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Randomly Selected "Politicians": Transforming Democracy in the Post-Conflict Context

随机选出的“政治家”：冲突后背景下的民主转型

基本信息

批准号：
ES/M000257/1
负责人：
John Garry
金额：
$ 24.75万
依托单位：
Queen's University Belfast
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2014
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2014 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FM000257%2F1
关键词：
Randomly Selected Politicians Transforming Democracy

项目摘要

After decades of violent conflict in Northern Ireland, the 'peace process' led to the historic 1998 Good Friday/ Belfast Agreement and the establishment of power-sharing institutions. However, one major criticism of the process and the resulting power sharing governance relates to the focus upon securing compromise between elites (political party leaders), somewhat at the expense of ordinary citizens. Citizen engagement is constrained by two features of the power sharing system. First, the fact that all politicians elected to the Assembly have to declare themselves to be either 'unionist' or 'nationalist' (or 'other') means that ethno-national issues relating to the nationalist-unionist divide dominate politics, and other issue areas - perhaps relating to social and economic matters - are downplayed in importance. Second, the fact that all political parties are included in the power sharing government means that it is not possible for voters to 'throw out' the government and replace it with a different one. Hence, despite the fact that power sharing has certainly solidified peace and stability, there is still much to be done to ensure a political system in which all citizens are engaged - in terms of being represented and in terms of contributing to decision making. We propose a practical intervention to help achieve this engagement. We suggest amending the current political institutions by adding a new parliamentary body - an 'upper house'/'second chamber' of randomly selected ordinary citizens. A virtue of randomly selecting citizens is that, as demonstrated by statistical theory, a group of such citizens would look very much like society as a whole. It would contain equal numbers of men and women, and would contain people from low-income backgrounds and ethnic minorities in direct proportion to the numbers of people from low-income backgrounds and ethnic minorities in society. And it would contain the cross section of views that exist right across society. So, if 10 percent of the entire Northern Ireland population are Protestant working class who feel that flags should be flown on public buildings all year round, then (almost exactly) 10 percent of a randomly selected body would contain such people with such views. A randomly selected upper house of parliament would be a mirror image of society as a whole. Randomly selecting political decision makers has actually been widely used in history - in ancient Athens (often seen as the birthplace of democracy) and in medieval Florence and Venice - and randomness is also the selection mechanism underlying the use of juries in legal trials. Furthermore, there have been some contemporary experiments internationally using randomly selected citizens to make policy recommendations (for example, in British Columbia and in the Irish Constitutional Convention). However, there has not been work on formally incorporating random decision making into the political system in deeply divided places in order to enhance inclusion and allow a legitimate democratic space for 'protest' voices of ordinary citizens. The purpose of our project is to come up with a good, well worked out, suggestion as to how best to include a randomly selected decision making body into the existing Northern Ireland political system. First, we bring international academic experts together to generate a range of possible ways of doing so. Second, we ask ordinary Northern Ireland citizens what they think of our suggestions. Third, we interview half of all elected politicians in Northern Ireland and identify their main objections to a possible role for randomly selected citizens. Bearing in mind this evidence from public opinion and the opinions of politicians, we finalise our suggestions as to how best to amend existing institutions to build in a role for randomly chosen citizen decision makers. Finally, we illustrate in a small real-world trial citizen decision making in action.

在北爱尔兰经历了数十年的暴力冲突后，“和平进程”促成了具有历史意义的1998年耶稣受难日/贝尔法斯特协议，并建立了权力分享机构。然而，对这一进程和由此产生的权力分享治理的一个主要批评涉及到关注确保精英(政党领导人)之间的妥协，这在一定程度上是以牺牲普通公民的利益为代价的。公民参与受到权力分享制度的两个特征的制约。首先，所有当选议会议员的政客都必须宣布自己是“工会主义者”或“民族主义者”(或“其他人”)，这意味着与民族主义者和工会主义者的分歧有关的民族问题在政治中占据主导地位，而其他问题领域--可能涉及社会和经济问题--的重要性被淡化。其次，所有政党都被包括在权力分享政府中，这意味着选民不可能“抛弃”政府，而用一个不同的政府取而代之。因此，尽管权力分享肯定巩固了和平与稳定，但仍有许多工作要做，以确保所有公民都参与其中的政治制度--无论是在代表性方面，还是在参与决策方面。我们建议进行实际干预，以帮助实现这一接触。我们建议修改现有的政治机构，增加一个新的议会机构--由随机挑选的普通公民组成的“上议院”/“下议院”。随机选择公民的一个优点是，正如统计理论所证明的那样，一群这样的公民看起来非常像整个社会。它将包含同等数量的男性和女性，并将包含低收入背景和少数族裔，其人数与社会中的低收入背景和少数族裔人数成正比。它将包含整个社会存在的各种观点的横截面。因此，如果北爱尔兰总人口的10%是新教工人阶级，他们认为应该全年在公共建筑上飘扬旗帜，那么(几乎完全正确)随机挑选的10%的人中会有这样的人持有这样的观点。随机选出的议会上议院将是整个社会的镜像。随机选择政治决策者实际上在历史上得到了广泛的使用--在古代雅典(通常被视为民主的发源地)以及中世纪的佛罗伦萨和威尼斯--随机性也是在法律审判中使用陪审团的基本选择机制。此外，国际上已经有一些当代的实验，使用随机选择的公民来提出政策建议(例如，在不列颠哥伦比亚省和在爱尔兰宪法公约中)。然而，在严重分裂的地方，还没有正式将随机决策纳入政治体系的工作，以加强包容性，并为普通公民的“抗议”声音提供合法的民主空间。我们项目的目的是就如何最好地将随机挑选的决策机构纳入北爱尔兰现有的政治制度提出一个良好的、经过精心设计的建议。首先，我们将国际学术专家聚集在一起，制定一系列可能的方法来实现这一目标。其次，我们询问普通北爱尔兰公民对我们的建议的看法。第三，我们采访了北爱尔兰一半的民选政客，找出他们对随机选择的公民可能扮演的角色的主要反对意见。考虑到这一来自公众舆论和政客意见的证据，我们最终确定了我们的建议，即如何最好地修改现有机构，以便为随机挑选的公民决策者建立一个角色。最后，我们通过一个小型的真实世界审判来说明公民决策的实际作用。