From Roger Morgan, Presteigne, Powys, UK
Laura Spinney’s article proposes the use of randomly selected citizens’ assemblies to harness the creativity of the crowd to generate good solutions to public problems. The idea is a return to Athenian democratic principles, using new decision-making processes and new technology to shift governing decision-making closer to the general public than it is in current, rather distrusted systems. (5 October, p 32)
But citizens’ assemblies haven’t been convincingly representative so far. Random invitations to the public to participate (“sortition”) have usually led to only a single-figure percentage accepting, reducing the initial value of random selection. Moreover, the representativeness of assemblies as “mini-publics” has relied on selection by criteria such as gender, age and initial views on subjects to be considered. But there is little evidence about what criteria truly maximise representativeness.
We need to properly test the validity and reliability of potential new democratic processes.
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