Category Archives: deliberation

Crowdsourcing Off-Road Traffic Legislation in Finland

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A paper by Tanja Aitamurto (Tampere) and Hélène Landemore (Stanford) on an interesting crowdsourcing exercise in Finland.

Abstract

This paper reports on a pioneering case study of a legislative process open to the direct online participation of the public. The empirical context of the study is a crowdsourced off-road traffic law in Finland. On the basis of our analysis of the user content generated to date and a series of interviews with key participants, we argue that the process qualifies as a promising case of deliberation on a mass-scale. This case study will make an important contribution to the understanding of online methods for participatory and deliberative democracy. The preliminary findings indicate that there is deliberation in the crowdsourcing process, which occurs organically (to a certain degree) among the participants, despite the lack of incentives for it. Second, the findings strongly indicate that there is a strong educative element in crowdsourced lawmaking process, as the participants share information and learn from each other. The peer-learning aspect could be made even stronger through the addition of design elements in the process and on the crowdsourcing software.

The first two things that come to mind when reading this, are:

  1. If there is a “strong educative element” in the crowdsourcing process, we have an argument for large-scale citizen participation. The more citizens take part in a process, the more citizens benefit from the educative element.
  2. If we consider point 1 to be true, there is still a major technical challenge in terms of having appropriate platforms to enable large-scale deliberative processes. For instance, I have some reservations about crowdsourcing efforts that use ideation systems like Ideascale (as is the case for this experience). In my opinion such systems are prone to information cascades and a series of other biases that compromise an exercise in terms of a) deliberative quality and b) final outcomes (i.e. quality of ideas).

There’s still lots to learn on that front, and there is a dire need for more research of this type. Kudos should also go to the proponents of the initiative, who involved the authors in the project from the start.

Read the full paper here [PDF].


sessions at the American Political Science Association

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I am helping to organize three sessions at this year’s APSA Conference that are relevant to civic renewal and civic education. The theme of the whole conference is “Power and Persuasion,” and the APSA president is the excellent Jane Mansbridge. Improving the relationship between persuasion and power is an essential goal of civic renewal. In that context …

1. Theme Panel: “Power and Persuasion from Below: Civic Renewal, Youth Engagement, and the Case for Civic Studies”
Aug 30, 2013, 4:15 PM-6:00 PM
Chair: Peter Levine, Tufts University. Participants: Paul Dragos Aligica, George Mason University; Carmen Sirianni, Brandeis University; Karol E. Soltan, University of Maryland; Filippo A. Sabetti McGill University; and Meira Levinson, Harvard University

“Civic renewal” refers to an international set of movements and practices that enhance citizens’ agency and may therefore strengthen persuasion over raw power. In the US, it includes public deliberation, broad-based community organizing, and collaborative governance, among other efforts. Its values have also been reflected in aspects of the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring, to name just two recent global movements. Youth are at the forefront of some of these efforts and must always be incorporated in them. “Civic Studies” is an emerging scholarly field inspired by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom and the Bloomington School, by social science as phronesis, by the new constitutionalism, by theories of public work and democratic professionalism, by research on deliberative democracy, and by related academic movements that take civic agency seriously. Civic education should draw on Civic Studies and support civic renewal.

2. APSA Committee on Civic Education and Engagement Roundtable: The Measurement and Assessment of Civic Learning in K -12 and College Education
Saturday, Aug 31, 2013, 8:00 AM-9:45 AM
13:00-14:30 on 29, 30 and 31 August 2013, Chicago
Chaired by Peter Levine. Participants: Elizabeth Bennion, Indiana University, South Bend; David Campbell, Notre Dame; Meira Levinson, Harvard University.

We will be thinking about what should be measured, how to measure it, and new opportunities afforded by tools like games and badges. One topic will be the ideas in the APSA’s edited volume, Teaching Civic Engagement: From Student to Active Citizen. But we will broaden the discussion beyond the question of how to measure students’ learning in college-level political science classes.

