Rotation, task definition and an increased membership: an alternative imaginary for a permanent ECA
Graham Smith (University of Westminster) and David Owen (University of Southampton)
We are sympathetic to the idea of a European Citizens’ Assembly (ECA) as a means of invigorating the democratic culture and practices of the European demos. And we appreciate the thought leadership offered by Kalypso Nicolaidis and the Democratic Odyssey project more generally. The issue for us is, first, how any ECA is conceived and realised, and second, how it is embedded within the wider institutional ecology of the EU. Many of the contributions have addressed this second issue, with some reflecting on the ECA while holding the rest of the current institutional context stable and others seeing the ECA as part of, and a spur to, wider institutional transformation. We suggest that focusing on the first issue is a prerequisite for thinking through the second issue.
The dominant imaginary for most proponents of permanent citizens’ assemblies is that of a single sortition assembly that functions somewhat like a parliamentary chamber: it works across a number of issues at the same time. Although Nicolaidis’ proposal is a little opaque in this regard, it appears to follow this logic.
Our concern is that such an assembly imaginary is a long way from the “deliberative wave” of citizens’ assemblies and other processes from which Nicolaidis and others draw inspiration. The majority of assemblies have been ad-hoc and focused on a single issue. Where permanent citizens’ assemblies have been established – for example, the Ostbelgian Citizens’ Dialogue, the Brussels Capital Region Climate Assembly and the Paris Citizens’ Council – remits have been similarly limited to single topics. Or, where there has been more than one topic, assembly members have been broken into different groups or dealt with them sequentially.
We offer an alternative imaginary to those who advocate for a permanent European Climate Assembly, or national sortition legislatures for that matter, who tend (implicitly or explicitly) to think in terms of a single body where members work together across multiple issues. Our alternative rests on a couple of design principles: (1) sortition combined with rotation and clear task definitions; (2) larger membership from which individual sub-assemblies – or juries – are drawn to undertake specific tasks.
Rotation, specific task assignment, and two-stage sortition
Rotation and clear task definition is critical because our concern is that a single body wrestling with a range of different issues will quickly develop the dysfunctions we associate with existing legislative bodies: from horsetrading between proponents of different proposals through to corruption as those with interests (and resources) outside the body target individual members as political amateurs who, as Richard Bellamy notes (and Svenja Alhaus & Eva Schmidt concur), may ‘be more susceptible to lobbying and the influence of conspiracy theorists and the like’. It is hard to believe that such a multi-issue body could be deliberative in the way that Nicolaidis and other proponents hope.
Second, we agree with some of the other contributors that the membership of the ECA, as currently proposed, would be rather limited: a relatively small number of European residents would be able to exercise their judgement and power at any one time. Our proposal, following the ancient Greek jury selection model, is that the ECA should be really big! At least several thousand European residents selected by democratic lottery perhaps once every couple of years, potentially growing much more as the diversity of functions that these mini-publics can play become embedded into, and act on, the institutional ecology of the EU.
Those several thousand citizens may only ever meet together online once or twice as part of an orientation programme. Instead, for each issue that emerges, a smaller sub-assembly – a jury – is drawn from the wider pool. Each such citizen’s jury is limited in time and remit.
At the same time, the membership of the assembly is radically expanded meaning that familiarity of the institution amongst wider European publics is increased – particularly at those moments when the full body is selected – and the random selection of each jury from within the wider pool protects against targeted corruption by nefarious interests.
Agenda-setting in a responsive ECA
Where more work needs to be done is on a third design principle. How are the agendas for individual juries set? That’s still up for debate, but a number of options exist – and could exist side-by-side. European institutions always have problems figuring out how to deal with successful European Citizens’ Initiatives (ECIs). By their very nature, we are only hearing one side of the argument from them. ECA juries could be empowered to consider successful ECIs, as Nicolaidis and Daniel Freund suggest, thereby giving European institutions a sense of the broader support (or otherwise) for propositions. The ECA could be empowered to consider major pieces of proposed legislation from European institutions, potentially with the right to send the proposal back for further consideration if it does not achieve (super) majority support. Or, more radically, chambers of previous jury members could set agendas for subsequent juries having taken evidence from a range of stakeholders – as is done in Ostbelgien and the Brussels Permanent Climate Assembly. ECA juries could also play a range of roles in terms of scrutiny whether of agenda-formation in the Parliament or Commission, or in terms of the implementation of policy in EU institutions (e.g., Frontex) or member states.
The ECA jury is a multi-functional tool that can play a multiplicity of roles within the architecture of the EU. It serves as a way of allowing citizens both to give visibility to voices and perspectives that the professional political elites may fail to engage and of holding the EU to public account. In this respect, we concur with Ahlhaus & Schmidt’s argument that the ECA can address problems of opacity, capture, and stuckness that are all present within the current EU system. On our construal, although the functions of ECA juries may variously be generative (expanding agendas and proposing policy directions), critical (reviewing and potentially revising legislative/policy proposals), or regulatory (exercising oversight on policy implementation and institutional conformity to constitutional norms), its powers are essentially negative powers of requiring bodies that exercise decision-making (and decision-execution) powers to be more responsive to the perspectives, reasons and interests of those who are subject to their rule: citizens and non-citizens, on the grounds that Rainer Bauböck adduces. The rationale for this restriction of the powers of the ECA is that while ECA juries are well-designed to act as fora for holding other bodies to account, they have an accountability problem: they cannot be held to account for their decisions in the same way as electoral institutions. If ECA juries are to become the final arbiters of decisions, more work is needed to ensure the democratic legitimacy of such arrangements. For us, at this time, this is sufficient grounds to limit ECAs to the exercise of negative powers. Hence, like Lafont & Urbinati, we see them as “mediating” institutions albeit ones that can play a wide multiplicity of critical democratic roles.
Our intervention is a plea for those advocating for permanent citizens’ assemblies to broaden their imagination as to what an ECA looks like and how it functions. We must not be constricted into thinking that a permanent citizens’ assembly should roughly mimic existing legislative bodies. It’s not enough to simply replace elected with randomly selected members and assume that everything else will be fine. Sortition-based assemblies can and should be designed and function differently. And that can be in ways that make them more participatory so that more European residents are able to see themselves as participants in EU democracy rather than spectators of it.