A Citizens’ Assembly in Northern Ireland?

John Garry Queen’s University Belfast

Difficult Issues…

• Welfare reform

• Flag display

• Parading

• Remembering the past

Why not just let citizens decide?

• Deliberative democracy

• Random selection of citizens

• Learn about an issue

• Discuss the issue face-to-face

• Make a decision

Are such decisions acceptable?

• Yes, say deliberative democrats

• Due to high quality consideration of the issue

• And because citizens are randomly chosen…

• …the decision is what everyone would come to if everyone took part

Problem! - Talking is Bad

• Citizens discuss the issues with each other

• This messes up the sample because the sampled persons are assumed to be independent of each other

• So, we can’t infer from the sample to the wider population

• Thus, the citizens doing the decision-making do not ‘represent’ the people as a whole

Solution! - Imagination is Good

• Dodge the problem by not letting people talk to each other • Get them to use their imagination instead

• Deliberate inside their head, not by talking to others

• Statistically desirable, it doesn’t screw up the sample

• Plus, deliberation is about thinking anyway

• Talk is just one way to get people to think

• Asking people to imagine is another way

How to imagine?

• Provide the random citizens with a description of the different perspectives on the issue

• Invite the random citizens to imagine a conversation with someone who holds a different view on the matter

imagined deliberation by random citizens

reflective preferences

binding decision

Perspective taking

empathy

Figure 1

Imaginative Randomcracy: A model of citizen decision making

described perspectives

reflective preferences

binding decision

Perspective taking

empathy

Figure 2

Imaginative Randomcracy via described perspectives

mentally simulated discussion

reflective preferences

binding decision

Perspective taking

empathy

Figure 3

Imaginative Randomcracy via mentally simulated discussion

Experiment: Which approach works best?

• Pilot test of an experiment using QUB students

• Issue of flag flying

• Options: Union Flag on public buildings– all the time– none of the time– designated days

Four Experimental Conditions

• Read distinct perspectives on each option

• Imagine a conversation with someone from the other community who hold the hardline viewpoint– What would he say on each option?– What would you say in response? – What would he say back to you?– How would you amicably conclude the discussion?

• Both

• Neither

Perspectives seems to work better than imagined discussion

• Less hardline views

• More conciliatory

• More accepting of different positions

• Imaginary friends can wind you up!

How many random citizens and what decision rule?

• 1000 would do

• In the same way that an opinion poll is usually 1000

• You need this many to be fairly sure it’s a good representation of the population as a whole

• Given the + or – 3% margin of error that is typical of polls of this size…

• …to ensure you have a majority you would need at least 53% rather than 50% plus 1.

A citizens’ assembly for Northern Ireland?

• Create a balanced short film of the distinct perspectives on an issue (such as flags)

• Show this to 1000 random citizens

• Then ask them to indicate their preferences on the flag issue

• This would be a high quality decision by the people

• Good deliberation plus a good sample that is representative of the population

• If you bring random citizens in to talk this messes up the sample

• If you have much less than 1000 citizens you can’t make any inferences anyway

Isn’t that very complicated?

• No

• And it’s cheap

• It could be done for about £50,000

• Isn’t that a lot of money?

• No

• Especially compared to the £22 million pounds of police costs for the recent flag dispute

Acknowledgements

• Presentation drawn from a paper with Clifford Stevenson and Peter Stone

• Research is part of a large research project called ‘Randomly Selected Politicians: Transforming Democracy in the Post-Conflict Setting’

• Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

• Under the ‘Transformative Research’ theme

• Team also includes David Farrell, Brendan O’Leary, John Coakley, Fabian Schuppert, Cillian McBride, George Tridimas

Thanks very much