Austria’s Climate Citizen Council: Broken from the Get-go

Posted on January 4, 2022 by H.J. Hofkirchner

Suspicious decisions and coincidences surround the preparations for Austria’s planned “Klimabürger*innenrat” (Climate Citizen Council) hosted by Austria’s Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment and Energy. Worrisome information emerged regarding the award of the organiser’s role and the choice of scientific experts.

Some background: Austria’s Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment and Energy is headed by Leonore Gewessler, a Green Party nominee within Austria’s coalition government of conservative ÖVP (People’s Party) and environmentalist minority partner “Die Gruenen” (Green Party). Their business lobbying sub-branch is called “Gruene Wirtschaft” (“Green Economy”) with its offices located at Seidengasse 25, in Vienna’s 7th “bobo” district.

As an aside, Austria now has the third Chancellor in quick succession since the 2019 elections due to a scandal surrounding fake citizen surveys which boosted the first Chancellor’s political ascent. SMS conversations revealed that a powerful boulevard newspaper was “incentivised” with government funds under the influence of said Chancellor to publish these fake surveys prominently. This matter is currently under investigation by Austria’s Anti-Corruption Agency. My readers will know that easily manipulated and biassed traditional surveys capture the Madness of Masses instead of Wisdom of Crowds, thus acting as a clandestine cause of corruption and many democratic ills in Austria (and other countries with a political party system).

With this background in mind: Gewessler answer to a parliamentary inquiry (the protocol is here) about the preparations to the “Klimabürger*innenrat” (Climate Citizen Council) stated that bids for independent organisation and moderation of the Klimarat were accepted throughout the EU and its 27 countries. Strangely, the Minister received only one single application by a consortium of three partners, PlanSinn GmbH, PulsWerk GmbH, and ÖGUT. PulsWerk is located at ​​Seidengasse 13. What a coincidence! Just six houses up in the same street as Gruene Wirtschaft. PlanSinn is – surprise! – also located in Vienna’s 7th district, in Zollergasse, a five minute walk from Gruene Wirtschaft. According to the Minister’s response, this single consortium’s offer luckily fulfilled all her quality criteria exactly and was thus awarded the contract.

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Filed under: Applications, Elections, Juries, Opinion polling, Sortition | Tagged: , , , , | 79 Comments »

Austria’s Climate Jury – A Mixed Effort

Posted on April 7, 2021 by H.J. Hofkirchner

Austria has now joined the circle of democratically-minded countries planning a government-sponsored Climate Citizen Jury (“Klima-Bürger*innenrat”) to tackle climate change. This follows a national popular initiative signed by 380.000 citizens of election age. At this stage, the envisaged process and timing is still quite unclear, what little has transpired is a mixed bag of some good and regrettably also some bad.

What is clear is that this mini-public shall consist of 100 random citizens and be “representative” for the general electorate of 6.4 million. Two issues here: the target number is underpowered, for comparison, Austria’s parliament consists of 183 representatives. And seeking “representativeness” in these numbers is a turnoff for those who know about statistical sampling requirements needed for this highly elusive adjective. An unnecessary weakness, the use of the word “representative” is entirely unnecessary when a simply “stratified” jury will serve the democratic purpose perfectly fine.

Clear is that the jury shall be tasked – similar to France – “to discuss and elaborate specific proposals for political measures to reach climate neutrality by 2040”. As I have noted in this forum so often, this fashionable brief is doomed to fail, just as it failed in France. An institution composed of random citizen juries is simply out of its depth with such a broad task and of such complexity. Like in France, well-meant but half-baked proposals will not impress those knowledgeable of consequences or charged to implement them. The elaboration of political proposals should be part of an open innovation competition in which any citizen or organisation is entitled to compete. Only then it is the turn of citizen juries to hear two-sided expert testimony, to judge and select between these, a task to which they are perfectly suited.

For the recruiting plan there is some encouraging information. The ministry’s intention is to recruit these random citizens proactively instead of the problematic oversampling of activists. Proof in point: a hundred of the usual suspects have already knocked at the ministry’s door but were sent away with the promise of some parallel participation process.

Recruiting will be put into the hands of a professional social research institute after a public tender – although rumours have it that SORA Institut will get the contract, anyway. There seems to be awareness of the distortions resulting from low invitation vs. acceptance rates in France.

Whether the future selected institute knows how to ensure the correct stratification for a jury is up in the air. An indicator for methodic accuracy will be that the final jury should seat 6 signatories of the public initiative (380k / 6.4m) and 43 members which see an immediate need to act on climate protection, corresponding to the ex-ante percentage of the general public which do so, according to pollsters.

