Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction: democratic renewal and deliberative democracy
- 1 Who should govern who governs? The role of citizens in reforming the electoral system
- 2 Citizen representatives
- 3 Institutional design and citizen deliberation
- 4 Agenda-setting in deliberative forums: expert influence and citizen autonomy in the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly
- 5 Descriptive representation in the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly
- 6 Do citizens' assemblies make reasoned choices?
- 7 Communicative rationality in the Citizens' Assembly and referendum processes
- 8 Deliberation, information, and trust: the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly as agenda setter
- Conclusion: the Citizens' Assembly model
- References
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction: democratic renewal and deliberative democracy
- 1 Who should govern who governs? The role of citizens in reforming the electoral system
- 2 Citizen representatives
- 3 Institutional design and citizen deliberation
- 4 Agenda-setting in deliberative forums: expert influence and citizen autonomy in the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly
- 5 Descriptive representation in the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly
- 6 Do citizens' assemblies make reasoned choices?
- 7 Communicative rationality in the Citizens' Assembly and referendum processes
- 8 Deliberation, information, and trust: the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly as agenda setter
- Conclusion: the Citizens' Assembly model
- References
- Index
Summary
In 2004, the government of British Columbia embarked on a bold experiment in institutional design: it empowered an assembly of 160 near-randomly selected citizens to spend eleven months assessing the province's electoral system. The government asked the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform (CA) to recommend a new electoral system if the Assembly concluded that the existing system could be improved. And the government committed to putting the recommendation of the BC Citizens' Assembly to a referendum, and then to legislating the results of the referendum in to law, should it pass.
Though citizen bodies have in the recent past served as advisory bodies to constitutional commissions, the CA represents the first time a government has responded to citizen discontent by empowering a citizen body to redesign fundamental political institutions. The case stands out for the care with which the experiment was conceived. The CA approximated the kind of process a political scientist might well design to test key propositions of deliberative democratic theory. The CA was conceived with deliberation in mind, and then given the time, power, support, and financing to return a credible, representative, and deliberate decision. The selection of CA members was designed to bypass the electoral system, and yet function as a representative body through the device of near-random selection. It was carefully insulated from established political interests.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Designing Deliberative DemocracyThe British Columbia Citizens' Assembly, pp. xi - xivPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008