Democracy in the UK after Brexit

公众对一个国家核心宪法安排的信任是民主成功的基本条件。围绕英国退欧的辩论在英国严重考验了这种联系。现在需要仔细、详细的研究来确定哪些变化有助于恢复它。拟议的项目将提供这方面的研究。​这些辩论不仅提出了关于制度的基本问题，还提出了关于政治文化和我们对民主的基本概念的基本问题。在2019年的大选中，所有主要政党的宣言都呼吁进行某种形式的宪法审查。保守党的宣言（第48页）承诺成立一个“宪法、民主和权利委员会”来审查“政府、议会和法院之间的关系”。自选举以来，疫情引发了进一步的问题，涉及对政府广泛的紧急权力的监督，专家、议会和媒体的适当作用，以及对公民自由的保护。因此，它更加需要了解公众对我国民主基本原则的态度，并确保听取公民的意见。该项目将根据三个要素的独特组合，通过对公众态度的严格、独立研究，为英国脱欧后治理的辩论和决策提供信息。首先，一项传统的调查将调查英国公众对民主原则、制度和实践的看法。它将显示社会各界的态度是如何变化的，并衡量人们对不同宪法问题的看法是如何相互关联的。第二，公民大会将探索人们对这些问题的看法，当他们能够深入了解这些问题，讨论这些问题，并考虑他们自己的优先事项时。决策者和其他人日益将公民大会视为促进对关键政策问题进行更深思熟虑的考虑的重要手段，该项目将实现这一目标，并收集有关其运作方式的证据。第三，对英国人口的进一步调查将评估人们对公民大会和大会结论的反应，通过一系列实验来评估大会产出的哪些部分对更广泛的公众最有说服力。这三个要素的结合将使项目领导能够衡量基线和深思熟虑的态度之间的分歧程度，并检查这种差异可以克服到什么程度。通过该项目产生的证据和分析将为有关民主改革的辩论和高层决策过程提供信息。它将提供迄今为止收集的有关英国公众对民主态度的最丰富的信息来源，允许按人口群体进行深入分析，并探索不同选择之间的权衡。它还将把态度与民主原则、政治文化和体制设计备选办法联系起来- -特别是在政府、议会和法院之间的权力平衡方面。在“改变欧洲”团队中，项目负责人将与英国其他成员密切合作，在整个项目的开发和实施过程中与政治领域的政策制定者密切接触，以最大限度地提高研究结果的相关性和影响。该项目的网页将成为公众讨论这些问题的关键资源：它们将包括调查结果、会议简报和演示文稿、报告、视频和博客文章。因此，该项目将促进对民主制度未来健康至关重要的问题进行知情的讨论。

Public confidence in a country's core constitutional arrangements is a basic requisite of democratic success. The debates over Brexit tested that bond severely in the UK. Careful, detailed research is now needed to establish what changes would help restore it. The proposed project will provide that research.In the years since the 2016 referendum, both supporters and opponents of Brexit have alleged at different times that a 'constitutional coup' has been underway - with judges, ministers or parliamentarians (depending on the accuser's perspective) said to be overreaching their proper powers. These debates raised fundamental questions not just about institutions, but also about the culture of politics and our basic conceptions of democracy. At the 2019 general election, all of the major parties' manifestos called for some kind of constitutional review. The Conservative manifesto (p. 48) promised a 'Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission' to examine 'the relationship between the Government, Parliament and the courts'. Since the election, the pandemic has raised further questions, regarding oversight of the government's extensive emergency powers, the proper roles of experts, parliament, and the media, and the protection of civil liberties. It has thus heightened the need to understand public attitudes to the fundamentals of our democracy, and to ensure that citizens' views are heard. This project will inform debates and decisions about post-Brexit governance, through rigorous, independent research into public attitudes, based on a unique mix of three elements. First, a conventional survey will examine public opinion across the UK on democratic principles, institutions, and practices. It will show how attitudes vary across society and gauge how views regarding different constitutional issues are related to each other. Second, a citizens' assembly will explore what people think on these matters when they have been able to learn about them in depth, discuss them, and think through their own priorities. Citizens' assemblies are increasingly seen by policymakers and others as vital means of fostering more thoughtful consideration of key policy questions, and the project will both enable that and gather evidence on how it works. Third, a further survey of the UK population will assess how people respond to the citizens' assembly and the assembly's conclusions, using a series of experiments to assess which parts of the assembly's output are most convincing to the broader public. The combination of these three elements will enable the project leaders to gauge the degree of disagreement between baseline and deliberated attitudes, and examine how far such differences might be overcome.The evidence and analysis generated through the project will inform debates and high-level policymaking processes relating to democratic reform. It will provide the richest source of information ever collected on UK public attitudes to democracy, allowing in-depth analysis by demographic group, and exploring trade-offs between different options. It will also link attitudes to democratic principles, political culture and options for institutional design - particularly with respect to the balance of power between government, parliament and the courts.Working in close collaboration with other members of the UK in a Changing Europe team, the project leaders will engage closely with policymakers across the political spectrum throughout the development and implementation of the project to maximise the relevance and impact of the findings. The project's webpages will become a key resource for public discussion on these matters: they will include survey results, assembly briefing papers and presentations, reports, videos, and blogposts. The project will thus advance informed discussion of issues of vital importance to the future health of the democratic system.