Could a citizens’ assembly break the Brexit impasse?

Posted on December 18, 2018 by The Constitution Unit

With parliament deadlocked, people are looking for alternative ways to break the Brexit impasse. Many have been suggested, from the Queen intervening to the formation of a government of national unity. Among the options is a citizens’ assembly (or similar deliberative process). Tim Hughes discusses four potential ways in which a citizens’ assembly could help break the current deadlock.

A citizens’ assembly is a body of citizens – typically 50 to 250 – that learn about an issue and deliberate over possible options, before reaching a collective decision. Like jury service, citizens are chosen at random to take part in the citizens’ assembly. Unlike jury service, they’re often also selected to be demographically representative of the wider population, forming what is called a ‘mini-public’. The idea is that the citizens’ assembly looks and feels like a miniature version of the wider public.

Citizens’ assemblies are fantastic tools for addressing challenging issues. They enable members of the public – not weighed down by party political interests or aspirations – to learn in depth about an issue through hearing from expert witnesses and discussions with people from all walks of life. And after that learning and deliberation, they reach a collective decision.

There is no more challenging issue at the moment than Brexit, so it’s unsurprising that citizens’ assemblies have been proposed as a possible solution. But while citizens’ assemblies have been used to tackle some very controversial issues – including abortion in Ireland – one has never been attempted in a political and media environment quite as febrile as the current Brexit debate. Continue reading →

Monitor 70 — Brexit: the uncertain road ahead

Posted on November 12, 2018 by The Constitution Unit

The latest issue of Monitor, the Constitution Unit’s regular newsletter, was published today. Since the last issue, the prospects of a Brexit deal occurring before March have oscillated, calls for a ‘people’s vote’ have increased in volume, and Brexit differences have led to relations between the UK government and politicians from Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland (still without a government) becoming increasingly strained. Allegations of a bullying culture in the House of Commons have coincided with concerns about digital campaigning and the alleged malfeasance by key players in the Brexit referendum campaign, causing concern about the state of the UK’s democracy. This post is the opening article from Monitor 70, and you can download the full issue (as well as past editions) here.

Exit day – when the UK is scheduled to leave the European Union – is now little more than four months away. Yet all bets are still off as to what form it will take, or indeed whether it will even happen. This is partly because the UK–EU negotiations on a Brexit deal remain ongoing, and partly because how parliament will react to the outcome of those talks is far from clear.

Screenshot_20181108.175141_Drive (2).jpg Just as the last Monitor went to press, and after months of delay, the government finally published a white paper in July, setting out its proposals for Brexit and the UK’s future relationship with the EU – the so-called ‘Chequers plan’. Even before publication, two key cabinet ministers – Brexit Secretary David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson – had resigned, arguing that its proposals would bind the UK too closely to the EU yoke. Many Brexit supporters – both MPs and voters – agreed: polls found the plan’s opponents among the public outnumbered its backers by around three to one. European leaders were also critical, and finally killed off the plan at the disastrous Salzburg summit in September.

Since then, UK and EU negotiators have been working frantically to resolve the crucial blocking point, regarding the Irish border (see pages 2–3). Whether the mooted November summit to sign off a deal can be resurrected will be known by the time this edition of Monitor is published. If not, agreement could potentially still be reached in December or even January. Continue reading →

Citizens’ Assemblies: How can the UK learn from Ireland?

Posted on October 25, 2018 by The Constitution Unit

Citizens’ assemblies are gaining increasing attention in the UK and elsewhere. The country with most experience of using them at national level is Ireland. The Constitution Unit therefore recently hosted a seminar exploring lessons for the UK of Ireland’s citizens’ assemblies with two of Ireland’s leading experts. In this post, Hannah Kaufman draws out five key insights.

Methods for fostering public deliberation on key policy decisions are increasingly prominent in the UK. Following on from last year’s Citizens’ Assembly on Brexit, organised by the Constitution Unit, the UK’s first official citizens’ assembly – on the future of social care – was commissioned by two parliamentary select committees earlier this year, and a Citizens’ Assembly for Northern Ireland is about to convene for the first time in Belfast. The recent Independent Commission on Referendums recommended that citizens’ assemblies be piloted in future referendum processes.

