Force on K-12 Civic Learning, co-chaired by Justice Judith McConnell and Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools David Gordon, presented the recommendations aimed at providing all students in California with the instruction, support and experiences they need to actively participate in society and succeed in the 21st century workplace.
These recommendations include:
revision of the California History/Social Science content standards;
integration of civic learning into state assessment and accountability systems;
improved professional learning for teachers connected to Common Core State Standards;
sharing of curriculum resources and best practices;
engaging stakeholders from local government, business, the courts, nonprofits, community organizations and parents; and
promoting funding in Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAP) through Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF).
Our friends at Healthy Democracy, an NCDD organizational member, recently made an announcement that I am personally excited about, and that we wanted to let you know about too: the Citizens’ Initiative Review Process is expanding to Colorado!
As a Colorado resident myself, I couldn’t be more pleased that this innovative democratic process is coming to my backyard, especially given how popular ballot initiatives are here in CO. In their recent announcement, Healthy Democracy had this to say about the expansion:
The Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) has been giving Oregon voters information they can trust since 2010, and other states are taking notice. In fact, this fall we’re helping local organizations bring fact-based ballot measure analyses to Colorado!
Ballot measures in Colorado drive some of the state’s largest policy decisions, yet 75% of voters say they often find measures too complicated or confusing to understand. Accurate and unbiased information is not only difficult to come by, it is often obscured by misleading statements and advertisements by both sides of an issue.
2014 marks the first year the Citizens’ Initiative Review will be conducted in Colorado, and if successful, the program could expand to multiple ballot measures in future election cycles.
Colorado has had important and controversial initiatives on the ballot during almost every election in recent memory, including our now-famous Amendment 64 that legalized recreational marijuana. But many Colorado voters – including myself – can still find the language and framing of these initiatives confusing, even when they’ve heard about them before Election Day. So with two initiatives already slated to be on the 2014 ballot in Colorado and others still possible, there has never been a better time for the Citizens’ Initiative Review to take hold and help voters get clear on the issues in this important swing state.
We wish the folks stewarding the roll out of the new Colorado CIR process the best of luck, and we look forward to seeing the results this Fall!
In physics, the “observer effect” is a well known principle – the very act of measuring changes what you’re observing.
Generally, the change is negligible, but it’s important to recognize nonetheless.
To be clear, this effect should not be confused with the uncertainty principle, which limits the precision with which related pairs of physical properties can be known. (Position and momentum, for example.)
The observer effect isn’t about uncertainty. It’s about measurement actually causing change. That is to say – the only way to measure something is to change it.
Imagine, for example, a thermometer. A thermometer starts at room temperature. Stick it in a pot of boiling water, and the temperature of both objects equalizes. The thermometer heats up while the boiling water cools down.
This effect seems obvious if you think of equally sized objects – pour a gallon of room temperature water into a gallon of boiling water, and the two waters together end up with a joint temperature in between the two starting temperatures.
In the case of a thermometer, that object is so small compared to the pot of boiling water that that the change in temperature is negligible.
But there is still a change.
The temperature of the thermometer – the temperature of the changed pot of water – is different from the temperature you were trying to measure. You now know the new temperature, but you don’t know the original temperature.
The measurement changed it.
This may seem like an issue of semantics. If the pot of water is still hot enough to be boiling, who cares if it’s not quite the same temperature as it was before you measured it?
And that’s a reasonable point. I’d certainly concede that day to day living doesn’t require a level of precision which would make the change significant.
But it’s still important to understand that there is a change.
Classical physics deals with the every day world. Quantum physics deals with the true world. The complex world. The impossible to measure world.
Objects traveling close to the speed of light don’t behave like your run-of-the-mill, every day objects. That may not matter for every day living, but it still matters.
The beauty of quantum dynamic equations comes when you use them to consider an everyday object. Suddenly, all the complications drop out and you’re left when the familiar, classical equation that explains the life you observe.
But the quantum equation is still more accurate. The quantum equation is still more True.
And so it is with measurement. As long as your thermometer isn’t the same size as the object you’re measuring, the effect of observation won’t effect day to day living.
But it still matters.
The only way to measure something is to change it.
Our friends with the Institute for Civil Dialogue, an NCDD organizational member, will be hosting a series of public dialogues across Arizona on hot button issues this Fall that are aimed at fostering more civility. We are excited to see how the series goes, and we encourage you to learn more in ICD’s press release below or at www.civil-dialogue.com.
