Electoral Reform

[eppie]

Hi Shadow,

I, too, am very excited about the Citizens' Assembly and its proposal. When I was doing my undergraduate work in BC I had the opportunity to watch the proceedings first hand and was amazed at the quality of the citizen deliberations. I've been similarly impressed in Toronto (where I'm doing my MA) and my PhD will likely relate to "experimental" deliberative exercises like the CA format, which (I think) might have interesting ramifications for the future of political representation. It's definitely helped to jar some preconceptions (among political scientists) about the ability of average citizens to reason about politics. When placed in the right setting, members have shown an impressive willingness to change their mind and actually respond to arguments and reasons rather than simply adhere to pre-formed biases and interpretations. Rather promising, I think.
BTW: our friends in California should get to know the process a little bit; from what I understand, there may be a proposal made sometime in the future that similar exercises (of a smaller scale) be used as deliberative "filters" on proposed ballot initiatives. There's also a similar process going on re: electoral reform in the Netherlands, so eppie should be paying attention!

I will, and I must say that I think the subject of your PhD research (will you start or have you already started?) looks very interesting to me. Be sure (if you can) to post some of your findings later on here.


ps I'm a bit confused by all the terms used here. Are you talking about what we (in Holland) call a referendum?