Monday, December 04, 2006
Making Reason Present: Deliberation, Representation, and the Citizens' Assembly
As many previous posts on this blog have pointed out, the legitimacy of the Citizens’ Assembly (CA) is far from a given. How does the suggestion of a group of randomly selected citizens, put in a position to deliberate on a given issue (in this case, electoral reform in Ontario), bear any weight or political significance to the political community at large? Other institutions (like legislatures) are considered legitimate largely because they are thought to be representative of the citizenry in some fashion. So the question might be asked, can the CA be considered a representative body? Or does the deliberative theory upon which the CA rests imply a different form of legitimacy? In the case of the latter, the idea of representation, at least in its most conventionally understood usage, might not be a necessary or even desirable trait for the CA to possess.
As a means of examining this issue in this post, I consider deliberative democratic theory and its corresponding notions of representation and legitimacy. First, I review the concept of representation and how social choice theory necessitates some form of it for legitimacy in contemporary politics. I will then contrast this notion of representation with that of the CA and its corresponding deliberative democratic foundations. I contend that theories of deliberative democracy depart radically from social choice theories in that they don’t necessitate representation of the citizenry in order to view themselves as legitimate. I make this claim not as a defense against the need for representation, but rather to point out the risk of deliberative democracy, and its capability to be unrepresentative, and perhaps undemocratic, when it is used in designs of mini-publics such as the CA. I end with an argument for why deliberative democracy should entail qualities representing the Ontario citizenry, assessing the extent to which the CA possesses these.
We may as well start by asking what the word “representative” means. The term has many different usages and implications, which complicates the matter of determining the meaning of “representative” as it pertains to legitimacy.[i] In the introduction to Representation Hanna Pitkin gives an extremely basic definition, which is “a making present of something absent—but not making it literally present.”[ii] Much of the controversy of defining “representation” can be seen as stemming from its core paradoxical precept of endowing something with opposing properties (namely absence and presence). Still, when we consider the idea of political representation, we generally have a more specific interpretation in mind, though we might not be able to articulate it. In order to help articulate it, asking the following clarifying questions can help: who/what is absent which is to be made present, who/what is to make them present and, in what manner are they to be made present? In answering these questions through different theoretical perspectives, we can ascertain what form of representation the theories are based upon.
Much of current political practice is informed by some variant of social choice theory, which sees the political process as functioning in the same way that the market does. In this conception, political views and beliefs are understood to be necessarily private, rendering the process of determining public policies as aggregative.[iii] In its most simple form, citizens would gather to pursue their own private political views, with the end result being the “optimal compromise between given, and irreducibly opposed, private interests.”[iv] A legitimate political system then, according to social choice theory, would be one which allows for its citizens to pursue their private interests or, put differently, one which allows for the many “selfs” of the polity to be present in the political process as to pursue their self-interests. We could see this being done in two different ways: direct democracy or representative democracy. The former does not seem plausible, as the expanse, complexity and specialization of modern society renders citizens unable to participate in the everyday practice of politics which direct democracy demands.[v] For the same reasons, politics become the business of an elite professional few who are capably specialized in the process of governance. In order to make this elite-driven model compatible with the aforementioned necessity that individuals pursue their private political interests, politicians must appeal to a concept of representation in order to be seen as legitimate; the individuals of society must see the elites of government as having their interests at heart in some fashion.[vi] This is congruous with the definition of democracy which Schumpeter offers: “the democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.”[vii] In this way, representation is actually the necessary compromise between the pursuit of self-interest and pragmatic functionality, as the political market of private self-interest is supplemented by the market of elite-level representation.