3. APSA Working Group on Young People’s Politics
August 29, 30 and 31, 2013, 1:00-2:30 PM
Convenors: Peter Levine, Tufts University; James Sloam, Royal Holloway, University of London

The political participation of young people in industrialized democracies has changed significantly over the past few decades. Although youth turnout in elections may be declining (or, as in the United States, has flatlined at a relatively low level), there is overwhelming evidence to show that young people are not apathetic. Indeed, it is young people who are diversifying political engagement: from consumer politics, to community campaigns, to international action groups; from the ballot box, to the street, to the Internet. Since the onset of the global financial crisis, we have witnessed a proliferation of youth protest: against authoritarianism (the Arab Spring), corporate greed and economic inequality (Occupy), youth unemployment (the ‘outraged young’ in Spain), and political corruption (the rise of populist parties like the Five-Star Movement in Italy). The international dimension of young people’s politics has also become increasingly apparent through the diffusion ideas and mobilisation from Cairo, to Madrid, to New York, to Istanbul to Rio. The APSA working group on young people’s politics will explore research on the nature of youth participation from a comparative perspective. To contextualise youth participation, it will also examine how public policy defines young people’s lives in our democracies e.g. through participation (or non-participation) in the labour market or opportunities (or lack of opportunities) for social mobility. Finally, the working group will focus on efforts to strengthen the civic and political engagement of young people (e.g. through civic education or political science education).

The working group sessions will provide an interactive forum for participants to discuss their own research with colleagues working in the same area, to reflect on panels visited by participants at the Annual Meeting (in the first meeting, we will agree on panels to recommend to participants), and discuss the potential for future research collaboration (e.g. conferences, funding, edited volumes) and the establishment of an APSA organised section on young people’s politics.

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the Oregon Citizens Initiative Review

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(This is the sixth in a series of blog posts by CIRCLE, which evaluated several initiatives funded by the Democracy Fund to inform and engage voters during the 2012 election. These posts discuss issues of general interest that emerged from specific evaluations. It is also on the Democracy Fund’s website.)

CIRCLE evaluated seven initiatives funded by the Democracy Fund during the 2012 election. These interventions were not comparable; they had diverse purposes and operated in various contexts and scales. We certainly do not have a favorite among them. But we do recommend that policymakers pay attention to one of the projects because it can be adopted by law—with positive effects.

In 2011, the Oregon legislature instituted a process called the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR). This reform unifies two apparently contrasting forms of democracy, the popular initiative and the deliberative forum.

Presentation of Key findings from Measure 85, 2012 CIR, Healthy Democracy Fund

Presentation of Key findings from Measure 85, 2012 CIR, Healthy Democracy Fund

With a referendum, the public can circumvent entrenched interests and hold politicians accountable. A referendum honors the democratic principle of one person/one vote.

Oregon was one of the first states to institute referenda, initiatives, and recall elections. Perhaps the most famous advocate of these populist reforms was William Simon U’Ren, known nationally as “Referendum U’Ren,” who formed the Oregon Direct Legislation League in 1897. As a result of early initiatives, Oregon was the first state to elect its US Senators directly (1908), the first to hold a presidential primary election (1910), and one of the first to allow women to vote (1912).

These were achievements. But a referendum does not require people to learn, think, or discuss. As the number of referenda rises, the odds fall that voters will be thoughtful and well-informed about each ballot measure. Deliberation is a form of democracy that encourages people to be well-informed and thoughtful. Juries and New England town meetings are deliberative bodies that have deep roots in the United States, but governments can also create innovative deliberative forums today. For instance, several cities have asked AmericaSPEAKS to convene large numbers of representative citizens to discuss an issue—such as the city plan of New Orleans or the budget of Washington, DC—and give official input on the final decisions.

Referenda can easily reach large scale and offer every citizen an equal vote, but they may not reflect thoughtful opinion and may in fact present information in a format that is too complex or filled with jargon to be easily understood even by well-informed voters. They can even be manipulated by the authors of ballot measures or by groups that spend money on campaigns. Deliberation addresses those two problems, but deliberations tend to be small and would cost a great deal (in both money and participants’ time) to make widespread.

The Citizens Initiative Review process combines the best of both ideas. The text of an initiative is given to a randomly selected, representative body of 24 citizens who study it, hear testimony on both sides of the issue, and collaboratively write an explanatory statement. They spend five days on this work. Their explanation does not endorse or reject the initiative but gives deliberated and informed arguments for and against it. A copy is mailed to all households in Oregon as part of the state’s Voters Pamphlet.

CIR: How it Works, Healthy Democracy Fund

CIR: How it Works, Healthy Democracy Fund

Penn State Professor John Gastil found that nearly half of Oregon voters were aware of the CIR’s explanations in fall 2012. He also conducted a randomized experiment, surveying a sample of Oregonians who were given the explanations and a control group who were not. His experiment showed that the text produced by the CIR influenced people’s views of the ballot measure and increased their understanding of it. If many people knew about the explanation, and the explanation changed people’s opinions in an experiment, then the CIR probably changed many people’s opinions across the state.