Nothing is known as of yet about deliberative process design, organisation and moderation.

Finally, the Citizen Jury’s “proposals” will be sent to a committee of national and regional government representatives. There is no information about any commitment or obligation to proceed with the proposals. Sadly, and in light of the unrealistic mission definition, this may be a lesser issue due to the likelihood of failure.

Here is to an article from an Austrian daily newspaper (in German language):

https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000125369666/klimapolitik-als-demokratisches-experiment-parlament-ebnet-weg-fuer-buergerrat

Filed under: Applications, Sortition | Tagged: | 35 Comments »

Venice and Why Sortition is Not Enough

Posted on October 16, 2018 by H.J. Hofkirchner

Without much commentary, given the high level of knowledge and debate on this blog, I share an important document about elections in Ancient Venice. As most here will know, I hold it that ‘pure’ sortition is a suitable and necessary tool for democracy. However, it is also an insufficient one, as has been criticised already at the time of sortition’s outset, with the powerful “Socratic Objection” as documented by Xenophon. Today, I describe the missing element specifically for appointments to positions of power.

As most here will know, the Ancient Venetians combined sortition with elections in multiple iterations to determine their leadership, the Doge. Their success with this add-on innovation was superior to the Athenians, as evidenced by the significantly longer duration of their system. Now, there clearly were flaws, room for improvement, as their system ended by reversal to today’s unfortunate party system but that’s for another day.

So far, most scientific papers on this topic have been descriptive. Now Miranda Mowbray, and Dieter Gollmann of the Enterprise Systems and Storage Laboratory at
HP Bristol expand the debate with this paper on the mathematical properties of the Venetian method in avoiding usurpation of power while still finding the best leadership. The authors have their mind on applications in distributed computing security, but for us here, the advantages for a more mundane topic such as democracy may be good enough to give it some thought.

Enjoy.

As an aside, the statutes of G!LT in Austria therefore employ the Venetian model for all executive leadership elections. My rationale is that the party system with its unholy alliance with mass media rewards showmanship and superficiality, as evidenced by the high proportion of TV Actors and Reality Show Stars in top jobs. Instead G!LT’s protocol ensures a reasonably self-experienced, direct, personal knowledge of a candidate’s ability and suitability for an executive position. For those who read German, here to the Statutes of G!LT. For those who don’t there is Google Translate.

Filed under: Athens, Deliberation, Elections, History, Sortition, Theory | 5 Comments »

G!LT Party in Austria to use sortition

Posted on August 12, 2017 by H.J. Hofkirchner

This sortition community may be pleased to hear that a new party employing principles of sortition was recently founded by Austrian Comedian Roland Düringer. The new party is called “Meine Stimme GILT” (translates as: “My Vote Counts”) and is now highly likely to get sufficient popular support to run at Austria’s national parliamentary elections in October.

Roland Düringer has puzzled media and pundits by declaring himself not eligible for election, which of course sounds absurd for party system adherents. In fact, however, he is not a candidate and will not accept a mandate. Also, the party has declared that it has absolutely no political program which adds to journalists’ head scratching but is a logical consequence of a commitment to crowdsourcing all future policy proposals and decisions with full neutrality.

Once sufficient supporting signatures have come in from all Austrian federal states, expected to happen at the end of next week, G!LT will allot 50 parliamentary candidates for its election lists from a group of 1,000 vetted volunteers. These volunteers committed to donate most of their salary (anything above 2017 Euros) to social or democratic causes and to represent the General Will in parliament. This will be determined by “Open Democracy“, a multi-stage process mixing elements of several democratic approaches:

  1. Participative democracy — broad public participation during initial opinion and prediction gathering, open for all citizens
  2. Sortition democracy — stratified random sampling for demarchic committees from volunteers vetted by prediction success
  3. Deliberative democracy — demarchic committees will vote after a multi-phase hearing of innovators, the pro and the con side, and deliberation
  4. Anticipatory democracy — all committee decisions will be backed and tracked by falsifiable impact predictions

(Here are the principles of this process in English.)

The party decided to adopt this model for the upcoming elections, over two other competing ones (Liquid Democracy and Sociocracy), after research by a combination of questionnaire and prediction market forecasts drawing on a representative sample of 1,000 Austrians.

Democratic legitimisation will be effected by vote share in general election. Or not, as a 4% hurdle applies.

If there is sufficient interest, I can keep this community posted on new developments and of course on actual election results.

Filed under: Elections, Sortition | 23 Comments »