Friday, September 29, 2006
Monday's Public Issues Forum
Monday's panel discussion at the Munk Centre was quite interesting with many issues and questions raised about the nature of a citizen's assembly and its implications. During the question period at the end, a number of people raised questions dealing with issues of arbitrariness, accountability, and legitimacy of the assembly. These are important points to consider. What seperates these 103 citizens from the Provincial Parliament of Ontario other than their not being elected? What significance does their random selection (insofar as it was a random selection) actually carry? In short, is this actually an excercise in public democratic deliberation or merely the substitution of an elected representative body with a non-elected one?
One questioner contended the superiority of elections in keeping institutions representative through accountability: if you don't like what they're doing you can "vote the bums out." In this way she was noting the lack of accountability in such a project as the Citizens Assembly. While I agree with elections as being the most efficient form of accountability, I think it is important to note that this citizen's assembly is not a legislative body. Because the Assembly members are merely posing a question for referendum, their accountability, insofar as they are legislators, will be if the referendum passes. Until the referendum passes, the Assembly is not a legislative body but just an assembly of citizens excerising deliberative association and free speech; therefore, an issue of accountability is not, and perhaps should not, be necessary.
This is of course not a perfect explanation. While they might be free from the accountability to which we would hold elected legislators, the Citizen's Assembly is not merely a deliberative act within civil society (civil society here simply meaning that part of society between the family and the institutions of state) in that it is an assembly commissioned by the Ontario Government to convene and, as Dr. Ron pointed, apparently has some notion of representation associated with it. This is where the idea of arbitrariness and randomness is crucial in understanding the Assembly. The extent to which the Assembly is random, and the extent to which it is not (ie. the number of women and the geographic diversity that were predetermined) is intended to create a mode of representation like that of statistics. By being an arbitrary group of citizens, the idea of the Assembly is that any other group of citizens, given the same circumstances, would come to similar conclusions and pose a similar question for referendum; essentially, by being freed from political and special interests, participants are allowed to make decisions based purely on their own reasons and ethical interests which, if the random selection works and one has enough faith in statistical suggestion, should reflect the opinions of the public at large.
Two problems were raised at the Forum on Monday which I found particularly apt. The first I believe Simone Chambers raised, which is the size of the body. If this is supposed to be a representative microcosm of Ontario, is 103 a big enough sample size to be particularly relevant? I do not know much about statistics, but it would seem that the larger the sample group the more accurate its findings, so why not do what they did in BC and take two from each district? Why not 3? The other problem raised was that only one Aboriginal person was predetermined for representation. While the intention was to assure at least one, and hope that more would be picked through the random selection, I believe that no other Aboriginal person was selected. Is this still a fair "mini-public" then? Does this suggest a basic flaw in the approach since other groups, who might bear important insight for such a body to be accurately representative, might also be excluded in such a way? Or is this a minor problem, since assuming one person from a group can represent the interests and values of such a group might do more to essentialize the process of representation that actually help it come to fruition?
I would love to hear others opinions.
One questioner contended the superiority of elections in keeping institutions representative through accountability: if you don't like what they're doing you can "vote the bums out." In this way she was noting the lack of accountability in such a project as the Citizens Assembly. While I agree with elections as being the most efficient form of accountability, I think it is important to note that this citizen's assembly is not a legislative body. Because the Assembly members are merely posing a question for referendum, their accountability, insofar as they are legislators, will be if the referendum passes. Until the referendum passes, the Assembly is not a legislative body but just an assembly of citizens excerising deliberative association and free speech; therefore, an issue of accountability is not, and perhaps should not, be necessary.
This is of course not a perfect explanation. While they might be free from the accountability to which we would hold elected legislators, the Citizen's Assembly is not merely a deliberative act within civil society (civil society here simply meaning that part of society between the family and the institutions of state) in that it is an assembly commissioned by the Ontario Government to convene and, as Dr. Ron pointed, apparently has some notion of representation associated with it. This is where the idea of arbitrariness and randomness is crucial in understanding the Assembly. The extent to which the Assembly is random, and the extent to which it is not (ie. the number of women and the geographic diversity that were predetermined) is intended to create a mode of representation like that of statistics. By being an arbitrary group of citizens, the idea of the Assembly is that any other group of citizens, given the same circumstances, would come to similar conclusions and pose a similar question for referendum; essentially, by being freed from political and special interests, participants are allowed to make decisions based purely on their own reasons and ethical interests which, if the random selection works and one has enough faith in statistical suggestion, should reflect the opinions of the public at large.
Two problems were raised at the Forum on Monday which I found particularly apt. The first I believe Simone Chambers raised, which is the size of the body. If this is supposed to be a representative microcosm of Ontario, is 103 a big enough sample size to be particularly relevant? I do not know much about statistics, but it would seem that the larger the sample group the more accurate its findings, so why not do what they did in BC and take two from each district? Why not 3? The other problem raised was that only one Aboriginal person was predetermined for representation. While the intention was to assure at least one, and hope that more would be picked through the random selection, I believe that no other Aboriginal person was selected. Is this still a fair "mini-public" then? Does this suggest a basic flaw in the approach since other groups, who might bear important insight for such a body to be accurately representative, might also be excluded in such a way? Or is this a minor problem, since assuming one person from a group can represent the interests and values of such a group might do more to essentialize the process of representation that actually help it come to fruition?
I would love to hear others opinions.
