A referendum in Ireland on March 8 resulted in a “no” vote for constitutional changes. The rejected proposals were the product of a process involving an allotted citizen assembly. An article by Rory Carroll in the The Guardian offers an illuminating review of the aftermath of the failure of the proposed changes at the polls.
Irish referendum fiasco puts future of lauded citizens’ assemblies in doubt
Debates involving 99 randomly selected people were hailed as a model for the world, but some say faith has been eroded
When Ireland shattered its history of social conservatism by passing a 2015 referendum on same-sex marriage and a 2018 referendum on abortion, progressives credited its citizens’ assembly.
Ninety-nine randomly selected people, who are brought together to debate a specific issue, had weighed evidence from experts and issued policy recommendations that emboldened the political establishment, and voters, to make audacious leaps.
Governments and campaigners around the world hailed Ireland as a model for how to tackle divisive issues and a modern incarnation of the concept of deliberative democracy that dated back to ancient Athens.
A debacle over twin failed referendums, however, widely seen as the last straw for the man who called them, Leo Varadkar, has now put a question mark over the future of Irish citizens’ assemblies.Voters on 8 March overwhelmingly rejected proposals to reword part of Ireland’s 1937 constitution. Asked to widen the definition of family to include “durable relationships”, 67% voted no. Asked to replace a reference to women in the home with a new provision recognising the role of carers, 74% voted no. Turnout was 44%.
The crushing margins chastened the government, opposition parties and advocacy groups that had campaigned for yes votes – and put scrutiny on the citizens’ assembly that had recommended the referendums.
“There is a danger that citizens’ assemblies have now become a part of the policymaking system in Ireland that supports the various agendas of lobby groups,” said Eoin O’Malley, a Dublin City University (DCU) politics professor.
In 2011 O’Malley was part of a group of academics who set up We the Citizens, a precursor to citizens’ assemblies, but he now believes that state-funded non-governmental organisations have “captured” the process, leading in some cases to unrepresentative deliberations and unwise recommendations.
“In certain policies NGOs do tend to set the agenda,” he said.
Assemblies could stimulate productive debate but were not necessarily representative, said O’Malley. People who agreed to spend weekends discussing arcane topics with strangers often had strong, preconceived views, while assembly chairs, who were civil servants, could shape outcomes through selection of experts, he said.
One government source said there was no appetite for further attempts at constitutional change before the next general election and that faith in assemblies had been eroded.
However, many analysts blame last week’s fiasco not on the assembly that recommended the referendums but on the ruling coalition for diluting the proposals in a way that fractured progressive support and confused many voters, and for running a rushed, lacklustre campaign.
Una Mullally wrote in the Irish Times: “Citizens’ assemblies are democratic, detail-orientated, and have proven to accurately reflect the desires of the broader public. The government arrogantly went for different wording, ignoring the outcomes of processes pointing them in the right direction.”
David Farrell, a University College Dublin politics professor who has advised on citizens’ assemblies in Ireland, Belgium and the UK, said last week’s referendums had undermined the assembly’s work. “To produce a wording that doesn’t reflect what was recommended, what’s the point?”
Dozens of recommendations from other assemblies have been ignored or rejected over the past decade, a reality masked by the success of the same-sex marriage and abortion referendums, said Farrell. He denied that NGOs had captured the process and said recruitment methods had greatly improved since an incident in 2018 when a recruiter was suspended for selecting people through personal contacts.
Irish assemblies had great potential but were too tightly controlled and on occasion tasked with inappropriate topics, said Farrell, who said Ireland should learn from other countries. “The reputation of Ireland as a trailblazer doesn’t apply any more.”
Jane Suiter, a DCU professor and founder member of We the Citizens, said assemblies remained valuable democratic instruments. “It’s a way to insert citizens’ voices into the process that otherwise would be completely dominated by business, unions, civil society groups.” A recent assembly on biodiversity was “amazing” and a future assembly could play a role in the potential unification of the republic with Northern Ireland, she said.