This can be seen as the governing paradigm of Western liberal democracies, or at least Canadian democracy, in a number of ways. First, there is a stark contrast between the private nature of citizens’ opinions and the public nature of politicians’ and political candidates’ views, made clear by the contrast between the secret ballot system of voting and the public debates of political candidates which are televised and open to all. This reinforces the view of political belief as private, and the competitive and public nature of politicians. Furthermore, the immutable pursuit of self-interest can be seen as analogous to the rigidity of party discipline, in which case party platforms serve as the representative instrument of the represented citizens. Therefore, in contemporary democratic practice, as social choice theory would suggest, absent citizens are made present by selected political elites (chosen through an aggregation of votes through political parties) who pursue the interests of their constituents as they govern the political process.[viii]
In this way, social choice theory’s conception of representation is understood. The CA, on the other hand, is not based on theories of social choice. As Elster notes, the premise which informs deliberative theory and practice
is that rather than aggregating or filtering preferences, the political system should be set up with a view to changing them by public debate and confrontation…[T]here would not be any need for an aggregating mechanism, since a rational discussion would tend to produce unanimous preferences.[ix]
In this view, the raw pursuit of self-interest is replaced with inquiry into the nature of the public-interest, with aggregation and compromise being substituted for rational discussion; in other words, the market view of private politics is replaced with a public-minded forum in which the goal is “not optimal compromise, but unanimous agreement.”[x] Politics is therefore not considered a private concern as it is in social choice theory, but rather an inherently public act. Individuals are brought into a forum for the express reason of discerning what is best for all. In such a situation, arguments invoking self-interest are impossible in that they are incompatible with the objective at hand; “in a political debate it is pragmatically impossible to argue that a given solution should be chosen just because it is good for oneself.”[xi] In this fashion, the practices and results of deliberation are seen as legitimate insofar as they are defended with reasons and evidence which all members of the public can understand and conceivably agree to. This criterion for deliberation is what theorists refer to as reciprocity.[xii] As Gutmann and Thompson point out, reciprocity implies a form of deliberative equality in which “citizens recognize and respect one another as moral agents, not merely as abstract object of others’ moral reasoning.” [xiii] By limiting reasons and arguments to those which could conceivably be agreed to by all, reciprocity implies that the argument is being addressed to all and that all are capable of comprehending and refuting it.
With this theoretical understanding, we can begin to determine what concept of representation deliberative democracy appeals to, using the CA as a focal point. First, the basic questions of representation (who is absent, who is present, and how the latter makes the former present) can be posed to the case of the CA. To these questions we might respond that the citizens-at-large, who are absent, are being made present by the selected CA members, and they are being made present through the processes of consultation and deliberation[xiv]. While the first two parts of this answer seem plausible enough, the question of how the act of the CA members deliberating makes present those absent from the process is not so clear. In his discussion of deliberative citizen panels, Mark Brown gives a possible answer:
Because panelists are not beholden to interest groups or political parties, and because the process encourages participants to defend their views with reasons potentially acceptable to all, citizen panels are arguably well suited to identify ways of addressing public problems that accord with some conception of the public interest… [They do] not represent in the sense of communicating with or acting for its constituents. It is rather a “representation of the public’s judgment.”[xv]
In this case, it is not actually Ontarians at large who are being made present in the CA, but their purported judgments or reasons. This is a notable difference, as Brown points out that “an important risk associated with this …is that it easily leads to the idea that deliberation by members of citizen panels can substitute for deliberation by their presumed constituents.”[xvi] The act of deliberation in a group differentiates the representation of the public interest (which these bodies purport to do) and the representation of the public itself. With this understanding, the CA does not fit into the mode of representation discussed earlier: if legitimate, it is representative of the citizenry’s logic, reasons, judgments and ideally, their general “public interest,” but not of the citizens themselves or their individual interests. Deliberations do not promise to make present the non-participating public, but rather to make their reasons present: “Because the immediate aim of representing perspectives is deliberation rather than decision-making, the need to include all possibly relevant perspectives (impossible on small citizen panels) is less pressing than if the aim were to represent their interests.”[xvii] In this way, as long as reasons which convince the public are given to justify the decisions, the deliberators do not need to be in anyway representative of the public. Similarly the CA, according to deliberative democratic theory, is not required to be a representative body; as long as the claims, reasons and arguments made satisfy the caveat of reciprocity, the deliberations can be seen as representative of a wider public deliberation, with the conclusions reached by the CA being seen as reached by Ontario as a whole. Bluntly, in deliberative democracy, reasons, absent from most political discourse, are made present by citizens through the act of deliberation.[xviii]
