Journal of Public Deliberation

B.C’s Citizens Assembly Becoming Pandemic: Spreads to California and The Netherlands

There can be little doubt that the randomly selected Citizens Assembly of British Columbia was a big success, since nearly 58% of the province’s voters cast a ballot in favor of their suggested reforms of BC’s electoral system in May of 2005. Since that time, the BC Citizen Assembly experiment has been discussed and begun to spin off suggestions for replications in various parts of the world.

To Ontario and California

Not surprisingly, one of those places is also elsewhere in Canada, specifically, the province of Ontario. In November of 2005, the Liberal Party of Ontario promised a similar Citizens Assembly to also look at the issue of electoral reform. Thus, a committee was formed in Parliament after the election to do just that and, according to The Toronto Star, “they produced a useful report with several recommendations on how to avoid the pitfalls that were experienced in British Columbia.” (Toronto Star, “Liberals should heed all sides on electoral reform,” November 28, 2005).

Among the new suggestions was that Elections Ontario–“the office that runs provincial elections–be responsible for a major public education campaign in conjunction with the referendum,” which was not done in the British Columbia experiment.

On January 27, 2006, a Democratic legislator (Joe Canciamilla) and a Republican counterpart (Keith Richman) together submitted a bill in the California Assembly that would amend the California constitution to set up a California Citizens Assembly that could change the election law and/or the structure of the state legislature itself, i.e., term limits, make it unicameral, reform campaign financing.

Their constitutional amendment would also select citizens randomly and have one man and one woman from each district in the state. Each participant would be paid $1,000 plus travel expenses and would meet twice a week to come up with suggested reforms. According to The San Francisco Chronicle (“Lawmakers promote citizens assembly for California,” January 27, 2006), “Canciamilla and Richman said citizens will embrace the idea because they have lost faith in their government.”

Gordon Gibson, the architect of the British Columbia plan, was quoted as saying that the new California idea would be an excellent application of the process. “If California chooses to adopt this process, this process works....It earned the deep respect and support of the people and media of British Columbia.” (San Francisco Chronicle, January 27, 2006)

Their idea was also endorsed by the Contra Costa Times in an editorial “A Citizens Assembly.” It concluded with this opinion: “The plan envisions ordinary citizens serving their state in an important role for a short time and for minimal compensation. It is an interesting concept. Come to think of it, it sounds a whole lot like what the founders had in mind from the beginning.” (Contra Costa Times, February 14, 2006).

The entire plan can currently be found on Assemblyman Keith Richman’s website at http://republican.assembly.ca.gov

The California concept was also favorably reviewed in Governing magazine in its February 2006 issue. This publication is widely read by over 10,000 U.S. state legislators.

To the Netherlands and Blogland

The government in The Netherlands has also gotten into the act and its process is due to start during the Spring of 2006. Last fall, the Interior Ministry decided to establish its own sort of Citizens Assembly to review their own electoral system. However, in this case, the recommendations would not lead to a referendum, but would simply be advisory to the national government.

Nevertheless, in the Fall of 2005, the government (The Ministry of the Interior) sent out 1,000 invitations nationwide to citizens who were randomly selected inviting them to participate in the Citizens Assembly. Since it was to be only advisory, they received about 3,000 positive replies. From this list, a random system will be used to select 140 Dutch citizens to deliberate publicly on this issue in February 2006. And the public deliberation part of the process is scheduled to begin formally sometime around late March 2006.

All of the above can be followed quite closely in Blogland. Jim Snider has set up a blog devoted exclusively to Citizens Assembly developments worldwide at http://snider.blogs.com/citizensassembly. All those interested in reading and commenting on such are invited to join up.

To United Kingdom

The New Politics Network has welcomed the launch of the Electoral Choice Bill, arguing that it will "radically change the relationship between the citizen and the state."

The Electoral Choice Bill, if made law, would make provision for referendums to be held on changing the electoral system, at both a national and local level. However, citizens, not politicians, would be at the heart of the system:

If 5% of the electorate call for it (either nationwide or within a specific local authority), a referendum must be held on whether to change the electoral system to another one (this procedure already exists for local people to demand a referendum on the question of introducing or abolishing elected mayors);
Instead of calling for a specific system, electors can also petition for a "citizens' assembly" to be established, in which case an assembly of randomly selected members of the public will be set up to deliberate on whether to change the system. Their recommendation will then be put to a referendum for approval.

Commenting on the Bill, Director of the New Politics Network Peter Facey said:
"Politicians have repeatedly demonstrated that they are incapable of discussing electoral reform without both real and perceived self-interest derailing the process; it is time for the people to decide. The Electoral Choice Bill would lead to a radical change in the relationship between the citizen and the state, and we can see no reason why any true democrat would oppose such a reform.

To Taiwan

Taiwan started its deliberate citizen participation movement on the issue of National Health Insurance in 2002. Since then, practices of deliberate democracy in Taiwan, like the Citizen Conference on National Health Insurance (Lin and Chen, 2003), deliberate polling (Huang, 2004), and civic group forums (Deng and Wu, 2004) have aroused plenty of discussions. Related research has indicated that practices of deliberate democracy have increased citizens’ political literacy, willingness of public participation, and consideration of public interest. Because of promotion from academic institutions and the central government, the citizen conference has become one of the most popular methods of all types of citizen participation in Taiwan.

It has been over 25 years since the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, Taiwan was established at the end of 1980. In the climate of the fast development of global high-tech industry, as well as the cooperation of the public policy, high-tech electronic industry has become the main contributor to Taiwan’s GDP growth, and the format of the “Science-based Industrial Park” (SIP) has been continuously duplicated and promoted in other areas in Taiwan.

Local counties often wage high-profile campaigns to strive for science-based industrial parks in their jurisdictions, expecting that high-tech electronic development will contribute to local prosperity. However, in Ilan, Taiwan, local people do not unconditionally accept the science-based industrial park (SIP) plan. Instead, the local civic leaders have introduced a citizen conference, a form of deliberative democracy, to encourage local people to be involved in discussions of SIP development and its possible impacts. Differently from most citizen conferences in Taiwan led or supported by the public sector, the Citizen Conference of the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park at Ilan (HSIP, Ilan) was held independently by civic groups, led by Ilan Community College.

Details of the Ilan citizen conference can be found in the article "Activism in Deliberative Democracy: An Inspiration from the Local-initiative Citizen Conference in Taiwan" written by Wen-Ling Tu from Shih-Hsin University in Taiwan

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