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
Perspective
taking
imagined
deliberation
by random
citizens
empathy
reflective
preferences
binding
decision
Figure 1
Imaginative Randomcracy: A model of citizen decision making
Perspective
taking
described
perspectives
empathy
reflective
preferences
Figure 2
Imaginative Randomcracy via described perspectives
binding
decision
Perspective
taking
mentally
simulated
discussion
empathy
reflective
preferences
binding
decision
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