It must be noted that deliberation does not preclude representation in government and in fact can be seen as enriching representative practice. As Mark Brown articulates, “democratic representation depends on continuous interaction between decision-making in state institutions and various sorts of public talk, including both informal public discourse and the more structured forms of deliberation that occur in civil society.”[xix] Representation then “depends on a critical public sphere”[xx] which is best cultivated through processes of deliberation. With this type of public sphere the aforementioned type of representative government which social choice theory suggests could still exist, and would in fact exist better, in that representatives would be chosen out of conceptions of the public good which have eclipsed and replaced notions of private good. However, for the type of public sphere to exist in which all citizens are able to participate and contribute to deliberation, it would take massive social transformation, arguably to a Marxian extent of public-ownership of many types of capital. Until such a public sphere exists, the process of deliberation itself entails aspects of representation in that those deliberating are seen as also doing so for those who are not participating; deliberations which impact policy or governance in some way are seen as bearing public value and opinions, although the entire public, and most often a vast majority of the public, did not participate. In this way, deliberations are seen as making present those who are absent from discussion by formulating an idea of “public interest” or “common good.” This is seemingly problematic in that those who are absent lack political and moral agency, having no ability to control or choose in what ways they are being made present by the deliberators. To counter this problem the idea of a “mini-public,” a group of people selected in such a way as to be representative in some form of the public-at-large, has been developed as a vehicle in which deliberations can be conducted.[xxi] In this way, just as deliberation can be a tool for enriching representative politics, representation can enrich the process of deliberation. For these reasons, the CA claims to represent Ontarians in some fashion, being referred to as a “representative body of electors” in the Election Act which created it.[xxii]
Some find contention with the convergence of representation and deliberation. One argument is that representation could conceivably restrict the representative from fully acknowledging and understanding ideas which diverge from those held by whomever s/he represents. In essence, representation “would lead to representation by an “elect” group, thus clashing with the goal of providing a voice for ordinary citizens.”[xxiii] In this view, representation is too contaminated by the interest-driven premises of social choice theory to be compatible with the public-minded promise of deliberation. While this is a valid claim that should be considered, I don’t think it completely forecloses representation in deliberative bodies. It is conceivable that representatives could be chosen for their ability to reason and comprehend arguments, as opposed to similarities in interest or belief. Furthermore, the way that a body represents the public-at-large does not have to be through an individual-constituency relationship. A deliberative body can be seen as a representative microcosm, in which the individual members of the body would not be representative, but the body itself would be representative of the general public. In this sense, a type of controlled randomness in the selection process would make the group deliberative, with the underlying premise being that any other group of citizens, given the same circumstances, would come to similar conclusions.[xxiv] It is this form of representation which I suggest the CA assumes.[xxv]
Whether or not deliberative bodies can, or are, in fact representative, the normative question of whether or not deliberative bodies should be representative still remains. In their discussion of mini-publics “with some claim to representativeness,” Goodin and Dryzek qualify their definition in a useful way for this discussion:
By “some claim,” we do not mean statistical representativeness…nor do we mean electoral representation. All “some claim to representativeness” need mean is that the diversity of social characteristics and plurality of initial points of view in the larger society are substantially present in the deliberating mini-public.[xxvi]
It is the importance placed on the diversity of “social characteristics” and “initial points of view” which is instructive. If the concept of deliberation rests on the notion that rational discussion, conducted by a group of non-self-interested individuals, can best unveil a truth in regards to (or at least the best answer for the question of) “public good,” then contingent to this is the assumption that an individual, with his/her held perspectives and experiences, holds an incomplete, but completely necessary, component of the public good. Reasons, arguments and public-minded claims are not seen as independent from individual perspective and opinion, but rather as deriving from them, in which case the perspectives individuals bring to deliberative forums are infinitely unique sources of reason and conceptions of public-good. Understood in this way, a plurality of “social characteristics” and “initial points of view” creates a richer supply for reasons and opinions, thus a more a robust deliberation and, it would follow, a better formulated conclusion and conception of public interest.
In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill writes that because “the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.”[xxvii] This was written in the defense of freedom of opinion, and it is this freedom which must be actively sought after and made present in deliberative bodies for the best results. As such, representation offers the ability for a vast array of perspectives and experiences to converge and synthesize, simultaneously enriching deliberation and fortifying legitimacy in the eyes of those not participating in the deliberation. This being the case, I suggest deliberative bodies, the CA included, be representative of the diversity of experiences, backgrounds, and lifestyles of the general public. Here, proportionality may or may not be necessary, as giving minority and majority alike the same amount of representation could make for a deliberation more inclusive to wide-ranging perspectives and viewpoints.
So in what ways does the CA attempt representation? First, as I mentioned earlier, it attempts to statistically represent Ontario as a microcosm through randomness. To this I would simply question whether or not 103 members is a statistically relevant sample size for this purpose. As for the representation of diverse backgrounds and perspectives which I just discussed, there are three main ways in which the CA has taken this into account: the requirement that a member from each electoral riding be present, presenting geographical diversity; the mandatory presence of fifty-two women in the CA; and the mandatory presence of one self-identified Aboriginal person.[xxviii] While this is certainly a good start, I would suggest that a fuller conception of diversity can have been taken into account. Some considerations along this line which, if taken into account, could have enhanced the diversity of the CA are as follows: requiring more than one mandatory seat for Aboriginals, perhaps with the intention of representing the diversity of experiences, cultures, and values within the Aboriginal community; the representation of recent immigrants, perhaps from different national backgrounds; taking social class into consideration, perhaps making certain requirements for landowners and non-owners, managers and union members, etc.; augmenting the “one member from each riding” stipulation in such a way that reflects the large Francophone community in Northern Ontario as a means of representing Ontario’s linguistic diversity.