CIRCLE conducted an analysis of media coverage of the CIR process in December of 2012.  With the bulk of coverage appearing in Oregon-based media outlets, it generally focused on the CIR process—describing it and communicating its validity and trustworthiness. Healthy Democracy, the organization that managed the CIR, created strong and consistent messages that guided this public conversation, which at times expanded into advocacy for the CIR or appeals to strengthen democracy through such processes. The media also used the CIR as a way to talk about deliberative dialogue in a concrete form. For the non-Oregon media especially, it offered a way to think about the possibilities for such processes in other locales. Advocating  deliberative processes and igniting the public imagination about new forms of engagement were clearly strong narrative threads in the public discourse caused by CIR media coverage.

CIRCLE is also in the final stages of interviewing political leaders from other states who have observed the CIR in Oregon or are engaged in other educational activities about the CIR. We are asking them what would influence their decision to adopt the reform. We will report our results here.

The previous entries in the series can be accessed below:

1 – Educating Voters in a Time of Political Polarization

2 – Supporting a Beleaguered New Industry

3 – How to Reach a Large Scale with High-Quality Messages

4 – Tell it Straight?  The Advantages and Dangers of Parody

5 – Educating the Public When People Don’t Trust Each Other

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Citizen Engagement Improves Access to Public Goods in Mexico

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A paper recently published in World Development brings new and fascinating evidence from Mexico of the impact of participatory governance mechanisms on access to services.

Below are a few excerpts from the paper by Diaz-Cayeros, Malagoni, and Ruiz-Euler “Traditional Governance, Citizen Engagement, and Local Public Goods: Evidence from Mexico” (emphasis are mine):

The goal of this paper is to assess the effects of traditional governance on local public good provision. We ask whether poor indigenous communities are better off by choosing to govern themselves through “traditional” customary law and participatory democracy, versus delegating decisions concerning the provision of public goods to “modern” forms of representative government, structured through political parties. This is a crucial question for developing countries seeking to enhance accountability, and a central problem in the theory of participatory democracy.

Our research design takes advantage of an important institutional innovation in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, that in 1995 allowed indigenous communities to choose their forms of governance. The reform gave full legal standing to a form of traditional indigenous governance called usos y costumbres (usos hereafter), which entails electing individuals to leadership positions through customary law in non-partisan elections, making decisions through participatory democracy, and monitoring compliance through a parallel (and often informal) system of law enforcement and community justice. If they did not choose usos, municipalities could opt instead for party governance, which entails the selection of municipal authorities through electoral competition among political parties and the adjudication of conflicts only through the formal institutional channels, namely the state and federal judiciary.

(…)

Our results show that electricity provision increased faster in those municipalities governed by usos. They also suggest that traditional governance may improve the provision of education and sewerage. With respect to citizen engagement and elite capture, contrary to existing scholarly work, we find no evidence of entrenchment of local bosses (caciques) associated with the former ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) in places ruled by usos. Our findings suggest that traditional participatory forms of governance do not handicap democratic development. Furthermore, municipalities governed by usos are more likely to hold open council meetings allowing citizens to participate in decisionmaking processes. We attribute better public goods coverage to differences in local governance and collective decisionmaking practices. We suggest three specific channels through which traditional governance affects local public good provision: the social embeddedness of municipal presidents, broader civic engagement in collective-decision making, and credible social sanctions. We argue that traditional governance practices (which include in our setting decision-making through direct participatory practices, the obligation to provide services for the community, and the establishment of a parallel system of justice), allow poor communities to better hold their political leaders accountable, prevent elite capture, and monitor and sanction non-cooperative behavior.

(…)

Systems of governance based on electoral competition among political parties differ essentially from usos because decisions are taken by politicians without an ongoing process of consultation with the citizenry. The monitoring and sanctioning dynamics that come into play when citizens gather in public assemblies are usually absent in party-run municipalities, and thus the allocation of resources for public goods seems sub-optimal.

(…)

Differences between the two types of governance that we presented in the paper point to a broader discussion of the organization of democracy. The delegated format of decision-making in electoral democracies dominated by political parties seems to bear a higher risk of agency loss than deliberative decision-making of what is often referred to as participatory democracy. (…) there are lessons to be extracted from the fact that, with regard to the provision of some basic services, a non-partisan political arrangement presented some advantages over the widespread electoral and party-based democratic organization. Participation and collective monitoring of authority are hugely important to maximize collective well-being.

Read the full paper here [PDF].