Dem_Discussions: DemocracyCo

Dem36 has had a fabulous response to our Draft Charter Discussion Paper, with many South Australians contacting us to share their thoughts on the challenges modern democracies face, and sharing their ideas for how we might revitalise our democratic practices in South Australia. We have been struck by the degree of thoughtfulness and creativity in the ideas put forward.

Your feedback has caused us to make some changes to the initial Draft Charter document. In particular, we have changed the title (it's now called: Towards a Charter) and reformulated the proposals as questions, to better reflect the purpose of the document as a discussion starter.

Over the next three-four years of our consultation and discussion phase, we will gather, categorise, and carefully consider all feedback provided to us. This feedback will be used in the development and advocacy of the Charter for Democratic Renewal - a document that will set out the people's demands for democratic reform and revitalisation.

This process will depend on open communication and respectful discussion and debate as ideas are formulated and tested.

To this end, we will be releasing regular blog posts under the Dem_Discussions label on the Dem36 website, and shared on our social media channels for discussion. These posts will highlight themes, ideas, comments, and even entire submissions, provided to Dem36. We invite anyone with an idea for how we could do democracy better to contribute their thoughts (or even an entire blog post!) to be published on the Dem36 website. We encourage contributors to consider and respond to the themes, principles and questions in the Towards a Charter discussion paper, which we are using as a framework for our online and offline discussions.

This week, we are sharing a submission provided by the team at DemocracyCo. Drawing on their extensive experience in delivering deliberative democratic processes, DemocracyCo has generously taken the time to provide thought-provoking feedback on Dem36's discussion paper.

—DemocracyCo’s submission follows verbatim—

This submission is provided by DemocracyCo. At DemocracyCo we have sought to provide feedback on the issues relevant to our oranisation and our advocacy efforts, therefore, we don’t address all questions or issues raised in the discussion paper.

Details about DemocracyCo can be found at the end of this document.

Introductory Comments

Consistent with many of the ideas identified in the 2036 paper – there is an urgent need to increase citizen participation in our democratic system between and in addition to elections.

A cocktail of trends is resulting in a rise in populism in Australia which is emerging at a pace –

• Australians are not feeling heard or listened to by the political system

• There is low trust in ‘politicians’ – particularly the ‘establishment’

• Australians are disconnecting from mainstream media – in part due to low levels of trust, but primarily out of fear and anxiety. Many Australians are feeling distressed by national and global changes which they can’t change. As a consequence, people aren’t hearing nuance, they aren’t engaging in complexity. Nothing is breaking through to them except for simple messages which echo their underlying anxieties.

• Australians are increasingly divided on a number of critical and central issues (such as immigration and climate change)

This toxic mix is resulting in a rapid rise in populism which poses significant risks to our democracy.

Solutions involve a range of reforms which increase transparency, improve our information environment (social media reforms and supporting public interest journalism), improving civics etc.

In our view, most importantly and urgently, we need to further democratise public policy development between elections.

Like the precursors to our democratic system in the UK did 800 years ago when they brought citizens into the decision-making process in courts through a jury system. We need to systematically bring everyday citizens into public policy decision making process – to build understanding between what government and experts know (evidence-based policy) and citizens lived experience (commonsense). We need to use a range of engagement methods, including deliberative democratic processes to build understanding complexity, enable citizens to consider tradeoffs, and enable governments and experts to work together with citizens across their divides.

3.1 Democratic framework – constitution reform

We don’t think constitutional reform is necessary to achieve this, but of course, it would be helpful.

The primary shift we need to see … and it is probably a precursor to constitutional reform anyway – is a ‘mindset shift’.

We need our leaders to see citizens as participants in our democracy - not just as voters. They need to see citizens as people to work ‘with’ not as working ‘for’.

They need to trust in citizens.

Whilst we know that citizens have declining trust in our institutions, in our experience, the trust deficit works both ways.

Over the last 10+ years working in this field, we observe public policy leaders are trusting less and less in the ability of citizens to contribute to policy making. We are yet to find substantive research that explains this lack of trust, but our working hypothesis is that it appears to reflect a perception that the public are one or more of the following

• self-interested,

• uninformed

• lacking the ability to consider complex issues and tradeoffs

• unable to compromise and

• an angry mob.

The other force at play, limiting the participation of our citizens is a prevailing mindset of our elected representatives that the ‘community has elected them to do a job – and their job is to get on and do it.’

It is this culture and mindset that needs to be addressed. And it can only be shifted by enabling leaders to have positive and productive engagements with community – building a stronger connective trust tissue between them.

If changes to the constitution are desired, these should be achieved through a process that is done “with” people – A statewide engagement process, using technology to support broadscale involvement and culminating in a citizen’s assembly (to ensure that considered judgement is applied).

Using a comprehensive engagement process can help demonstrate to government that people can act sensibly and in turn help to build faith / trust in the public.

3.2 Improving Representativeness

We can improve representativeness of our democracy by our Members of Parliament using and embedding deliberative and other engagement methods in how they represent their communities.

Over the past five years, in partnership with Federal MP’s we have been developing specific deliberative approaches which help MPs to better understand where their communities stand and where their communities can reach common ground on contentious issues.

