Equality by lot

Sylvain Waserman is a representative from Bas-Rhin and the vice president of the French National Assembly. He is a member of Macron’s party, LREM. He published the following piece in the French Huffington Post.

The Climate Convention: a democratic innovation or a sign of crisis of the representative system?

The citizen climate convention tests our democratic model. It was born in an atmosphere of general skepticism, or even worse, a certain condescension. We kept hearing that sortition has no democratic legitimacy and that its place is only in the history books under the heading “Ancient Greece”.

Today the situation is quite the opposite: no one doubts anymore the value of the proposals formulated, and the only question is about knowing how those proposals will be implemented and if they are going to be implemented in full.

When the so-called “climate and resilience” bill arrived at the Assembly, numerous deputies expressed irritation and some opined that this signaled another decline in the status of Parliament and a negation of the role of its members.

Following the example of the citizen members of the Convention

Let’s be clear: what the Convention has brought to us is different from what either the government or the Parliament would have produced in a classic legislative process. Surely it is more audacious and truly different. Let’s have the humility to recognize that and the intelligence to see that as a virtue rather than as an affront. The best example is the text for the amendment of the first article of the Constitution. Few among us would have spontaneously proposed the bold formulation adopted by the Convention: “France guarantees the preservation of the environment and of biodiversity, and the struggle against global warming”. The term “guarantee” is vertiginous and could open the door to questions of constitutional priorities, leading to complex issues and giving constitutional judges wide discretion in invalidating laws which would not respect this guarantee. Indeed: Nicolas Hulot, a sincerely committed environmentalist, had proposed constitutional reforms that are judicially less risky and more convenient legalistically, such as “France acts in order to” or “committed to promote”.

In short, the parliamentary logic has taken hold of him. This logic is opposite to the audacity of the citizens which we must recognize and which mandates that we face our responsibilities. Either we heed the words of judicial experts who would like to dissuade us by playing up the risks (as do the scientists regarding the management of the coronavirus pandemic), or we take the risk and make a strong and willful political decision. This is what we are facing: making a decision which is neither comfortable nor judicially simple, but which aims at achieving the planetary goals and our historical responsibility on this subject. It is this that the citizens of the Convention remind us, citizens who have freed themselves from an understanding of the situation which is too judicial and too prudent.

But the democratic innovation does not end there. The elected in their daily actions are increasingly trying to get citizens involved. They are even constructing public policies together with them. This is the case with mayors who involve residents in every city planning project, but also the case with deputies who involve citizens from their districts when they write bills or vote on them. All of that employs the same logic: creating direct links between citizens and public policy decisions and the bills voted on in Paris. The Citizen Convention takes this a step further: if the text it proposes for a constitutional amendment is adopted, the logic of direct linking will have been carried out to its culmination, having the citizens modifying the top level of our rules, the law of laws.

Challenging our democratic models

The Citizen Convention, both in the substance of its contribution as well as in its form, challenges our democratic models. We need to have the clarity as parliamentarians to think about it as a positive citizen involvement which gives us an unembellished message which moves us all forward. If representative democracy were doing well, if our democratic models were not in need of questioning and rethinking, if the gulf between the elected and the citizens were not as large, then the Citizen Convention could have been considered as a mere anecdote. But this is not the case.

To wrap ourselves in our parliamentary pride would be an error. Closing our eyes to the democratic innovations which strengthen democracy rather than weaken means blindness. As parliamentarians, we should accept that anything which amplifies the voices of citizens is positive.

Let us have no fear. Let us not forget that our parliamentary freedom is unconstrained and that it is in the name of this freedom that we can welcome these new voices of citizens for what they are: an opportunity for our democracy.

Filed under: Applications, Elections, Press, Sortition | Tagged: Convention pour le climat |