“Civility in Action” events start September 9
CAREFREE, Ariz., (July 30, 2014) – Valley citizens will have a new opportunity to discuss hot topics with cool heads this fall. The Institute for Civil Dialogue, in association with the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University, will present a five-part series of free public dialogues focused on provocative issues that emerge during election season. The five-part series, called Civility in Action, will be presented at various venues throughout the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, September-November, 2014.
“As political campaigns heat up, candidates will give us their opinions on the most important issues of our times, and media pundits will give their opinions on the candidates. Civility in Action events will give citizens a chance to voice their own opinions through our unique Civil Dialogue format,” said John Genette, president of the Institute. “The Civility in Action series is not a political rally, it’s for the whole community. It’s designed to foster civility, which is sorely lacking in today’s public conversations. All points of view will be welcome and respected.”
The events are free and open to the public. Reservations are not required. Each event will cover two topics, determined from election coverage and announced in advance. Events will be held in various venues throughout the Valley:
Sept. 9, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m., The Empty Space, Arizona State Univ., 970 E. University, Tempe
Oct. 29, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m., Willo Room, Phoenix College, 1202 W Thomas Rd., Phoenix
Nov. 4, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m., Room FSH102, Scottsdale Community College, 9000 E. Chaparral Rd., Scottsdale
Nov. 11, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m., Dayspring United Methodist Church, 1365 E Elliot Rd., Tempe
Civility in Action events will employ a unique facilitated format, Civil Dialogue®, which was created by Genette and two members of the Hugh Downs School faculty, Jennifer Linde and Clark Olson. The trio serve as founding directors of the new Institute. “In a Civil Dialogue, we draw a distinction between ‘disagreement,’ which is healthy for democracy, and ‘demonizing,’ which alienates us from one another,” said Linde. “Civil Dialogue is the alternative to the traditional win-lose debate format,” adds Olson. “There is no attempt to change minds or reach consensus, the purpose is to help people of different political stripes, including those who may be neutral or undecided, to interact on hot topics with cool heads. It’s an eye-opening experience.”
For directions to Civility in Action events and more information about Civil Dialogue, visit the Institute’s website at www.civil-dialogue.com.
(New York City): I am on a Washington-New York-Boston trip in which many of my meetings coincidentally touch on the same topic: what should we do about money in politics? Per my usual rant, the question is not what should be done. That is relatively easy. The question is: What should you and I do, granting that courts and legislatures are not going to do what should be done?
This is a question not only for you and for me, but also for the national organizations that work on this topic, such as my beloved first employer, Common Cause (now under the dynamic and visionary leadership of Miles Rapoport). Such organizations can communicate with the public and can enroll members, but ultimately they must ask citizens to do stuff. What should they ask?
They can’t just ask people to change their minds. Public opinion is at the heart of some problems. For example, climate change is worse because many voters do not believe it is happening, do not consider it a serious threat, or doubt that we can realistically do anything about it. Motivation is also a factor, because individuals, communities, and nations benefit by generating the problem (in this case, carbon emissions), and anyone who takes individual or collective action to limit pollution bears the price of that action. Climate change is thus the Mother of All Collective Action Problems, made worse by false opinions (which, in turn, result from targeted investments in misinformation). It is worth changing people’s minds to believe the facts and to vote and act differently.
Campaign finance is a different kind of problem. The public already thinks it’s terrible. Most people do not contribute to the problem, since only 0.18% of the population gives $200 or more. But it is against the interest of the majority of elected officials to do anything about money in politics, since they were elected under the current system. Democratic politicians tend to be more hypocritical than Republicans on this topic; neither party does anything about it, but some Republicans would defend the status quo on philosophical grounds.
Hobson, who offered one particular horse or none at all, and called that a choice.
Voters are typically offered a Hobson’s Choice: Vote for Candidate A–who shares your views on important issues like climate change but won’t do anything about campaign finance–or vote for Candidate B, who opposes your views of those other essential issues and won’t do anything about campaign finance.
I think that to some extent, politicians also face a Hobson’s Choice because of the recalcitrance of all the other politicians, a classic collective action problem. They can A) burn their capital trying to pass campaign finance reform, or B) actually pass health insurance reform, Wall Street reform, and environmental laws. Basically, my reading of President Obama is that he chose option B.
We would like everyone (voters and politicians) to change their priorities and put campaign finance reform higher–but in order to do what?
Well, there are things you can do. Join Common Cause, because it’s a robust membership organization that fights indefatigably for reform. Give money to Mayday PAC, which will intervene in “five districts during this election cycle, in a way that makes it clear that the most important issue was the role that money plays in politics.” Donate to Fund for the Republic, too. Tell your elected officials, even if they stand with you on other issues, that they risk losing your support unless they sign onto something like H.R. 20, the Government by the People Act.
