French Socialist Presidential Candidate Also Under Fire From “Direct Democrat” Site for Her Views on Citizen Juries

Direct Democracy network Discussion About Whether “Sego’s” Use of CJs Would Really Empower Public

As recently reported in JPD, the French Socialist Party’s candidate for President of France, Segolene Royal, is a strong advocate for moving France forward in “participatory democracy” by using a wide variety of well tested methods.  One of these is the “Citizens Jury”—invented by American Ned Crosby in the early 1970s—and now widely and successfully experimented with around the world.

According to Royal, she envisions employing Citizens Juries in a novel way, one not yet part of any representative democracy in the world.  She would choose citizens randomly to come together and become a sort of public watchdog over government, in terms of their policies, acts of possible conflict of interest or corruption and the like. 

Of course, this has not become a major issue in a campaign that will not end until April 2007 and Royal skimps on the details.  Still, as of early January 2007, Royal is about 50-50 against her main right wing rival for the presidency www.msnbc.com (See Newsweek International Edition). So, how she handles this issue, could make a difference.

 Citizens Juries vs. Participatory Budgeting?

Her platform of “more participatory democracy in France” has prompted a debate within The French Socialist Party, as  reported earlier.  However, it has also sparked thought and discussion within a global direct democracy network called The World Direct Democracy Movement (WDDM) at www.@world-wide-democracy.net through comments made from another network “Reseau Democratizer Radicalement la Democratie” www.budget-participatif.org.  This latter group is a network of concerned citizens, NGOs, elected representatives, and academics who promote new methods of empowering the public.  One of their favored methods, with a well proved track record, is that of Participatory Budgeting as developed in Porto Alegre, Brazil. 

According to a posting in the worldwide direct democracy network, Segolene Royal’s proposal would not empower the public beforehand—as is obviously the case with the Porto Alegre method.  Moreover, it does not allow all citizens to come and discuss important money and capital improvement items in advance. Worst of all of its sins, according to the writer, it has no power whatsoever of mobilizing the citizenry, something for which the Porto Alegre process is well suited to do.  From such a viewpoint, Royal’s use of CJs is almost a hoax since it is comprised of small groups of randomly selected citizens who can’t make any decisions at all and the public, itself, is disengaged.

The French Democratic Critique

Les « jurys citoyens » sont constitués par tirage au sort et donc *ne sont en aucune manière* des dispositifs faisant appel à la *mobilisation de* *_tous_* les citoyens. Ils n’ont donc aucune légitimité démocratique et donc, contrairement à ce qu’on dit de nombreux élus en réponse à Ségolène Royal, ne remettent fondamentalement pas en cause la conception élitiste de la démocratie représentative. Ils répondent apparemment à une volonté supposée de contrôle des élus par les citoyens. Oui, les citoyens aspirent à contrôler les élus plus souvent qu’aux élections ;mais ils entendent les contrôler *directement *et surtout participer à la définition des priorités, définir les priorités et ensuite contrôler que les élus mettent en œuvre les priorités. C’est cela la *démocratie participative*. Les « jurys citoyens » proposés sont à l’opposé de cette conception ; Ils sont au mieux une fausse réponse à une réelle aspiration et au pire un écran vers une véritable démocratie participative.

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