While I know these types of suggestions presents a self-perpetuating problem in that there are an infinite number of groups which could demand representation ad infinitum, including cross-group sects (eg. perhaps there should be a mandatory seat for Aboriginal women or Francophone workers), it is nevertheless an important consideration for future deliberative bodies to take into account. In this way, the reasons which are made present by deliberation can be more closely in sync with the reasons of the absent society-at-large, making deliberation a more viable and legitimate political method within Canadian political culture as it now stands.
---------------------
[i] For a more thorough treatment of the complexity of “representation” see Dr. Ron’s first posting.
[ii] Hanna Pitkin. Representation. New York: Atherton Press, 1969: 16.
[iii] Jon Elster. “The Market and the Forum: Three varieties of Political Theory” from Foundations of Social Choice Theory ed. Elster, J & Hylland, A. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986: 103-104.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Joseph Schumpeter. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper & Row, 1950: 259-262.
[vi] The way in which the representative acts can still be open to interpretation, particularly in what Pitkin calls the “mandate-independence controversy” (Ptikin, Representation, 17). Regardless of how it is interpreted, the necessity here is that the citizens see their interests as somehow represented through their politicians.
[vii] Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 296.
[viii] Elster, “The Market and the Forum,” 104-105.
[ix] Elster, “The Market and the Forum,” 112.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Ibid, 113.
[xii] For a more detailed discussion of “reciprocity” see my posting “Deliberative Democratic Theory and the Citizens’ Assembly”
[xiii] Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson. Democracy and Disagreement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996: 14.
[xiv] The emphasis here however is on deliberation over consultation. I say this because the vast majority of Ontarians are not participating in the consultation phase. Because of this, those who participate are more akin to those who are present as opposed to those who are absent; by participating in the consultation phase, non-CA Ontarians are participating in the more general deliberation, and in turn are participating in the act of making those not participating, or who are absent, present. While one might argue that voting on the final referendum is also part of making those absent present, I would contend that that does not make them present in the process of producing the recommendation (what the CA was assembled for) but rather in the enactment of it. In this way, it is still mainly the act of deliberation which is supposed to make them present in the CA.
[xv] Mark Brown. “Survey Article: Citizen Panels and the Concept of Representation.” Journal of Political Philosophy (14.2, 2006): 216. Representing “in the sense of communicating with or acting for its constituents” relates to the point I raised in Note vi regarding the “mandate-independence controversy.”
[xvi] Ibid.
[xvii] Ibid, 219.
[xviii] One objection to this might be that in practice the CA’s conclusion is definitively not seen as the same as Ontarians, a fact evidenced by the proviso of the referendum. Because of this, deliberation is perhaps not intended to reason on behalf of the public, but merely on behalf of its participants. While I might agree with this contention, the referendum (notwithstanding the sixty percent super-majority recently attached to it) can still be viewed as compatible with deliberative theories in that it assures that the conclusion reached by the CA is justified by sufficient reason. In theory, the conclusions reached by such a deliberative body could be agreed to by all and the reasons used to justify it could be understood by all, however if the reasons offered are not sufficient to convince the general public, the referendum failing to pass hold’s the decision accountable. In short, if deliberations are conducted successfully, the referendum will pass; if not, the referendum will fail. Either way the referendum does not deligitimate the CA’s deliberation but indicates how efficiently it was carried out.
[xix] Brown, “Citizen Panels,” 206.
[xx] Ibid., 205
[xxi] Archon Fung. “Survey Article: Recipes for Public Spheres: Eight Institutional Design Choices and Their Consequences.” The Journal of Political Philosophy (11.3, 2003): 338-339, and Robert Goodin and John Dryzek. “Deliberative Impacts: The Macro-Political Uptake of Mini-Publics.” Politics & Society (34.2, 2006): 219-221.
[xxii] Election Act, Ontario Regulation 82/06, Citizens’ Assembly on ElectoralReform, Article 2.
[xxiii] Brown, “Citizen Panels,” 208.