Filed under: Applications, Press, Sortition |
Adam Cronkright
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Equality by lot 
Whilst some may choose to lay the blame at the feet of the political parties, Eoin O’Malley offers a more persuasive argument:
<blockquote>There is a danger that citizens’ assemblies have now become a part of the policymaking system in Ireland that supports the various agendas of lobby groups . . . state-funded non-governmental organisations have “captured” the process, leading in some cases to unrepresentative deliberations and unwise recommendations. In certain policies NGOs do tend to set the agenda . . . Assemblies could stimulate productive debate but were not necessarily representative. People who agreed to spend weekends discussing arcane topics with strangers often had strong, preconceived views, while assembly chairs, who were civil servants, could shape outcomes through selection of experts.</blockquote>
This confirms my worst fears — that poorly designed CAs will discredit the sortition process. We should remember that O’Malley was also a sortition pioneer.
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I like to think that the demi-legislators elected under my “Demiocracy” would not have gotten so out of sync with the general publc, being more sensitive to “political” matters such as what the public will stand for, and being reluctant to risk damage to their credibility and thus the odds of retaining their paid positions by going too far out on a limb.
Decision-making bodies, I’ve noticed from the ones I’ve been on, have an unfortunate tendency to sometimes think of themselves as gods, or as little Napoleons, needing only to wave their wand to make things happen. They can get in a mood where they think their job is to build castles in the air, the more delightful the better.
This wishfulness is very tempting. Who would not “grasp this sorry scheme of things entire” and remake it nearer to our heart’s desire, if offered the opportunity? Even an assembly that is a microcosm can be lured from its moorings after being invested with power and immersed in a let’s-make-policy environment.
This afflatus needs to be deflated and supplanted by other considerations. Legitimacy must not be imperiled. Feet need to be kept on the ground. Demiocracy does this by distancing its demi-public Electors from the policy-making fray—their job is to choose among policy-proponents—and by imperiling those of its demi-legislators who succumb to high-minded hubris.
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Roger:> Demiocracy does this by distancing its demi-public Electors from the policy-making fray—their job is to choose among policy-proponents—and by imperiling those of its demi-legislators who succumb to high-minded hubris.
Yes indeed. That is a perspective that you share with Alex Kovner and myself. The role of the statistically-representative assembly is to choose between policies proposed elsewhere, rather than to come up with their own suggestions, which will be subject to the manipulations that Professor O’Malley outlined.
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PS: In addition, Demiocracy requires that measures passed by its special-topic demi-legislatures be accepted by its all-topic omni-legislatures, whose job is to review and revise, or reject, their effusions. This is another check on out-of-touch legislation.
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PPS: “We compensate, we reconcile, we balance. … From hence arises, not an excellence in simplicity but one far superior, an excellence in composition.” —Edmund Burke
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This is the Burke quote that I think is most relevant to our work:
[Virtual representation occurs when] there is a communion of interests, and a sympathy in feelings and desires, between those who act in the name of any description of people, and the people in whose name they act, though the trustees are not actually chosen by them . . . Such a representation I think to be, in many cases, even better than the actual. It possesses most of its advantages, and is free from many of its inconveniences; it corrects the irregularities in the literal representation, when the shifting current of human affairs, or the acting of public interests in different ways, carry it obliquely from its first line of direction. The people may err in their choice [of representatives], but common interest and common sentiment are rarely mistaken. (Edmund Burke, ‘A Letter to Hercules Langrishe MP’, cited in (Hampsher-Monk, 2011), my emphasis)
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PPPS: Demiocracy tries to avoid the madness of crowds by conducting its business over the internet, distancing its participants from one another.
And Internet-based interaction has another benefit: it reduces the burden of membership on average people, who are not overly keen to participate in politics, and not as likely to be fanatical about certain issues. They can listen at convenient times, for instance, and replay sessions at 1.5 speed.
Or, if they ARE keenly interested in certain stretches, which will also be normal, they can pause and replay them, bookmark them for review, and even automatically highlight their portions of the transcribed text that is provided as captions.
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The problems with the CA process that are proposed in the article by the various commentators are the body parts of the elephant. The elephant is that the whole process is managed from beginning to end by elite, undemocratic groups. It is they that a CA is to be set up, and they determine what is its agenda, how the body will be composed, how it will work, what information will be provided to it, what form its product would have, and how that product would be used. The allotted are allocated a small part in the process, and are used as a PR asset by the elites that set it up. This is not democracy but rather an exercise in “demos-washing” the established oligarchy.
