View of Athens from Pnyx, at dusk, 2015. To the left is Lycabettus, to the right Acropolis. Wikicommons/ C Messier. Some rights reserved.
The recent publication of Theresa
May's Brexit deal incited a number of zealots in Parliament to throw various
toys out of their prams so fast that it is hard to believe they had time to
read it. It has also provoked a great clamour for a "people's vote"
in another EU referendum.
One of the arguments offered in favour of a second referendum is that the people
didn't know what they were voting for in June 2016. Now, it is claimed, we have
the details, so voters will be better informed. The idea that more than a
handful of voters would read and digest the 585-page withdrawal document, along
with supplementary papers on the proposed future trading arrangements between
Britain and the EU, shows that this line of argument is essentially spurious –
promoted by those who simply want a different result from last time. They might
get a different result from last time, but that brings dangers of its own, as
many commentators have pointed out, for example Richard
Shrimsley in the FT, (October 8, 2018).
Those Greeks
There is, however, an alternative way
of "letting the people decide" on an issue where Members of
Parliament seem incapable of agreeing a coherent policy. The Greeks had a word for it.
Democracy as implemented by deliberative assemblies of randomly chosen citizens
rather than by elected chambers of representatives is very much a minority
activity in the modern world, but it has begun to impress a growing number of
political scientists with its effectiveness wherever it has been tried (see the
writings of Tin
Gazivoda, Carole
Pateman, and Matthew
Taylor, cited below). The idea is to go back to something more like the classical
Greek model, in which ordinary citizens had a direct input into political
decision-making. The key to dealing with larger populations than in an ancient
Greek polis goes by the name of sortition, namely random selection from a pool
of eligible voters.
Below I propose an EEC (Extraordinary Electoral College) with a step-by-step
procedure that is likely to deliver a verdict that would command more
widespread assent than yet another referendum. (For clarity, a number of
implementation details, though important, are omitted from this outline –
discussed separately in the next section.)
1. 650 people, chosen purely at random, one from each of the electoral
registers of the UK's 650 parliamentary constituencies, are selected to decide
upon the issue. (What to do about alternatives for seriously unwell or heavily
pregnant people or others with good reasons for being unable to attend is
discussed later on.)
2. These people are given 14 days' notice to gather for 8 days (Saturday
to Sunday) in a conference centre somewhere in the UK, situated north of
Bedford and south of Berwick upon Tweed. In a time of national crisis it is
impressed on them that it is their duty as citizens to take this task at least
as seriously as jury service. (What to do about payment, accommodation
arrangements, finding replacements for them in their workplaces and so on is
discussed below.)
3. When they arrive at the conference centre on Saturday morning they are
given the withdrawal document to study and a hotline is made available to a
panel of civil servants who have been involved in the negotiations to call on
for explanations of difficult passages.
4. They are left at liberty in their accommodation (with regular meals
provided, of course, preferably in a communal dining area) to read and try to
understand the document until Monday lunchtime. After lunch on Monday they are
each given a multi-choice quiz, previously compiled by the civil servants, to
test their comprehension of what they were asked to read and understand. (This test
must later be published, with its expected correct answers.) The 50 people with
the lowest scores on the test take no further part in the process, with
tiebreaks to be decided at random, if necessary. (What to do about anonymity
and whether they should depart is discussed below.)
5. The remaining 600 participants are divided into fifty groups of 12,
again entirely randomly, to spend the next four days discussing in their groups
the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed deal. Voters are asked to
avoid discussion with members of other groups as far as possible. During this
period mobile phones and other internet devices must be deposited in a secure
holding area during the hours of 0900 to 1900 each day, but the hotline to
civil servants should remain open at certain times, e.g. 1200 to 1800 for
technical queries.
6. On the second Saturday morning, all voters are asked to retire
individually to their rooms for 24 hours to ponder their choice of all the viable options (in this case let us say
the 3 options: May's deal, No Deal & Remaining in the EU) without any
internet device and without speaking to other voters.
7. On the second Sunday morning these 600 citizens vote by secret ballot
on the three options available. They will be required to rank them in order
from most to least preferred. The overall result should be calculated by adding
1 to the count of each option ranked top and subtracting 1 from to the count of
the least preferred option, with zero for the middle option, giving each option
an overall positive or negative score. (What to be done about spoilt ballots
and suchlike is considered below.)
8. On the Sunday evening the result is announced and the participants
depart to resume their lives.
Why should this command more respect from the wider population than a vote in
the House of Commons or a full-scale referendum? There are four main reasons.
Firstly, the citizens taking part better represent the diverse range of people
in this country than do Members of Parliament. Secondly, again unlike MPs, they
have no personal ambitions for prestige or wealth that depend on their
decisions. They are simply citizens who have been asked to take their
responsibilities seriously to the best of their abilities. Thirdly, lobbyists
from large corporations and other vested interests would not have time to exert
pressure on the decision makers, who in any case would have nothing to gain or
lose from such pressure. Finally, and most importantly, they will have studied
and discussed and thought seriously about the choices at stake – something
that is simply impractical for voters in a full referendum. (It could also be
arranged more cheaply and quickly than a national referendum, though that
advantage should not be decisive.)