[xxiv] Ibid, 209.
[xxv] See my post “Monday’s Public Issues Forum.”
[xxvi] Goodin and Dryzek, “Deliberative Impacts,” 221.
[xxvii] J.S. Mill. On Liberty. London: Penguin Publishing, 1974: 116.
[xxviii] Election Act: Article 4, Clauses 1-3.
As a means of examining this issue in this post, I consider deliberative democratic theory and its corresponding notions of representation and legitimacy. First, I review the concept of representation and how social choice theory necessitates some form of it for legitimacy in contemporary politics. I will then contrast this notion of representation with that of the CA and its corresponding deliberative democratic foundations. I contend that theories of deliberative democracy depart radically from social choice theories in that they don’t necessitate representation of the citizenry in order to view themselves as legitimate. I make this claim not as a defense against the need for representation, but rather to point out the risk of deliberative democracy, and its capability to be unrepresentative, and perhaps undemocratic, when it is used in designs of mini-publics such as the CA. I end with an argument for why deliberative democracy should entail qualities representing the Ontario citizenry, assessing the extent to which the CA possesses these.
We may as well start by asking what the word “representative” means. The term has many different usages and implications, which complicates the matter of determining the meaning of “representative” as it pertains to legitimacy.[i] In the introduction to Representation Hanna Pitkin gives an extremely basic definition, which is “a making present of something absent—but not making it literally present.”[ii] Much of the controversy of defining “representation” can be seen as stemming from its core paradoxical precept of endowing something with opposing properties (namely absence and presence). Still, when we consider the idea of political representation, we generally have a more specific interpretation in mind, though we might not be able to articulate it. In order to help articulate it, asking the following clarifying questions can help: who/what is absent which is to be made present, who/what is to make them present and, in what manner are they to be made present? In answering these questions through different theoretical perspectives, we can ascertain what form of representation the theories are based upon.
Much of current political practice is informed by some variant of social choice theory, which sees the political process as functioning in the same way that the market does. In this conception, political views and beliefs are understood to be necessarily private, rendering the process of determining public policies as aggregative.[iii] In its most simple form, citizens would gather to pursue their own private political views, with the end result being the “optimal compromise between given, and irreducibly opposed, private interests.”[iv] A legitimate political system then, according to social choice theory, would be one which allows for its citizens to pursue their private interests or, put differently, one which allows for the many “selfs” of the polity to be present in the political process as to pursue their self-interests. We could see this being done in two different ways: direct democracy or representative democracy. The former does not seem plausible, as the expanse, complexity and specialization of modern society renders citizens unable to participate in the everyday practice of politics which direct democracy demands.[v] For the same reasons, politics become the business of an elite professional few who are capably specialized in the process of governance. In order to make this elite-driven model compatible with the aforementioned necessity that individuals pursue their private political interests, politicians must appeal to a concept of representation in order to be seen as legitimate; the individuals of society must see the elites of government as having their interests at heart in some fashion.[vi] This is congruous with the definition of democracy which Schumpeter offers: “the democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.”[vii] In this way, representation is actually the necessary compromise between the pursuit of self-interest and pragmatic functionality, as the political market of private self-interest is supplemented by the market of elite-level representation.
This can be seen as the governing paradigm of Western liberal democracies, or at least Canadian democracy, in a number of ways. First, there is a stark contrast between the private nature of citizens’ opinions and the public nature of politicians’ and political candidates’ views, made clear by the contrast between the secret ballot system of voting and the public debates of political candidates which are televised and open to all. This reinforces the view of political belief as private, and the competitive and public nature of politicians. Furthermore, the immutable pursuit of self-interest can be seen as analogous to the rigidity of party discipline, in which case party platforms serve as the representative instrument of the represented citizens. Therefore, in contemporary democratic practice, as social choice theory would suggest, absent citizens are made present by selected political elites (chosen through an aggregation of votes through political parties) who pursue the interests of their constituents as they govern the political process.[viii]
In this way, social choice theory’s conception of representation is understood. The CA, on the other hand, is not based on theories of social choice. As Elster notes, the premise which informs deliberative theory and practice
is that rather than aggregating or filtering preferences, the political system should be set up with a view to changing them by public debate and confrontation…[T]here would not be any need for an aggregating mechanism, since a rational discussion would tend to produce unanimous preferences.[ix]
In this view, the raw pursuit of self-interest is replaced with inquiry into the nature of the public-interest, with aggregation and compromise being substituted for rational discussion; in other words, the market view of private politics is replaced with a public-minded forum in which the goal is “not optimal compromise, but unanimous agreement.”[x] Politics is therefore not considered a private concern as it is in social choice theory, but rather an inherently public act. Individuals are brought into a forum for the express reason of discerning what is best for all. In such a situation, arguments invoking self-interest are impossible in that they are incompatible with the objective at hand; “in a political debate it is pragmatically impossible to argue that a given solution should be chosen just because it is good for oneself.”[xi] In this fashion, the practices and results of deliberation are seen as legitimate insofar as they are defended with reasons and evidence which all members of the public can understand and conceivably agree to. This criterion for deliberation is what theorists refer to as reciprocity.[xii] As Gutmann and Thompson point out, reciprocity implies a form of deliberative equality in which “citizens recognize and respect one another as moral agents, not merely as abstract object of others’ moral reasoning.” [xiii] By limiting reasons and arguments to those which could conceivably be agreed to by all, reciprocity implies that the argument is being addressed to all and that all are capable of comprehending and refuting it.
