Future of Conflict #9: Deliberative Cafe

This week I dove into the work of Marcin Gerwin on citizens’ assemblies, including Citizens’ Assemblies: Guide to democracy that works, Deliberative Democracy: Waldenia Model, Citizens’ Chamber in the Canton of Vaud, A Constitution Created by the Citizens, and Deliberative Café: An Easy to Organise Citizens’ Assembly.

The citizens’ assembly is a pattern for how a large group can resolve problems co-operatively. It is a very different way of coming together to govern ourselves than the typical instruments of democracy as I’ve experienced them.

It is much more democratic, perhaps radically so.

I am convinced the citizen assembly pattern will be a vital part of successful large group decision making in the future, so I want to use today’s episode to describe a miniature version of it.

I’m going to make up an example using an Airbnb ordinance:

Mountainville (pop. 37,000) Council is considering banning or restricting short-term rentals. Housing prices have gone up, rental inventory is low, and the character of many neighborhoods has changed for the worse.

The public comment periods have been long and contentious. All of the councils’ ideas are met with ridicule, scorn, and opposition. It’s clear that any decision they take will leave a rift in the community.

So, instead of taking a decision, they decide to pass the buck and let the citizens decide.

These are the council’s goals:

Not be blamed personally for the results
Get a better idea than what they came up with
High level of buy-in and consent from the people
Take into account diverse viewpoints
Build community through the process of discussion
Transparency

So this is what they do:

Get a group of people together that feels “representative”
Pay them to participate (3 days total)
Publicly educate those people in a way that feels “fair”
Allow those people to develop and share their own proposals
Agree to implement any (legal) proposal that has at least 80% support of the group

Because the decision came from a “representative” group with high agreement, it will have taken into account diverse viewpoints (4). Because the ideas were developed by the group and not the council, the council can’t be blamed (1) and the idea has a shot of being better (2) than the original options. The process itself is transparent (6), and the discussion itself builds community (5). Finally, if the group is representative and there is 80% support internally, that should lead to broad support (3).

And this is how they do it…

Getting a representative group

The decision of the assembly can be considered more “legit” than a specialized task-force, a referendum, or legislative vote because it’s made by a miniature version of the community in question, with every relevant kind of diversity taken into account.

In the Swiss canton of Vaud, where assemblies of these kind are written into the constitution, it works like this:

The composition of the Citizens’ Chamber shall be representative of the canton’s population in terms of selected demographic criteria, including:
a. gender;
b. age;
c. level of education;
d. residence in rural and urban areas;
e. category of occupation; and
f. income.

North Americans will notice that race/ethnicity is not taken into account. This might be because:

there’s no ethnic diversity in Vaud, or
Vaudians are “colorblind”, or
Vaudians want to oppress and disenfranchise their ethnic minorities, or
there is never any difference of opinion along ethnic lines, or
ethnic and class differences are identically correlated, so income is enough, or
something else

(I don’t know anything about Vaud!)

Gerwin emphasizes:

The assumption is that the assembly should be credible in the eyes of the residents and if a particular criterion is considered important in your city, then it is worth adding it.

In our case, let’s say the people organizing the assembly decide to take the following factors into account:

gender
age
Mountvainville Center vs Outer Mountainville (rural/urban)
income

… with the idea that income will provide some diversity in terms of renters, resident-owners, and owners with multiple properties they might rent out.

Then there’s the question of who should not be invited to the assembly.

Employees of short-term rental companies (airbnb, vrbo) might be excluded, and maybe even current hosts, as they have a strong personal interest in the outcome.

(Anyone who is excluded from participation because of their “closeness” to the topic should be included as a stakeholder, which we’ll get to later.)

The organizers send out 3,000 letters in the mail (and announce they are doing so in the newspaper) to a random sampling of residents who are balanced in terms of gender, age, and rural/urban (which is presumably available information).

Let’s say the organizers are looking for 36 members of the assembly, with 4 alternates. 40 people. And that they got 300 responses from their mailing (which is awesome) and asked the responses to include income category (self-reported) or a tax return (more work for everyone).

