Why Citizens’ Assemblies should not have Decision-making Power
Cristina Lafont (Northwestern University) and Nadia Urbinati (Columbia University)
Against the many democratic deficits of European institutions, Kalypso Nicolaidis offers a radical institutional cure: introducing a permanent European Assembly (ECA) of randomly selected citizens into Europe’s political landscape. This is an intriguing proposal. In contrast to the many Citizens’ Assemblies that have been recently organised in several countries, the ECA would be the first to be both permanent and transnational. As Nicolaidis thinks of it, this assembly will not be in Brussels. Instead, it will be an itinerant body travelling around Europe, meeting with different local actors, with a frequent rotation of members. The idea is that having a permanent assembly of randomly selected citizens would bolster bottom-up participation of ordinary citizens in political deliberation and encourage transnational debates on policy preferences among the European citizenry. This in turn would “radically bolster the sense of ‘democratic ownership of the EU’s institutions by its citizens”.
In Nicolaidis’ opinion, complementing existing electoral institutions with a permanent assembly of randomly selected citizens is the best option to overcome current democratic deficits. Whereas more radical proposals that aim to replace electoral institutions (elected assemblies, political parties, etc.) with sorted assemblies would “run the risks associated with denying the import of politics, parties, and organized civil society”, proposals to use citizens’ assemblies in a subordinate role vis-à-vis electoral institutions are too timid to contribute to democratization. Thus, in Nicolaidis’ opinion the complementary model offers us the best of both worlds. We avoid the risks of giving sovereign powers to randomly selected assemblies without losing the democratic benefits, as we would if they had only the subordinate role of issuing recommendations that elected officials can simply ignore.
The pitfalls of complementing elections with sortition
Unfortunately, we do not share Nicolaidis’ optimism. In our opinion, the complementary model runs the risk of giving us the worst of both worlds, elections and sortition. This may not be apparent in Nicolaidis’ proposal. But this is mainly because she does not specify the exact division of powers between the European Parliament (EP) and the European Citizens’ Assembly (ECA). What type of legislative decisions can each of these institutions make? Do they have the same agenda-setting authority? Would the ECA have veto power over legislative decisions of the EP or is it the other way around? In cases of conflict, which of them has final authority? These are very important questions for assessing the stability of complementary proposals in general. If in cases of conflict electoral institutions prevail, then it seems that the complementary model collapses into the subordinate model that Nicolaidis rejects. The ECA would have merely advisory powers vis-à-vis the EP that would have final say on political decisions. On the other hand, if in cases of conflict, sorted institutions prevail, then it seems that the complementary model collapses into the lottocratic model that Nicolaidis rightly rejects. Indeed, if in cases of conflict the political decisions of a few randomly selected members of the ECA prevail against the political preferences of the majority of citizens, as expressed by their elected representatives, the democratic legitimacy of the ECA would be seriously questioned. Why would it be democratic to empower a few randomly selected people to make political decisions as they see fit while the overwhelming majority of the citizenry is (both directly and indirectly) excluded from the exercise of that political power?
Accountability vs blind deference
Nicolaidis mentions that the ECA would receive input from the citizenry. But this in no way assuages the problem of exclusion from decision-making, since members of the ECA are supposed to make decisions as they see fit and thus are free to ignore the input they receive. But even if they decide to listen to citizen input, by what criteria do they do so if not by their own personal opinion? This would be an arbitrary decision, not subject to any accountability. This is so by design. Whereas the relationship between citizens and their elected representatives is based on accountability, the relationship between citizens and the randomly selected representatives is based on deference. Elected officials ignore citizens’ political preferences at their own peril, since they can be held accountable by the citizenry in the next election and lose their power. By contrast, randomly selected individuals cannot be held accountable by non-participating citizens. Randomly selected individuals are neither up for election to serve again in the ECA nor do they have a mandate from the citizenry to make some policy decisions rather than others. To the contrary, they are supposed to make decisions as they see fit, simply based on the quality of the information they receive and the deliberative process that they engage in. But since the rest of the citizenry has not participated in the deliberative process, a misalignment between the political views of the ECA members and the rest of the citizenry is predictable. In cases of conflict, whose political preferences should prevail? Those of the citizenry or those of the very few randomly selected individuals? It is hard to see why it would be democratic for citizens to blindly defer to the political preferences of the few randomly selected members (Lafont, 2020). It is even harder to see why doing so would bolster the sense of ‘democratic ownership’ of the EU’s institutions by its citizens.