With this theoretical understanding, we can begin to determine what concept of representation deliberative democracy appeals to, using the CA as a focal point. First, the basic questions of representation (who is absent, who is present, and how the latter makes the former present) can be posed to the case of the CA. To these questions we might respond that the citizens-at-large, who are absent, are being made present by the selected CA members, and they are being made present through the processes of consultation and deliberation[xiv]. While the first two parts of this answer seem plausible enough, the question of how the act of the CA members deliberating makes present those absent from the process is not so clear. In his discussion of deliberative citizen panels, Mark Brown gives a possible answer:
Because panelists are not beholden to interest groups or political parties, and because the process encourages participants to defend their views with reasons potentially acceptable to all, citizen panels are arguably well suited to identify ways of addressing public problems that accord with some conception of the public interest… [They do] not represent in the sense of communicating with or acting for its constituents. It is rather a “representation of the public’s judgment.”[xv]
In this case, it is not actually Ontarians at large who are being made present in the CA, but their purported judgments or reasons. This is a notable difference, as Brown points out that “an important risk associated with this …is that it easily leads to the idea that deliberation by members of citizen panels can substitute for deliberation by their presumed constituents.”[xvi] The act of deliberation in a group differentiates the representation of the public interest (which these bodies purport to do) and the representation of the public itself. With this understanding, the CA does not fit into the mode of representation discussed earlier: if legitimate, it is representative of the citizenry’s logic, reasons, judgments and ideally, their general “public interest,” but not of the citizens themselves or their individual interests. Deliberations do not promise to make present the non-participating public, but rather to make their reasons present: “Because the immediate aim of representing perspectives is deliberation rather than decision-making, the need to include all possibly relevant perspectives (impossible on small citizen panels) is less pressing than if the aim were to represent their interests.”[xvii] In this way, as long as reasons which convince the public are given to justify the decisions, the deliberators do not need to be in anyway representative of the public. Similarly the CA, according to deliberative democratic theory, is not required to be a representative body; as long as the claims, reasons and arguments made satisfy the caveat of reciprocity, the deliberations can be seen as representative of a wider public deliberation, with the conclusions reached by the CA being seen as reached by Ontario as a whole. Bluntly, in deliberative democracy, reasons, absent from most political discourse, are made present by citizens through the act of deliberation.[xviii]
It must be noted that deliberation does not preclude representation in government and in fact can be seen as enriching representative practice. As Mark Brown articulates, “democratic representation depends on continuous interaction between decision-making in state institutions and various sorts of public talk, including both informal public discourse and the more structured forms of deliberation that occur in civil society.”[xix] Representation then “depends on a critical public sphere”[xx] which is best cultivated through processes of deliberation. With this type of public sphere the aforementioned type of representative government which social choice theory suggests could still exist, and would in fact exist better, in that representatives would be chosen out of conceptions of the public good which have eclipsed and replaced notions of private good. However, for the type of public sphere to exist in which all citizens are able to participate and contribute to deliberation, it would take massive social transformation, arguably to a Marxian extent of public-ownership of many types of capital. Until such a public sphere exists, the process of deliberation itself entails aspects of representation in that those deliberating are seen as also doing so for those who are not participating; deliberations which impact policy or governance in some way are seen as bearing public value and opinions, although the entire public, and most often a vast majority of the public, did not participate. In this way, deliberations are seen as making present those who are absent from discussion by formulating an idea of “public interest” or “common good.” This is seemingly problematic in that those who are absent lack political and moral agency, having no ability to control or choose in what ways they are being made present by the deliberators. To counter this problem the idea of a “mini-public,” a group of people selected in such a way as to be representative in some form of the public-at-large, has been developed as a vehicle in which deliberations can be conducted.[xxi] In this way, just as deliberation can be a tool for enriching representative politics, representation can enrich the process of deliberation. For these reasons, the CA claims to represent Ontarians in some fashion, being referred to as a “representative body of electors” in the Election Act which created it.[xxii]