Then the organizers randomly trim a few positive responses from the 300 to get a set of responses that matches their representative criteria. Maybe they end up with 260, in such a way that the gender, age, location, and income of those 260 reflect the gender, age, location, and income distribution of the community as a whole.

But we need 40, not 260.

Then the organizers randomly choose 40 people from those 200, maybe using one of those lottery ball machines and broadcasting it live on local radio, to make it both fun and transparent.

Then they look at the composition of the 40 and make sure it’s “close enough” to the overall demographics to be representative. If not, choose another 40 with the machine and check again, and so on until they find a representative 40.

(There’s some mathematical algorithms to help with this, but I think the most important part is the transparency.)

And now we have a group of 36 people (and some alternates) who have blocked their calendars for the necessary days (if we sent out the invitations correctly) and are ready to take on the mantle of leadership with this one specific issue.

I spent some time on this because, if done correctly, it can scale to arbitrarily large groups of people. A national Citizens Assembly might have 1,000 people instead of 36, and involve more small group work (or parallel efforts), but essentially has the same flow and legitimacy.

Day 1: Integration and Education

We have intentionally chosen these people without regard to their pre-existing relationships or specialized knowledge, and sometimes even excluded people with highly specialized knowledge.

This is important for legitimacy, but would be unhelpful for coming with good ideas and making decisions. So we need to bond them and educate them.

The bonding part is pretty straightforward so I won’t go into detail: think “icebreakers” and polyvagal regulation.

The education part involves 2 phases: experts and stakeholders.

In the experts phase, four different experts on the topic present to the group for 15 minutes each. For the short-term rental ordinance, there might be an expert on the local economy, on building codes, or on housing.

The choice of experts is announced in advance, and all their presentations are public, recorded, and broadcast live on the internet and any community media. The point of this phase is to give a strong grounding in objective fact to the assembly.

Note: If the organizers choose experts who are associated with one position or another, they will compromise the integrity of the process by doing so.

After the presentations, the members break up into four groups and get to ask experts questions. They can they rotate so every member has a chance to Q&A with each expert.

The stakeholders phase is basically the same, except the stakeholders are supposed to be biased. They represent particular interests at stakes. Airbnb owners or operators, housing advocates, and neighborhood associations would be invited at this stage.

Again, the organizers have chosen these stakeholders in advance, and must be careful to include all relevant interest groups.

After the members have interacted with the experts and the stakeholders, the cameras are turned off and the members are left to discuss by themselves.

The last part of the day is a facilitated discussion highlighting what the members learned. The point is to share insights and information across the group and create a shared understanding amongst the group.

This lays the groundwork for working together constructively.

Day 2: Ideas and Preliminary Vote

Two weeks later, the Mountainville group gathers again.

The facilitators lead a session where everyone can share the current state of their thinking, or anything that’s occurred to them since last time.

Once the “state of the group” has been established, individuals have a time to reflect and write out the outcomes they would like to see.

This might be something like:

I would like to make sure there are a enough rentals available for locals without banning short-term rentals.

I want to prevent “ghost neighborhoods” that only have people in them on the weekends who don’t interact with the other residents

I would like some of the money from short-term rentals to somehow support local housing, so the short-term rentals become part of the solution instead of part of the problem

The point is not to identify specific solutions. It’s just to understand each member’s vision of what success looks like.

Once the members have gotten that internal clarity, they can meet in small groups and listen to each other’s perspective. The idea is not to debate — no vision is “right” or “wrong” but understand and clarify lies underneath each person’s idea of success.

This mirrors conversations processes we’ve seen before — before getting into the solution space, it’s important to understand what’s motivating the other parties. Even deeper, it’s important to understand why.

That’s the next phase: individual reflection on why that vision is important to them. What are the values that underlie their vision?

As Gerwin explains:

What is crucial is that this must be a personal perspective. These are exercises for clarifying the picture of what you want to achieve.

