Democracy Matters: A Constitutional Assembly for the UK- A Comparative Study and Pilot Project

民主问题：英国制宪会议——比较研究和试点项目

• 批准号: ES/N006216/1
• 负责人: Matthew Flinders
• 金额: $ 24.56万
• 依托单位: University of Sheffield
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2015 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FN006216%2F1
• 关键词: Democracy; Matters; Constitutional; Assembly; UK

In the wake of the Scottish referendum on independence the UK is undergoing a rapid period of constitutional reflection and reform. The Smith Commission has set out a raft of new powers for the Scottish Parliament, English devolution has taken the form of a number of bi-lateral 'city deals', and Cabinet Committee on Devolved Powers (chaired by William Hague) has reported on options for change in Westminster. One critical component of this frenetic period of reform has been the absence of any explicit or managed process for civic engagement even though the Prime Minister's statement on the 18 September 2014 emphasized that 'It is also important we have wider civic engagement about how to improve governance in our United Kingdom, including how to empower our great cities. And we will say more about this in the coming days'. The creation of a citizen-led Constitutional Convention has been promoted through a number of letters in the national media, calls from senior figures within academe and the third sector and even a major petition to the Prime Minister. On the 5 Dec. 2015 William Hague responded to this pressure by publishing an open letter to some of the individuals and groups making this research grant application in which he conceded that although the coalition government was focusing on the delivery of devolution in the short-term there would be a need for a broader process of public engagement about the constitutional system as a whole. 'A constitutional convention' Mr Hague acknowledged 'is one way of doing this'. The Labour Party has formally committed itself to launching a Constitutional Convention if it forms the government after the next General Election and the Liberal Democrats, UKIP and the Green Party have also made this a core element of their plans for the future, making this a genuine cross-party issue. The issue of holding a Constitutional Convention has therefore shifted from the periphery of constitutional debates in the UK to the very core. The likelihood of a hung parliament after 7 May 2015 and the inter-party deals that will be required to form a coalition plus the existence of unresolved constitutional questions that require resolution makes the establishment of a constitutional convention more likely. The urgency - and therefore rationale - for this application is that a major skills and knowledge gap exists at the centre of government. The Cabinet Office has no specialist knowledge in terms of how to design, manage or implement major public-led democratic innovations. Other countries and regions, by contrast, have undertaken deliberative public consultative exercises - most notably the Netherlands, Iceland, Canada and Republic of Ireland have organized constitutional assemblies. As such, they offer valuable lessons and insights that need to be harnessed within the UK. There is also a major need to take these insights and feed them into pilot projects in the UK to test not only their generalizability across and between countries but also their capacity to be scaled-up from the comparatively smaller scale of previous experiments to a country with 64.1 million people. The need to get these UK-based test cases up and running so that their findings could inform future plans to establish a Citizens Assembly in late 2015 adds an urgency that pushes this application beyond the standard response mode application process with its 26 week decision-making process. This research will run two pilot constitutional assemblies around the theme of decentralisation in the UK. They will address the question of how civic engagement can be delivered, where power should lie across and within the nations of the UK and will be organised as a 'proof of concept' exercise with significant potential to influence the next UK government's decision on how to commission and execute a Constitutional Convention.

在苏格兰独立公投之后，英国正在经历一个快速的宪法反思和改革时期。史密斯委员会为苏格兰议会制定了一系列新的权力，英格兰的权力下放采取了一些双边“城市交易”的形式，内阁权力下放委员会（由威廉·黑格担任主席）报告了威斯敏斯特的改革方案。这一狂热的改革时期的一个关键组成部分是缺乏任何明确或有管理的公民参与进程，尽管首相在2014年9月18日的声明中强调，“我们还必须让更广泛的公民参与如何改善联合王国的治理，包括如何增强我们伟大城市的权能。我们将在未来几天对此进行更多讨论。通过国家媒体的一些信件、议会和第三部门的高级人士的呼吁，甚至向总理提出的一项重要请愿书，推动了公民领导的制宪会议的成立。2015年12月5日，威廉·黑格（William Hague）回应了这一压力，发表了一封公开信给一些申请研究资助的个人和团体，他在信中承认，尽管联合政府专注于在短期内交付权力下放，但仍需要对整个宪法制度进行更广泛的公众参与。黑格承认，“制宪会议是实现这一目标的一种方式”。工党已正式承诺，如果它在下次大选后组建政府，将启动制宪会议，自由民主党，英国独立党和绿色党也将其作为未来计划的核心要素，使其成为真正的跨党派问题。因此，举行制宪会议的问题已经从英国宪法辩论的边缘转向了核心。2015年5月7日之后出现无多数议会的可能性，以及组建联盟所需的政党间交易，加上存在需要解决的悬而未决的宪法问题，使建立制宪会议的可能性更大。迫切需要-因此也是理由-采用这一办法的原因是，政府的核心部门存在着重大的技能和知识差距。内阁办公室在如何设计、管理或实施由公众领导的重大民主创新方面没有专业知识。相比之下，其他国家和地区则开展了审议性的公共协商活动-最值得注意的是荷兰、冰岛、加拿大和爱尔兰共和国组织了制宪会议。因此，他们提供了宝贵的经验教训和见解，需要在英国利用。此外，还非常需要将这些见解纳入联合王国的试点项目，不仅要测试其在各国之间的普遍性，还要测试其从以前相对较小的实验规模扩大到6，410万人口的国家的能力。需要让这些基于英国的测试案例启动并运行，以便他们的发现可以为未来计划提供信息，以便在2015年底建立公民大会，这增加了一个紧迫性，推动该应用程序超越标准响应模式应用程序流程，其26周的决策过程。这项研究将围绕英国权力下放的主题运行两个试点制宪会议。他们将解决如何实现公民参与的问题，权力应该在联合王国的国家之间和国家内部进行，并将作为一个“概念证明”活动，具有影响下一届英国政府关于如何委托和执行制宪会议的决定的重大潜力。

项目成果

Popular demand for a new democracy

民众对新民主的要求

• 发表时间: 2015
• 作者: Flinders, M

The Problem with Democracy

民主的问题

• DOI: 10.1093/pa/gsv008
• 发表时间: 2016
• 期刊: Parliamentary Affairs
• 影响因子: 1.2
• 作者: Flinders M

Fifty Years of Representative and Responsible Government: Contemporary Relevance, Theoretical Revisions and Conceptual Reflection

代议制和负责任政府五十年：当代意义、理论修正和概念反思

• DOI: 10.1080/00344893.2017.1341078
• 发表时间: 2017
• 期刊: Representation
• 作者: Flinders M

Building Public Engagement: Options for Developing Select Committee Outreach

建立公众参与：发展特别委员会外展活动的选项

• 发表时间: 2015
• 作者: Flinders M

Nexus Politics

联系政治

• DOI: 10.3167/dt.2018.050205
• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: Democratic Theory
• 作者: Flinders M