Ireland possesses the most experience of citizens’ assemblies at the national level: the Irish Constitutional Convention of 2012–14 resulted in the 2015 referendum on same-sex marriage; and the Irish Citizens’ Assembly of 2016–18 led to this year’s referendum on abortion. Last week’s Constitution Unit seminar on Ireland’s experience of citizens’ assemblies therefore provided a valuable and timely opportunity to learn lessons. The speakers were two of Ireland’s leading experts on the subject – Professor David Farrell of University College Dublin and Dr Jane Suiter of Dublin City University. This post reflects on five key insights from their presentations. Continue reading →

More direct democracy or a more directed democracy in populist-run Italy?

Posted on October 12, 2018 by The Constitution Unit

For the first time since its inception, the Five Star Movement finds itself in government, with the stated intention of increasing the use of direct democracy by increasing the circumstances in which a national referendum can be held. Carlo Fusaro examines the proposals and their potential impact on Italian democracy.

This post intends to report on the most recent initiatives concerning referendums by the new populist majority in Italy, as represented in the government formed by the Five Star Movement (M5S) and by the League (formerly known as the Northern League), following the 4 March 2018 elections.

The proposals

While the two vice-premiers Matteo Salvini and Luigi di Maio have been making headlines in other areas, Riccardo Fraccaro, a University of Trento graduate in international environmental law who serves as the “minister for relations with parliament and direct democracy”, has recently announced the constitutional reform strategy of the Cabinet.

Since the Conte Cabinet was formed on 1 June 2018, the denomination of Mr Fraccaro’s ministerial assignment was intended to symbolise the M5S preference for direct democracy. The M5S claims to be a ‘non party’ (therefore a ‘movement’), based on the apparently bottom-up organisation of the followers of comedian Beppe Grillo’s blog. In fact it has been entirely created via the internet and factually set up by a web marketing company (Casaleggio Associati) whose present owner, Davide Casaleggio, holds full and personal control of the movement’s official internet platform (and the related big data). The latter is significantly named ‘Rousseau’ after the Swiss-French theoretician of direct democracy.

Understandably neglecting the total lack of transparency of the Rousseau platform, Davide Casaleggio himself has recently theorised that parliaments might cease to exist in the near future and has emphasised the unlimited potential of people’s direct participation via the net. Mr Fraccaro himself, as a member of parliament, introduced a private member’s bill in 2015 that was meant to strengthen and multiply the instruments of direct democracy already present in the Italian Constitution. It was not enacted.

Before any text had been submitted this time around, Mr Fraccaro (in parliamentary hearings on 12 and 26 July 2018) and his chief adviser on constitutional reforms, Professor Lorenzo Spadacini (in a password-protected article for the think-thank Astrid), had presented sufficiently detailed descriptions of the reform package they have in mind.

It is a relatively prudent set of proposals which would be difficult to describe as revolutionary, but which must be framed within the extraordinary conditions in which Italian democracy is struggling these days. The package is based upon the premise that any ambition of comprehensive reform even only of part II of the Italian Constitution should be set aside: this approach, it is claimed, is more in line with a full compliance of article 138 of the Italian Constitution (which regulates the constitutional amendment procedure). This said, the government (not without some hypocrisy) refrained from directly submitting proposals: but has in fact offered a detailed strategy, expecting parliamentary groups to introduce one single bill for each reform along the same lines. The novelty is that the voters will be allowed to cherry-pick among a series of single texts, one for each item. This might be justified by the fact that the announced amendments are in fact punctual and allow such an approach. Continue reading →

Not So Fast with AV in a Second Referendum

Posted on October 2, 2018 by The Constitution Unit

As the debate about whether or not to have a second Brexit referendum continues, the form any such process might take remains unclear. Ahead of the launch of his new book on particpatory democracy, Albert Weale argues that caution should be exercised when considering the use of the Alternative Vote system in any future Brexit referendum.

In a valuable blog on what question might be put to voters in a second Brexit referendum, Jess Sargeant, Alan Renwick and Meg Russell conclude that if a three-way option is put to voters, the alternative vote (AV) system could be the right one to use. The basis for this conclusion is that when three options are involved, the option that receives the single largest number of votes may not receive an overall majority. So some system is needed to find out if there is an all-round winner, and the AV system of voting will do this.