The whole point of this is internal clarity. In my mind, this is critical to help people avoid attaching themselves to particular options or positions. The clearer you are about your values and your vision, the more you’ll be able to see how the different proposals may achieve your goals.

Finally, we can get to solutions.

The first phase is for the members to read through ideas that have been submitted in advance by experts, stakeholders, and other residents. These are meant to kickstart the idea generation process, and are reviewed and commented on in small groups.

Then the whole group gets together for a brainstorming session — as many ideas are possibly are suggested without criticism or analysis.

After the brainstorming, the participants break into groups to focus on the idea they want to refine into a proposal.

If I was interested in market-based mechanisms to balance short- and long- term housing, I would work on the wording and details of that proposal.

If I was interested in quotas for short-term rentals by neighborhood, I work on those proposals.

Once everybody has spent time working on their favorite proposals — and before any group discussion of the proposals — the facilitation teams compiles a ballot and circulates it.

When everyone has a ballot, the members do an emotional analysis of the proposals, individually, and then share with the group:

Are there any proposals they feel happy about? Are there any proposals that make them feel anxious? Are there any proposals that worry them?

I find this step particularly interesting. We’re surrounded by this fiction of rationality — that we’re making carefully-considered decisions based on gathering information about what’s best.

This assembly pattern recognizes the only true expertise the members have is in understanding themselves (and even that is not obvious!), and appeals directly to that source.

By surfacing fears and doubts before discussion, the members have a chance to understand and address the most important blockers directly. From a mediation point of view, it’s quite brilliant.

Once the group has given its emotional analysis, the preliminary vote is taken. Each person has 6 options for each proposal:

This is exactly what I want,
This is what I want,
This is more or less what I want,
I have many doubts,
This is rather not it,
This is not it at all.

Obviously, my favorite is “This is rather not it”, spoken by a spoiled aristocratic English girl about the pony her father has just given her:

Father, I said chestnut! This is rather not it.

Anyhow.

The point is that there’s a lot of grey area that’s taken into account.

And since members vote on every single proposal, you can get a real sense of which proposals have no support, some support, and a lot of support. As well as which proposals are ho-hum compromises (only 3’s and 4’s) vs. which are heavily polarized (only 1’s and 6’s).

The final step in Day 2 is posting the proposals and anonymous vote tallies online and requesting feedback from everybody involved: citizens, experts, stakeholders, and the city government.

Ideally, Mountainville city officials would be able to provide cost estimates for each of the proposals before the final day.

Day 3: Decision

The final day focuses on getting to a decision.

As with Day 2, the first part of Day 3 is public and broadcast live.

The members meet with members of Mountainville Council in small groups to present the proposals and get feedback about how the proposals would be implemented if passed.

There’s another feedback session where comments are read or guests who have been invited to speak can do so. This will be the final round of “information gathering” for the members.

The session then “goes private” again, and the members share their reflections on the morning’s conversation with the whole group.

Once everybody is caught up, the members reflect individually on any changes they would like to make to the suite of proposals. Once again, reflection is followed by group discussion and possible revision of existing proposals.

There may be multiple rounds of reflection and revision, depending on what the group has decided. Once an equilibrium has been reached, the voting cycle is prepared.

Just like Day 2:

Organizers prepare and share ballots
Individual emotional analysis
Group sharing of emotional analysis
Voting

In order for a proposal to be accepted, it has to have high support (80%). Because of the deliberative nature of the process and the knowledge that high support is required, much of the energy that would normally go into “campaigning” in our system goes into “revision” in this one.

Conclusion

What I find brilliant about this pattern is it incorporates everything mentioned in every mediation, negotiation, and difficult conversation book out there.

Focus on building a shared understanding before asking a difficult question (Go slow to go fast)
Invite everyone affected to observe and participate at every step (All the feedback from citizens, experts, and stakeholders)
Elicit and surface member’s underlying interests, visions, and feelings
Give them a constructive mandate that forces them to think as a team from the beginning (80% or bust)

From something as small as a friendship to as large as a national conversation, these are pillars of agreement if force is not an option. We cannot assume these things — we have to construct them with intention.