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The
problem in a two-party system is that the rancor and partisan passions
of electoral campaigns push voters into zero-sum camps. In reality,
people’s views are nuanced. If disaggregated from the rigidity of this
procrustean platform, their choices would reflect that.
After
the Trumpist triumph, Democrats are rightly “soul-searching” to
discover where they went wrong so they can once again compete for power
down the road. If, in this process, they insist on defending their
losing propositions defined by the zero-sum terms of the election, form
political action committees on that basis for the next battle and limit
their reflections within the bubble of the like-minded, they will only
confirm what they thought they knew and lose even more traction with the
body politic.
To
reach out of the bubble and search for their soul among the public at
large, the Democrats should organize a series of citizens’ assemblies or
other deliberative forms of listening at scale precisely in order to
discover the nuanced concerns of the average citizen, unaligned with the
neat divisions of partisanship, and be responsive on that basis.
Deliberative Democracy
These
deliberative practices are not focus groups that survey the
already-formed opinions of voters. They are nonpartisan gatherings of
citizens, online or in person, indicative of the public as a whole in
terms of race, gender, region, education level, etc. They are convened
with professional moderators in a neutral space, “islands of goodwill”
outside the electoral arena and its partisan ploys. Pro and con
positions on a given issue are posited, verified information is
presented and, like in a jury trial, expert witnesses are called to
answer questions and provide context.
Decades
of experience with this process around the world by the Deliberative
Democracy Lab at Stanford University has consistently shown that, once
informed and empathetically exposed to the concerns of others,
participants move from previously held dispositions toward a consensus.
Citizens’ assemblies in Ireland on abortion and in France on climate
policies after the “yellow vest” protests have shown a similar result:
Consensus can be reached on even the most flammable issues.
In
recent years, the European Commission has convened deliberative
citizens’ panels on issues ranging from “tackling hatred in society” and
energy efficiency to food waste, and even committed to “embed
deliberative democracy in EU policymaking” on an ongoing basis. In
September, the Democratic Odyssey project of the European University
Institute organized the first “transnational citizens’ assembly” at the
birthplace of democracy in Athens.
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