Some find contention with the convergence of representation and deliberation. One argument is that representation could conceivably restrict the representative from fully acknowledging and understanding ideas which diverge from those held by whomever s/he represents. In essence, representation “would lead to representation by an “elect” group, thus clashing with the goal of providing a voice for ordinary citizens.”[xxiii] In this view, representation is too contaminated by the interest-driven premises of social choice theory to be compatible with the public-minded promise of deliberation. While this is a valid claim that should be considered, I don’t think it completely forecloses representation in deliberative bodies. It is conceivable that representatives could be chosen for their ability to reason and comprehend arguments, as opposed to similarities in interest or belief. Furthermore, the way that a body represents the public-at-large does not have to be through an individual-constituency relationship. A deliberative body can be seen as a representative microcosm, in which the individual members of the body would not be representative, but the body itself would be representative of the general public. In this sense, a type of controlled randomness in the selection process would make the group deliberative, with the underlying premise being that any other group of citizens, given the same circumstances, would come to similar conclusions.[xxiv] It is this form of representation which I suggest the CA assumes.[xxv]
Whether or not deliberative bodies can, or are, in fact representative, the normative question of whether or not deliberative bodies should be representative still remains. In their discussion of mini-publics “with some claim to representativeness,” Goodin and Dryzek qualify their definition in a useful way for this discussion:
By “some claim,” we do not mean statistical representativeness…nor do we mean electoral representation. All “some claim to representativeness” need mean is that the diversity of social characteristics and plurality of initial points of view in the larger society are substantially present in the deliberating mini-public.[xxvi]
It is the importance placed on the diversity of “social characteristics” and “initial points of view” which is instructive. If the concept of deliberation rests on the notion that rational discussion, conducted by a group of non-self-interested individuals, can best unveil a truth in regards to (or at least the best answer for the question of) “public good,” then contingent to this is the assumption that an individual, with his/her held perspectives and experiences, holds an incomplete, but completely necessary, component of the public good. Reasons, arguments and public-minded claims are not seen as independent from individual perspective and opinion, but rather as deriving from them, in which case the perspectives individuals bring to deliberative forums are infinitely unique sources of reason and conceptions of public-good. Understood in this way, a plurality of “social characteristics” and “initial points of view” creates a richer supply for reasons and opinions, thus a more a robust deliberation and, it would follow, a better formulated conclusion and conception of public interest.
In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill writes that because “the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.”[xxvii] This was written in the defense of freedom of opinion, and it is this freedom which must be actively sought after and made present in deliberative bodies for the best results. As such, representation offers the ability for a vast array of perspectives and experiences to converge and synthesize, simultaneously enriching deliberation and fortifying legitimacy in the eyes of those not participating in the deliberation. This being the case, I suggest deliberative bodies, the CA included, be representative of the diversity of experiences, backgrounds, and lifestyles of the general public. Here, proportionality may or may not be necessary, as giving minority and majority alike the same amount of representation could make for a deliberation more inclusive to wide-ranging perspectives and viewpoints.
So in what ways does the CA attempt representation? First, as I mentioned earlier, it attempts to statistically represent Ontario as a microcosm through randomness. To this I would simply question whether or not 103 members is a statistically relevant sample size for this purpose. As for the representation of diverse backgrounds and perspectives which I just discussed, there are three main ways in which the CA has taken this into account: the requirement that a member from each electoral riding be present, presenting geographical diversity; the mandatory presence of fifty-two women in the CA; and the mandatory presence of one self-identified Aboriginal person.[xxviii] While this is certainly a good start, I would suggest that a fuller conception of diversity can have been taken into account. Some considerations along this line which, if taken into account, could have enhanced the diversity of the CA are as follows: requiring more than one mandatory seat for Aboriginals, perhaps with the intention of representing the diversity of experiences, cultures, and values within the Aboriginal community; the representation of recent immigrants, perhaps from different national backgrounds; taking social class into consideration, perhaps making certain requirements for landowners and non-owners, managers and union members, etc.; augmenting the “one member from each riding” stipulation in such a way that reflects the large Francophone community in Northern Ontario as a means of representing Ontario’s linguistic diversity.