Why the ECA will be ignored by the wider public
This connects with another major problem we find in Nicolaidis’ proposal. She claims that currently existing experiments with sortition such as European Citizens’ Panels have failed to generate any democratic revival because “they have been largely ignored by the wider public.” This is correct. It is indeed a major concern when thinking about the democratic prospects of such experiments. Having a few randomly selected individuals giving recommendations to policy makers while bypassing the citizenry leads to a technocratic model of ‘governance without politics’ that in no way contributes to revitalizing and improving political debates in the public sphere or citizen participation in democratic self-government. Nicolaidis suggests that the ECA would not suffer from this problem because it would reach out to the public to get input for their deliberations. But we fear that she misdiagnoses the nature of the problem. In our view, the reason why the public has largely ignored the work of Citizens’ Panels and many other citizens’ assemblies is not because their members have failed to reach out to the public. It is simply because the public had no role to play in the functioning of these institutions. It makes sense to expect people to be actively involved in a process if there is something important for them to do. If there is nothing that they have to do for the process to succeed, if all the decisive functions are fulfilled by someone else, why would the citizenry pay attention? In elections or referenda the citizenry is asked to play a very important role in the decision-making process. They are sharing political power. This is why they get involved. There are some important political decisions they must make. By contrast, the ECA proposal seems to share the same weakness with the European Citizens’ Panels. It expects citizens to pay attention to the ECA while failing to assign them any significant role in the decision-making process and in the absence of any power sharing. Of course, citizens would be allowed, even encouraged, to provide input to the institution. But if only the ECA members have agenda-setting and decision-making power, the wider public is very likely to ignore the process and let the ECA do its work.
Empowering citizens through a mediating role for Citizens’ Assemblies
We agree that citizens’ assemblies are promising institutional innovations that may be used to revitalize democracy. But they can only have a democratizing effect if they are used to empower the many, not the few. As we argue in our forthcoming book, The Lottocratic Mentality. Defending Democracy against Lottocracy (Oxford University Press), a change of perspective is needed when thinking about how to design these institutions. The important question is not how much power citizens’ assemblies ought to have, whether only consultative powers (subordinate model) or the sovereign powers of parliaments (lottocratic model). This is a false alternative. Both options are highly problematic, although for different reasons. The question we need to ask is who ought to be empowered through these institutions, whether we should empower a few randomly selected individuals or the citizenry as a whole. It is hard to see how the first option can have anything to do with revitalizing democracy. Only the latter option could have the democratic effects that defenders of citizens’ assemblies promise (e.g. improving citizen participation in agenda setting, improving the responsiveness of the political system to citizens’ interests, needs and policy objectives, etc.). To do so, citizens’ assemblies should be designed to play a mediating role between the political system and the wider public rather than being directly coupled with formal political institutions while bypassing the citizenry.
Imagine if instead of having the randomly selected members of the ECA setting the political agenda as they see fit, multiple citizens’ assemblies were regularly organised all over Europe to review and improve citizens’ initiatives to be submitted by civil society groups after gathering some low threshold of signatures. The assemblies would review and improve the initiatives they receive based on all the relevant information and inclusive deliberation. They could rank them by importance and/or urgency, and either submit them to the relevant public authorities (e.g. the EP, national parliaments, local authorities) for (mandatory) discussion and decision-making or, in the appropriate cases, to general referenda (in the relevant jurisdictions). Institutionalizing citizens’ assemblies in this mediating role would give the citizenry a clear role to play in the agenda setting process of the political system. Instead of ignoring the work of citizens’ assemblies, this design would energize the citizenry to actively participate in the process of proposing and publicly discussing initiatives, as they would know that there is an effective institutional mechanism to get them reviewed, and that in many cases it would be ultimately up to the citizenry whether to approve them. By strengthening citizen participation in this way citizens’ assemblies would provide a very much needed democratic boost precisely at a time of increasing citizen dissatisfaction with democracy. This bottom-up model for using citizens’ assemblies to empower the citizenry is very different from the centralized model of a permanent ECA. Nicolaidis writes that the permanent sorted assembly can “represent” the citizens of 27 countries “at least to the extent that the selection process is communicated and explained to the broader public in a way that is radically transparent… Over time, the pedagogy of sortition can teach the wider public that the core ethos of randomness is equal chance, if explained well, in fun and accessible ways….” Plato wrote in The Republic that the rulers must be able to devise “beautiful lies” to convince citizens that they are the best possible. What would European citizens gain from another decision-making body that makes use of good rhetoric to make them believe that they must obey its decisions simply because they have an equal chance to be selected? Why would citizens believe that it is democratic to let a few individuals exercise unilateral power over them so long as everyone has an equal chance to do so?