When this “works”, everybody is happy – the elites sing the praises of the new democratic innovation, none more loudly than those who hitched their wagon to the CA industry, and the people may get a momentary feeling that things actually are working as they should. When it doesn’t work, acrimony sets in.
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I agree with Yoram’s verdict regarding “demos-washing” the established oligarchy. But any attempt to go beyond that has to address two problems:
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Asking a group of citizens their deeply considered opinion on a topic is hardly controversial in a democracy.
when it comes to it, electeds probably don’t really want CAs to succeed. What’s their purpose if CAs can do the job? Those who have gained power don’t want to give it up. There’s a school of thought that running CAs in parallel with elected processes is a mistake. It’s too easy for electeds to discredit or selectively mis-represent the output from CAs. This article would tend to confirm this assertion.
CAs give citizens a great opportunity to balance the corporatocracy that has captured the election process.
it’s up to citizens to decide whose voice they want driving decision making: shadowy third party donors or everyday citizens. CAs create a great opportunity here for citizens to build a world that better suits their needs than the needs of a small minority of elites. Don’t let that opportunity pass because of one glitch. Learn from the error. Those in power will put pressure on this.
theres also the style of reporting in this article which is written to be provocative and controversial for clicks. Probably over exaggerating the doubt created by this outcome.
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>Asking a group of citizens their deeply considered opinion
The problem is ensuring that the opinion(s) accurately reflect the diversity of views within the target population, especially when the acceptance rate for the sortition is (typically) only 5%.
>over exaggerating the doubt created by this outcome
Even though it led to the resignation of the Taoiseach?
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Keith wrote:
”How can the speech acts of an allotted sample be held to represent the considered view(s) of the demos in any sense other than the purely definitional?”
Demiocracy side-steps that stumbling block by adopting the already-existing procedure of electing legislators, preferably by proportional representation, and simply similarly implicitly assuming that they embody the considered views of the populace after having attended to their behavior and campaigns.
Such election campaigns shouldn’t be as objectionable as mass-electorate elections, not being liable to the distortions of the Pernicious P’s and Dolorous D’s, and not being as shallow and multi-topic as they.
“How to get from here to there, without recourse to a popular insurrection.”
Two ways: 1 By a legislative candidate pledging to obey the mandates of a mini-public. This method was proposed by Brett Hennig and is treated in some detail in my Chapter 17, just posted.
2 By the bandwagon momentum of its adoption among employees, which “daring leftists” can jump-start—being careful to employ the Demiocratic version in which the drawing-pool is populated by employees’ ballots, not by all rando-employees, in order to bolster competence and legitimacy, to ensure success.
“The problem is ensuring that the opinion(s) accurately reflect the diversity of views within the target population…”
Demiocracy again sidesteps an objection by not aiming for a perfectionist goal, but by adopting an accepted good-enough method: assuming that the Electors considered election of legislators—ideally proportionately elected—would adequately reflect such diversity. And by assuming that there would be a good-enough similar diversity among the ballotteried Electors drawn from the public. If there isn’t, then it’s the public’s fault for not ballotting for more reflective persons—the system isn’t the problem.
Anyway, the legitimacy of Demiocracy doesn’t depend on its being reflective—although it will be much more reflective than the current system—but on its expressing the Public’s Will—a will or basic instinct to elevate persons who are archetypical, not typical.
“… especially when the acceptance rate for the sortition is (typically) only 5%.”
The acceptance rate among ballotteried Proxy Electors should be high, because: A: The ballotting public will tend to recognize persons who are above average in public spirit and pep; B: Persons wishing to serve can indicate that by donning certain accoutrements and/or garments, which should attract ballots; C: Persons selected by public opinion will feel honored and somewhat obligated to accept—more so than from merely having their number turn up.
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Complementary notes
*** The 44 % turn out of the referenda is a central fact. It implies that for many voters the involved social choices were not important or not clear (or both). So they may have been not clear for many voters themselves – and thus their votes badly reasoned; or not important – and the referendum in such cases may be a way of expressing hostility towards the political establishment. Low turn out referenda are void of serious democratic meaning.
*** I don’t have data about the representativity of the Citizen Assembly : which percent of the citizens called by the recruiters did accept to participate ? This basic point does not seem to appear in the official documents.