While I know these types of suggestions presents a self-perpetuating problem in that there are an infinite number of groups which could demand representation ad infinitum, including cross-group sects (eg. perhaps there should be a mandatory seat for Aboriginal women or Francophone workers), it is nevertheless an important consideration for future deliberative bodies to take into account. In this way, the reasons which are made present by deliberation can be more closely in sync with the reasons of the absent society-at-large, making deliberation a more viable and legitimate political method within Canadian political culture as it now stands.
---------------------
[i] For a more thorough treatment of the complexity of “representation” see Dr. Ron’s first posting.
[ii] Hanna Pitkin. Representation. New York: Atherton Press, 1969: 16.
[iii] Jon Elster. “The Market and the Forum: Three varieties of Political Theory” from Foundations of Social Choice Theory ed. Elster, J & Hylland, A. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986: 103-104.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Joseph Schumpeter. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper & Row, 1950: 259-262.
[vi] The way in which the representative acts can still be open to interpretation, particularly in what Pitkin calls the “mandate-independence controversy” (Ptikin, Representation, 17). Regardless of how it is interpreted, the necessity here is that the citizens see their interests as somehow represented through their politicians.
[vii] Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 296.
[viii] Elster, “The Market and the Forum,” 104-105.
[ix] Elster, “The Market and the Forum,” 112.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Ibid, 113.
[xii] For a more detailed discussion of “reciprocity” see my posting “Deliberative Democratic Theory and the Citizens’ Assembly”
[xiii] Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson. Democracy and Disagreement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996: 14.
[xiv] The emphasis here however is on deliberation over consultation. I say this because the vast majority of Ontarians are not participating in the consultation phase. Because of this, those who participate are more akin to those who are present as opposed to those who are absent; by participating in the consultation phase, non-CA Ontarians are participating in the more general deliberation, and in turn are participating in the act of making those not participating, or who are absent, present. While one might argue that voting on the final referendum is also part of making those absent present, I would contend that that does not make them present in the process of producing the recommendation (what the CA was assembled for) but rather in the enactment of it. In this way, it is still mainly the act of deliberation which is supposed to make them present in the CA.
[xv] Mark Brown. “Survey Article: Citizen Panels and the Concept of Representation.” Journal of Political Philosophy (14.2, 2006): 216. Representing “in the sense of communicating with or acting for its constituents” relates to the point I raised in Note vi regarding the “mandate-independence controversy.”
[xvi] Ibid.
[xvii] Ibid, 219.
[xviii] One objection to this might be that in practice the CA’s conclusion is definitively not seen as the same as Ontarians, a fact evidenced by the proviso of the referendum. Because of this, deliberation is perhaps not intended to reason on behalf of the public, but merely on behalf of its participants. While I might agree with this contention, the referendum (notwithstanding the sixty percent super-majority recently attached to it) can still be viewed as compatible with deliberative theories in that it assures that the conclusion reached by the CA is justified by sufficient reason. In theory, the conclusions reached by such a deliberative body could be agreed to by all and the reasons used to justify it could be understood by all, however if the reasons offered are not sufficient to convince the general public, the referendum failing to pass hold’s the decision accountable. In short, if deliberations are conducted successfully, the referendum will pass; if not, the referendum will fail. Either way the referendum does not deligitimate the CA’s deliberation but indicates how efficiently it was carried out.
[xix] Brown, “Citizen Panels,” 206.
[xx] Ibid., 205
[xxi] Archon Fung. “Survey Article: Recipes for Public Spheres: Eight Institutional Design Choices and Their Consequences.” The Journal of Political Philosophy (11.3, 2003): 338-339, and Robert Goodin and John Dryzek. “Deliberative Impacts: The Macro-Political Uptake of Mini-Publics.” Politics & Society (34.2, 2006): 219-221.
[xxii] Election Act, Ontario Regulation 82/06, Citizens’ Assembly on ElectoralReform, Article 2.
[xxiii] Brown, “Citizen Panels,” 208.
[xxiv] Ibid, 209.
[xxv] See my post “Monday’s Public Issues Forum.”
[xxvi] Goodin and Dryzek, “Deliberative Impacts,” 221.
[xxvii] J.S. Mill. On Liberty. London: Penguin Publishing, 1974: 116.
[xxviii] Election Act: Article 4, Clauses 1-3.