You can learn all about it and read the case studies here.

Deliberative democracy doesn’t have to supplant representative democracy (as suggested by the discussion paper) – it can and does support it.

Deliberative democracy can also support policy-making by government agencies (its most common usage to date). Where this is supported and led by Cabinet – using deliberative in this way can be very effective at achieving change in public policy.

A good example of this is the Citizens Assembly and stakeholder co-design process that we designed and delivered for the ACT Government. More information about this Case Study can be found here.

Deliberative democracy can also be embedded in our parliamentary processes to institutionalize the voice of everyday citizens alongside elected representatives, through the inclusion of citizens in Parliamentary Committees. This has been done to great effect in Brussels Parliament through their Deliberative Committees Model. This model sees randomly selected citizens working alongside elected representatives on important issues to the community. You can read all about the model here.

We would also note that embedding participatory budgeting processes in the State budget development process would help both Treasury and the Community to consider the tradeoffs involved in budget development together, and enable the community to provide advice on where, on balance, South Australians would like $ investment for our future given the constraints of the budget.

How do we make politicians more responsive?

We would like to see more opportunities and circumstances in which MPs from the two major parties can have conscience votes (instead of being bound by party rules).

We would also like to see MPs use The Peoples House methods or similar innovations to better represent the interests of their communities.

3.4 Democratic Culture

There are many challenges to improving democratic participation and building a more democratic culture.

Our experience tells us that there are two core challenges:

1) Lifestyles and workload – Australians have busy lives; with many competing things they need to do. For those with families, it can be hard to find space to participate in our democracy (beyond voting).

We could affect change in this- but rewarding participation in democratic processes – by appropriately paying participation or via using a similar scheme to that used for Jury Duty – where employers are expected Under the Fair Work Act, to pay full-time and permanent part-time employees the difference between their jury allowance and their ordinary base rate of pay for the first 10 days of service.

2) Power and influence – in our experience if people can find time to participate – they will participate in democratic processes IF those opportunities have meaning and purpose. People want to make a difference to their communities and to improve the lives of their children, families and their country. If they feel that by giving their time to getting involved, they can make a difference – they will get involved.

The key to improving democratic participation is to make sure that governments

• are clear about their commitment (what is and isn’t able to be influenced),

• listen/ are seen to be listening and

• responding – clearly to people who participate about what they did with what they heard.

At the moment Australian governments at all levels regularly fail on all three counts. Governments can be particularly poor at being clear at the beginning of processes about what is able to be influenced and what is not.

Governments can also be poor at listening authentically. The mindset challenges discussed earlier in our submission are pertinent here - if public sector leaders involved don’t trust community, they don’t see community having anything valuable to add … they wont want to involve them authentically. As a result, their processes become ‘tick box’ exercises, and community is ignored. Culture & mindset need to shift at all levels of public service and at a political level.

Governments also often don’t respond to what they hear through an engagement process - close the loop in a meaningful way. Where they do respond, this is often inadequate and unspecific to what was heard / said and heavily delayed.

Addressing these core challenges of lifestyle/ workload and power and influence are central to building a thriving democratic culture.

We agree with the suggestion that there is more room for improvement in how civics is taught in schools – both through informal and formal mechanisms. However, civics courses need to focus on building capability of citizens for their role between elections – not just on how to be a good voter and understanding the system.

Democracy Fitness – provides a suite of tools which could be embedded in a broader curriculum to teach young people – everyday skills for democratic participation.

Being a good citizen, and a leader in a community should not only be the pervue of the ‘elite’ – those with aspirations, confidence and eloquent. We need to build democratic leadership skills in a all young people – by allowing and enabling a all young people to take on leadership roles in schools. We would recommend that instead of Student Representative Councils positions being held by those who ‘put up their hand’ and are elected – that a process of sortition / democratic lottery is used instead. This system is being used extensively in South America and could be used here, as all the tools are available online via open access - Reinventing leadership and civic education | Democracy In Practice.

Closing remarks

At DemocracyCo we have hope for the future South Australia’s democracy. We know that ours is one of the most robust democracies in the world. While so much focus is put on changing the system, we believe that if we strengthened aspects of our current system, this would go a long way to providing the protective factors that are needed to retain our democracy, and prevent it from being dismantled.

Empowering and activating people, creating the conditions for leaders to listen, and improving the ways that people are engaged, beyond the ballot box are where we think enormous gains can be made and democratic strengthening can occur.

About DemocracyCo

We a South Australian social enterprise that supports communities and organisations to find sustainable solutions to complex problems. We are a global leader in facilitation & deliberative engagement both in Australia and overseas.

Having undertaken hundreds of engagement processes (including 120 deliberative processes) on complex issues involving more than 20,000 people over almost 11 years we have earned a reputation for tackling some of today’s toughest questions. We support industry and government to connect with the communities that they serve and foster the type of understanding and collaboration that creates powerful, lasting change.

Our work is nonpartisan and impartial, with clients including local, federal and state government; environmental, utility and infrastructure; regional development authorities; non-profit and NGOs; and humanitarian and philanthropic organisations.

You can learn more about us and the impact our work has here.