Three unprecedented large-scale democratic experiments have recently taken place. Citizen assemblies on electoral reform were conducted in British Columbia, the Netherlands, and Ontario. Groups of randomly selected ordinary citizens were asked to independently design the next electoral system. In each case, the participants spent almost an entire year learning about electoral systems, consulting the public, deliberating, debating, and ultimately deciding what specific institution should be adopted.
When Citizens Decide uses these unique cases to examine claims about citizens' capacity for democratic deliberation and active engagement in policy-making. It offers empirical insight into numerous debates and provides answers to a series of key questions: 1) Are ordinary citizens able to decide about a complex issue? Are their decisions reasonable? 2) Who takes part in such proceedings? Are they dominated by people dissatisfied by the status quo? 3) Do some citizens play a more prominent role than others? Are decisions driven by the most vocal or most informed members? 4) Did the participants decide by themselves? Were they influenced by staff, political parties, interest groups, or the public hearings? 5) Does participation in a deliberative process foster citizenship? Did participants become more trusting, tolerant, open-minded, civic-minded, interested in politics, and active in politics? 6) How do the other political actors react? Can the electorate accept policy proposals made by a group of ordinary citizens?
The analyses rely upon various types of evidence about both the inner workings of the assemblies and the reactions toward them outside: multi-wave panel surveys of assembly members, content analysis of newspaper coverage, and public opinion survey data. The lessons drawn from this research are relevant to those interested in political participation, public opinion, deliberation, public policy, and democracy.
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Patrick Fournier is principal investigator for the next two Canadian Election Studies, and was co-investigator of the CES for the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Université de Montréal. His research interests include political behaviour, political psychology, citizen competence, opinion change, and survey methodology.
Henk van der Kolk co-directed the Dutch Parliamentary Election Studies in 1998, 2006, and 2010. He is Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Twente. In 2006, he was involved in educating the citizen assembly on electoral reform in the Netherlands. His research interests are: electoral systems, electoral behavior, political participation, and local politics.
R. Kenneth Carty is Professor Emeritus and former Head of Political Science in the University of British Columbia, where he held the Brenda and David McLean Chair in Canadian Studies, and served as the Director of the UBC Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions. Carty is a past President of the Canadian Political Science Association. His publications include Big Tent Politics (UBC Press, 2015), When Citizens Decide (with P. Fournier, H. van der Kolk, A. Blais, and J. Rose; OUP, 2015), and Politics is Local (OUP, 2005).
André Blais, Université de Montréal
Jonathan Rose served as the Academic Director of the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University. He has held visiting positions at Victoria University of Wellington, the International Study Centre, and Kwansei Gakuin University. His research interests include Canadian politics, mass media, political communication, political advertising, and propaganda.