I think these are worthy steps, but I am not overly optimistic they will work even if quite a few people do them. That is why I am obsessed with the problem of leverage, or how to turn ethical civic action into large-scale change in a given system of incentives and constraints, against dedicated opponents. After all, Margaret Mead was wrong: we should doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. They usually fail–or grow into a large group, maybe achieve something, and cease to be thoughtful and committed along the way. We must turn from a bunch of citizens who are angry about the status quo (and who perhaps take some modest actions) into an effective mass movement. That is a problem of organization and structure that I do not think we have cracked.
Some truly brutal things have occurred in the history of mankind, and to try to rank-order them by terribleness seems to demean them all. And misses the point. We should all do better. Be better.
In 1945, Kurt Vonnegut, then a prisoner of war, witnessed the firebombing of Dresden firsthand. He considered it the worst atrocity ever committed. He saw the corpses. He saw the destruction. He saw the agony, the brutality. He saw the senselessness of it all.
He couldn’t conceive of anything more terrible.
So he considered Dresden the worst atrocity of all.
And so it goes for all of us. Of all the terrible, brutal, dark, and destructive things mankind has done, some strike us individually more poignantly than others. Perhaps we were there or knew somebody there. Perhaps we relate to the victims. Or to the perpetrators. Perhaps some other reason moves us to feel a connection to that tragedy over others.
And that becomes, for us, the worst tragedy of all.
69 years ago, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later we dropped another on Nagasaki.
It’s hard to say exactly how many people were killed. Some were vaporized on impact, their shadows permanently branded on walls like a scene from some B-rate horror movie. Others died in the days that followed, wounded too severely to ever recover. And, of course, with the unleashed radiation of a nuclear explosion, many died in the months, years and decades since.
The trees in Hiroshima are still deformed.
I have seen that horror. As an American and as a physicist, that is my tragedy.
Many still make good-sense arguments about how resorting to nuclear weapons was the wise course of action. It ended the war, saving American lives. Arguably it saved Japanese lives as well – they are a proud people, they would never surrender in a land war, I’ve been told.
And what do I know? I am not a military strategist. I am not prepared to argue mathematical calculations of lives lost or lives saved. I don’t know how to do that.
All I know is – the horror.
The horror which has been part of human history since its dawn. The horror which we try to ignore. Which we try to make someone else’s problem, rationalizing it away until our own actions appear blameless. The horror we put in boxes and compare – as if a million and one lives lost is worse than a million lives lost.
As if all human darkness can be boiled down to a mathematical conclusion and a clean ranking of atrocities.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima is probably not the worst thing that’s ever happened. It’s probably not even the worst thing that happened during the War.
And yet it haunts me.
A group of scientists, not entirely unlike myself, thrilled by discovery and moved by patriotism, pursued their work. And unleashed hell.
When we look back at humanity’s long, dark road of abuses, we question how these horrors happened. What evil corrupted the perpetrators? What apathy or self-interest dissuaded the bystanders? How did the mass of Good men allow such a horror to unfold?
We look back with a critical eye and a shake our heads in superiority.
(Washington, DC) If you work at a federally funded institution like mine and you want to collect data from human beings or animals, you need permission from an Institutional Review Board. Its purview is ethics, and specifically the ethical treatment of the individuals from whom data is collected. Although the idea of a IRB intimidates some new researchers, you can learn to navigate the process routinely. I believe I am the PI on more than a dozen IRB-approved projects right now.
I have often heard the argument that the review should be broader; it should consider impacts on whole communities and issues like cultural sensitivity and whether results are shared in useful forms. Likewise, the reviewers should be more diverse, including laypeople from the community as well as experts.
I now read that there are in fact several community review boards in operation that consider such issues, apart from or in addition to research ethics.* They gain their approval power from agreements with local institutions that agree to participate. For instance, in Hawaii, five nonprofits and three universities or university-based centers have agreed to put all research proposals involving the Native population through a community committee’s screening.
I must admit that I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, research is usually supported by the government (directly or otherwise) and has social impact, whether positive or negative. Thus researchers should be accountable to the public for their questions, methods, and presentations. Community members have a right to express their views and valuable perspectives to offer.
On the other hand, research is already quite bureaucratic, and every extra layer of review means another set of forms and meetings. Also, there are potential costs to academic freedom. We might start with an assumption that citizens may talk to and observe other citizens and say what they want as a result. That is a First Amendment right, meant partly to protect individuals so that they can say things that are critical and uncomfortable. Although we may want to oversee a scholar when government money is supporting organized research, liberty remains a consideration. For instance, if a community panel blocked a study because it was critical of the community’s norms, that would be a violation of free speech. Finally, I would wonder whether any committee could truly represent a community.