Devils lurking in the details
Naturally there are ways that such a procedure can be compromised, so it is
important to guard against apparently minor elements of the process than can
undermine its integrity. Nevertheless, it should not be beyond the wit of homo
sapiens to devise a trustworthy procedure. Some suggestions in this regard are
listed below in the same order as the steps outlined above.
1. Some individuals selected from the electoral registers may have
extremely strong reasons for not taking part. They may need urgent medical
treatment; they may be in the late stages of pregnancy, or they may even be
dead. Thus each constituency must devise a justifiable randomization process
along with clear rules about what grounds for self-exclusion are acceptable, as
well as a rapid way of selecting an alternative elector if needed. These must
be open to scrutiny so that they can be seen to be unbiased. It is vital to
keep screening to a minimum. The temptation to stratify by age, gender,
socioeconomic or other criteria should be resisted: the nearer to a pure random
selection of eligible voters the better.
2. Participants should be well rewarded (by normal standards, even if not
by MPs' standards) for their participation; and their employers, if adversely
affected, should be compensated on relatively generous terms. Thus the exercise
will cost public money, although a trivial amount compared to the renovation of
the Houses of Parliament, for example. In addition, details of the venue, such
as eating and sleeping arrangements, can make a significant difference, so expense
should not be skimped on this aspect either. Above all, the participants should
not find the event stressful. It may be that centres capable of holding events
of such a size should bid for what will be a taxpayer-funded operation. It is
important that the choice (presumably by civil servants) is transparent, i.e.
that the reasons for the choice of location can be laid open to public
scrutiny. The geographic limits stated in the previous section, above, are
designed to keep the participants away from the delirium of the
"Westminster bubble" and arrive at a venue not too far distant from
the centre of the UK population.
3. The Brexit withdrawal document does not contain a summary. It would be
helpful for ordinary members of the public to have some kind of executive
summary to guide them, but of course the danger then is that the summary will
be used instead of the full document. Perhaps a small team of independent
scholars could prepare in advance a synopsis that does not tend to bias towards
one conclusion or another.
4. Excluding a small number of people who haven't read or have very
poorly understood the central document is controversial. The wider public will
accept something of the kind as fair so long as it is restricted only to those
who, for one reason or another, aren't able to make an informed contribution.
However, the proportion excluded should be small, definitely less than 10
percent of the total; and if a tiebreak among equal scores is indicated, it
would probably be better to proceed with slightly more than 600 participants
rather than fewer. (Presuming that the official document under scrutiny is in
English creates potential disadvantages those for whom English is a second
language, but time is not sufficient to provide for speakers of other
languages.) It is also very important to guard against groupthink. It would be
unnatural to expect a group of strangers with a specific topic at the forefront
of their minds not to talk about it at all with their fellows, but arrangements
should be in place to emphasize that what is being sought is 600 separate
informed decisions not 600 repetitions of some influential person's opinion.
Hence fraternization with other participants, other than at meal times, will
have to be discouraged.
5. Hosting fifty groups in surroundings conducive to free-ranging
discussion isn't an easy task. Something like a campus with separate meeting
rooms will be required. Each group should share thoughts and have the chance to
seek clarifications from the civil servants, but too much discussion with other
groups might undermine the independence of each discussion, so should be
discouraged as far as possible. In western so-called democracies we have become
accustomed to, but also disenchanted with, adversarial debate on divisive party
lines. The present arrangements are explicitly designed to minimize the risk of
polarization into 2 or 3 factions who then devote their energies to disparaging
each other rather than seeking solutions to a problem. To encourage freshness,
another option might be to reallocate participants to new groups, again
randomly, half-way through the four-day discussion phase.
6. Again, the idea of a period of private reflection is to allow debate
to lead on to deliberation, thereby reducing the chances of groupthink.
7. The Alternative Vote (AV) might be thought appropriate here for a
3-way choice. The reason for advocating a tallying system, such as that
described above, is that AV, in effect, stops as soon as one alternative
reaches 50% support. The present method results in an overall order of
preference, not just a 'winner'. This gives more information about the decision
process to politicians and to the wider public. Spoilt ballot papers, as agreed
by a panel of trusted returning officers, would be left out of the
computations.
8. Questions of anonymity will need to be considered. It would be hard to
guarantee all participants anonymity, but it will probably be necessary to
impose strict limitations on whether they should be allowed to give interviews
to media organizations and suchlike. Possibly a four or five-year moratorium on
revealing their deliberations should be imposed on participants, long enough
for the information to pass from news (from which political points can be
scored) to history (from which lessons can be learned).
Problem-solving politics
Even more important than finding an acceptable route through the tangled
thicket of Brexit, successful adoption of such an approach would demonstrate
direct democracy in action as a more effective way of doing politics. This is
something that will be sorely needed if we are to confront the coming climate
crisis, (which will make Brexit look like a mere hiccup), without turning it
into a catastrophe.
References
Gazivoda, T. (2017). Poles
are making democracy work again in Gdansk.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-11-22/solutions-how-the-poles-are-making-democracy-work-again-in-gdansk/
Pateman, C. (2012). Participatory Democracy Revisited. Perspectives on
Politics, 10(1), 7-19. doi:10.1017/S1537592711004877
Shrimsley, R. (2018). A second Brexit poll is a bigger risk than leaving.
Financial Times, 8 October 2018.
Taylor, M. (2018). Is
Deliberative Democracy Key to a 21st Century Social Contract? RSA
Publications.