It is certainly true that when voters have to choose among three alternatives, the operation of majority voting gets quite complex. This is one of the reasons why, as I explain in my forthcoming The Will of the People: A Modern Myth, it is relying on a myth to talk about ‘the will of the people’ emerging from a referendum. This does not mean abandoning majority voting. But it does mean that we need to be careful in the way we apply the majority principle. Continue reading →

The stormy Dutch referendum experience: Social media, populists and post-materialists

Posted on July 24, 2018 by The Constitution Unit

Since 1 July 2015, the Netherlands has been one of the few Western democracies that has allowed its citizens to call a referendum. However, the legislation allowing referendums is now repealed, as the new government says the law has not delivered what was expected. Four serious referendum attempts have been made during the life of the provision, of which two resulted in actual referendums. Based on these four experiences, Kristof Jacobs highlights what other countries can learn from the Dutch referendum experience.

The Dutch referendum law

The Consultative Referendum Law allows citizens to trigger a non-binding referendum about a law or treaty within a strict timeframe. In a first phase citizens have four weeks after the law or treaty is approved to collect 10,000 signatures. When this threshold is met, citizens then have six weeks to collect 300,000 new signatures. Certain topics, such as the constitution, the budget, and the monarchy are exempt.

Once enough signatures have been collected, a referendum is held, and 30% of the electorate must take part in order for the vote to be valid. If the majority of voters support ‘No’ and the turnout threshold is met, a bill withdrawing the law or treaty has to be introduced. The Parliament can decide not to approve this bill, but a debate has to be held. In other words: the result is advisory, even though there are formal consequences. In practice, both successful referendums led to changes to the existing legislation/treaty.

The referendum law does not allow government-initiated referendums, for two reasons. First, if the referendum is supposed to be a method of highlighting gaps between the government and public opinion, it is widely accepted among politicians that they are not in a good position to be the ones calling the referendum. After all, if they already knew there was a gap, they would surely already have acted to close it. Moreover, such referendums are seen as easy to manipulate by government parties. Continue reading →

Monitor 69: Rethinking referendums

Posted on July 16, 2018 by The Constitution Unit

The latest issue of Monitor, the Constitution Unit’s regular newsletter, was published today. The issue covers all of the major UK constitutional developments over the past four months, a period that has seen the EU (Withdrawal) Bill pass into law, a government White Paper on Brexit provoke numerous ministerial resignations, continuing investigations into the conduct of the EU referendum campaigns, and a failure to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland. Abroad, Ireland’s referendum on repeal of restrictions on abortion passed by an overwhelming majority, and Italy has a new government, the formation of which raised questions about the position and role of the country’s president. This post is the opening article from Monitor 69, and you can download the full issue on our website.

Political debate in the UK continues to be dominated by the fallout of the 2016 Brexit referendum. Both government and parliament are grappling with the detail of how Brexit can, and should, be realised.

Last year the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) characterised the vote of June 2016 disapprovingly as a ‘bluff-call’ referendum, where the government puts something to the vote in the hope it would be defeated, without setting out clearly the consequences of change. As committee chair Bernard Jenkin said on our blog at the time, ‘there should be more clarity and planning by the government holding the referendum, so there is less of a crisis of uncertainty if they don’t get the answer they want, as in the EU referendum’. That crisis of uncertainty continues. One consequence is that both MPs and peers face claims of ‘betrayal’ for asking awkward questions, which cannot be good for democracy.

It is in this context that the Independent Commission on Referendums, established by the Constitution Unit last year, has recently issued its report. The Commission was set up following concerns about various recent referendums, in order to examine the role that such polls should play in the UK’s system of representative democracy, and how they can best be conducted and regulated. It comprised 12 senior politicians, journalists, public servants, and researchers, who spanned the major dividing lines in contemporary UK politics. The Commission’s report represents the most comprehensive review of referendums in the UK for 20 years. It follows a previous Commission established by the Unit, whose 1996 report helped lead to the first statutory regulation of referendums in 2000. Continue reading →

The Constitution Unit Blog

Category Archives: Public Engagement and Policy Making

Monitor 70 — Brexit: the uncertain road ahead

Citizens’ Assemblies: How can the UK learn from Ireland?

More direct democracy or a more directed democracy in populist-run Italy?

Not So Fast with AV in a Second Referendum