Despite the caveats in the last paragraph, this is an innovation to watch and to consider.
*Shore N, Park A, Castro P, Wat E, Sablan-Santos L, Isaacs ML, Freeman E, Cooks JM, Drew E, Seifer SD. Redefining Research Ethics Review: Case Studies of Five Community-Led Models. Seattle, WA: Community-Campus Partnerships for Health, 2014.
Rio Grande do Sul Participatory Budgeting Voting System (2014)
Within the open government debate, there is growing interest in the role of technology in citizen engagement. However, as interest in the subject grows, so does the superficiality of the conversations that follow. While the number of citizen engagement and technology events is increasing, the opportunities for in-depth conversations on the subject do not seem to be increasing at the same rate.
This is why, a few weeks ago, I was pleased to visit the University of Westminster for a kick-off talk on “Technology and Participation: Friend or Foe?”, organized by Involve and the Centre for the Study of Democracy (Westminster). It was a pleasure to start a conversation with a group that was willing to engage in a longer and more detailed conversation on the subject.
My talk covered a number of issues that have been keeping me busy recently. On the preliminary quantitative work that I presented, credit should also go to the awesome team that I am working with, which includes Fredrik Sjoberg (NYU), Jonathan Mellon (Oxford) and Paolo Spada (UBC / Harvard). For those who would like to see some of the graphs better, I have also added here [PDF] the slides of my presentation.
I have skipped the video to the beginning of my talk, but the discussion that followed is what made the event interesting. In my opinion, the contributions of Maria Nyberg (Head of Open Policy Making at the Cabinet Office) Catherine Howe (Public-i), as well as those of the participants, were a breath of fresh air in the current citizen engagement conversation. So please bear with me and watch until the end.
I would like to thank Simon Burral (Involve) and Graham Smith (Westminster) for their invitation. Simon leads the great work being done at Involve, one of the best organizations working on citizen engagement nowadays. And to keep it short, Graham is the leading thinker when the issue is democratic innovations.
Below is also an excellent summary by Sonia Bussu (Involve), capturing some of the main points of my talk and the discussion that ensued (originally posted here).
***
“On technology and democracy
The title of yesterday’s event, organised by Involve and Westminster University’s Centre for the Study of Democracy, posed a big question, which inevitably led to several other big questions, as the discussion among a lively audience of practitioners, academics and policymakers unfolded (offline and online).
Tiago Peixoto, from the World Bank, kicked off the debate and immediately put the enthusiasm for new technologies into perspective. Back in 1795, the very first model of the telegraph, the Napoleonic semaphore, raised hopes for – and fears of – greater citizen engagement in government. Similarly the invention of the TV sparked debates on whether technology would strengthen or weaken democracy, increasing citizen awareness or creating more opportunities for market and government manipulation of public opinion.
Throughout history, technological developments have marked societal changes, but has technological innovation translated into better democracy? What makes us excited today about technology and participation is the idea that by lowering the transaction costs we can increase people’s incentives to participate. Tiago argued that this costs-benefits rationale doesn’t explain why people continue to vote, since the odds of their vote making a difference are infinitesimal (to be fair voter turnouts are decreasing across most advanced democracies – although this is more a consequence of people’s increasing cynicism towards political elites rather than their understanding of mathematical probabilities).*
So do new technologies mobilise more people or simply normalise the participation of those that already participate? The findings on the matter are still conflicting. Tiago showed us some data on online voting in Rio Grande do Sul participatory budgeting process in Brazil, whereby e-voting would seem to bring in new voters (supporting the mobilisation hypothesis) but from the same social strata (e.g. higher income and education – as per the normalisation hypothesis).
In short, we’re still pretty much confused about the impact of technology on democracy and participation. Perhaps, as suggested by Tiago and Catherine Howe from Public-i, the problem is that we’re focusing too much on technology, tempted by the illusion it offers to simplify and make democracy easy. But the real issue lies elsewhere, in understanding people and policymakers’ incentives and the articulation (or lack thereof) between technologies and democratic institutions. As emphasised by Catherine, technology without democratic evolution is like “lipstick on a pig”.
The gap between institutions and technology is still a big obstacle. Catherine reminded us how participation often continues to translate into one-way communication in government’s engagement strategies, which constrains the potential of new technologies in facilitating greater interaction between citizens and institutions and coproduction of policies as a response to increasing complexity. As academics and practitioners pitch the benefits of meaningful participation to policy makers, Tiago asked whether a focus on instrumental incentives might help us move forward. Rather than always pointing to the normative argument of deepening democracy, we could start using data from cases of participatory budgeting to show how greater participation reduces tax evasion and corruption as well as infant mortality.