*** A possible interpretation: the Citizen Assembly was highly un-representative, the volunteers being motivated by an involvement in a “culture war” against the “traditional family”, whereas in the referenda people of the other side rallied and many citizens did not feel like being involved in such a “culture war”.
*** The Guardian article tells that “the Irish referendum fiasco puts future of lauded citizens’ assemblies in doubt”. But if I understand well the referendum said NO to constitutional choices approved by a wide majority of elected “representatives”. It puts likewise in doubt the principles of the Irish system as well, with both ways of expressing the “people’s will” which give opposite results. It seems easier to put doubt on the democracy-by-sortition idea, without looking to its actual implementation, than on the established principles of the so-called “modern democracy”.
André SAUZEAU
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>Demiocracy . . . assuming that the Electors considered election of legislators—ideally proportionately elected—would adequately reflect such diversity.
Alex and I agree that election is the only democratically-valid way of selecting policy proposers. The problem with the lack of diversity is the majoritarian decision rule, which we address directly by our superminority principle.
>which percent of the citizens called by the recruiters did accept to participate ?
Typically it is around 5%.
>the Citizen Assembly was highly un-representative, the volunteers being motivated by an involvement in a “culture war” against the “traditional family”, whereas in the referenda people of the other side rallied.
That sounds very plausible. And it’s why these poorly-designed CAs will give sortition a bad name.
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keithsutherland, you state that “election is the only democratically valid way of selecting policy proposers.” Why?
André — Why should we assume that “the Citizen Assembly was highly un-representative, the volunteers being motivated by an involvement in a “culture war” against the “traditional family”, whereas in the referenda people of the other side rallied and many citizens did not feel like being involved in such a “culture war””?
Well, this is one possible interpretation, but not the only one or the most plausible one.
The Assembly reported that the members were representative of the Irish population in terms of gender, age, region and social class. In that is the case it seems highly unlikely that a disproportionally large members were involved in a “culture war” against the “traditional family”.
I think we need to take into account what happened to the Assemblies reccomendations, that the wording put to the referendum did not adequately reflect what the assembly recommended.
Another aspect of this, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the “refined public opinion” differs from the views of the public at large. That’s why I think it would be highly unrealistic to expect all recommendations from citizen assemblies to be approved by referendum. I think we should not see such instances as a failure of citizen assembly in general. As we know a lot can go wrong in the time period between the assembly and the referendum, given that the matter is then in the hands of the elected representatives that may want to put their own spin and agenda on the issue.
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I was unable to edit the comment above, so I’ll just leave my regards here:
all the best, Sævar
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Saevar:> you state that “election is the only democratically valid way of selecting policy proposers.” Why?
In her 1967 monograph The Concept of Representation, Hannah Pitkin points out that the only thing that “statistical representatives” can do is vote. As soon as one of them opens their mouth to speak, they are in breach of their mandate.
An elected assembly (depending on its size and the prevailing electoral rule) approximates the ideological diversity of the target population, but this diversity is destroyed by the 50+ policy threshold. The way to ensure policy proposals reflect the diversity of the electorate is to reduce the threshold, so the (statistically representative) CA can select the one that best matches their beliefs and preferences.
>The Assembly reported that the members were representative of the Irish population in terms of gender, age, region and social class.
The polling industry assumes voluntarism to be a highly significant population parameter, which cannot (by definition) be remedied by any degree of stratification. The very low levels of take up in sortition assemblies parallels the tiny minorities who take to Twitter/X, hence the reference to the culture wars.
The democratic solution is for large quasi-mandatory allotted juries to choose between a diverse range of proposals generated by election and the superminority principle. See https://www.academia.edu/44790587/Some_Problems_of_Citizens_Assemblies
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DemocracyNext have written their apologia for the situation.
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From DemocracyNext apologia
The results marked a setback for the ruling Fine Gael party and may have been a contributing factor to the resignation of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on March 24.
May have been a contributing factor. Seems likely it would be one of many, not what led to the resignation as some are interpreting.
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Anon:> I think it would be highly unrealistic to expect all recommendations from citizen assemblies to be approved by referendum.
That’s why it’s so important to ensure that the CA decision output is perceived as democratically legitimate. I’ve long argued that this requires both balanced advocacy and a decision that is invariant across different samples. Otherwise which sample is the representative one?
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