He also made a methodological point: we might need to start using more effectively the vast array of data on existing engagement platforms to understand incentives to participation and people’s motivation. We might get some surprises, as findings demystify old myths. Data from Fix My Street would seem to prove that government response to issues raised doesn’t increase the likelihood of future participation by as much as we would assume (28%).** But this is probably a more complicated story, and as pointed out by some people in the audience the nature and salience of both the issue and the response will make a crucial difference.
Catherine highlighted one key problem: when we talk about technology, we continue to get stuck on the application layer, but we really need to be looking at the architecture layer. A democratic push for government legislation over the architecture layer is crucial for preserving the Internet as a neutral space where deeper democracy can develop. Data is a big part of the architecture and there is little democratic control over it. An understanding of a virtual identity model that can help us protect and control our data is key for a genuinely democratic Internet.
Maria Nyberg, from the Cabinet Office, was very clear that technology is neither friend nor foe: like everything, it really depends on how we use it. Technology is all around us and can’t be peripheral to policy making. It offers great opportunities to civil servants as they can tap into data and resources they didn’t have access to before. There is a recognition from government that it doesn’t have the monopoly on solutions and doesn’t always know best. The call is for more open policy making, engaging in a more creative and collaborative manner. Technology can allow for better and faster engagement with people, but there is no silver bullet.
Some people in the audience felt that the drive for online democracy should be citizen-led, as the internet could become the equivalent of a “bloodless guillotine” for politicians. But without net neutrality and citizen control over our own data there might be little space for genuine participation.
*This point was edited on 12/07/2014 following a conversation with Tiago.
** This point was edited on 12/07/2014 following a conversation with Tiago.”
—————————
I am also thankful to the UK Political Studies Association (PSA), Involve and the University of Westminster for co-sponsoring my travel to the UK. I will write more later on about the Scaling and Innovation Conference organized by the PSA, where I was honored to be one of the keynote speakers along with MP Chi Onwurah (Shadow Cabinet Office Minister) and Professor Stephen Coleman (Leeds).
There are some great trainings being offered this Fall by the League of Extraordinary Trainers, an NCDD org member and sponsor of the 2014 NCDD conference. We want to make sure NCDDers know not only that these great IAP2 certificate trainings are happening, but there is a discount on registration for NCDD members! Make sure to take a look at LET’s announcement about the trainings below or to find their full training schedule here.
IAP2’s Certificate Program has been revitalized to incorporate more international perspectives and to address and incorporate many thoughts and ideas provided as feedback from more than 6,000 participants who have taken the program since 2000. The updated curriculum, newly named Foundations in Public Participation, launched July 1, 2014. The Planning for Effective Public Participation course has been extended to three days, incorporating communications planning into the Planning course. An increased focus on deliberative dialogue, plus the addition of web-based and social media engagement tools were added.
Public anger is an increasing fact of society. Growing global citizen outrage causes government gridlock, lawsuits, stopped projects, election losses, loss of time, money, and destroyed credibility. Emotion, Outrage and Public Participation is a two-day workshop that builds on IAP2’s global best practices in public involvement and the work of Dr. Peter Sandman, a foremost researcher and expert in public outrage and risk communication. This course will help you move people from rage to reason and engage stakeholders in building consensus for better decisions.
If you work for or are involved in public participation and community engagement outreach projects in: government – municipalities, state and federal agencies; corporations; utilities; environmental agencies; community organizations; universities; advocacy and lobbying these courses can broaden your toolkit and bring greater creativity to your approach. The hands-on design of these courses and the expertise of the IAP2 Licensed Trainers ensure that you’ll be receiving the best public participation and community engagement training available globally.
Emotion, Outrage and Public Participation – Moving from Rage to Reason (2-Days)
Las Vegas, Nevada – October 6-7
Austin, Texas – October 16-17
Chicago, Illinois – December 4-5
LET offers Early Bird Registration Discounts. Dues-paying NCDD members receive a discounted rate on all trainings. Email us directly to receive a Promo Code for the NCDD member discount:info@extraordinarytrainers.com.
CAREFREE, Ariz., (July 30, 2014) – Valley citizens will have a new opportunity to discuss hot topics with cool heads this fall. The Institute for Civil Dialogue, in association with the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University, will present a five-part series of free public dialogues focused on provocative issues that emerge during election season. The five-part series, called Civility in Action, will be presented at various venues throughout the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, September-November, 2014.
