age for democracy that is a premise for
today's conversation welcome to
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exponentially democracy is having a
popularity crisis Recent research found
that the young are more disaffected with
it than at any point in the last 50
years polarization is a common problem
the basic questions of State economic
growth and fairness seem Out Of Reach
and new challenges technology climate
change and social division Loom what if
we could engage people in new ways and
have them deliberate over the toughest
political issues could this put
democracy back on track I've come to New
York to discuss these questions with an
expert on the subject professor Len
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lemore democracy is having quite a tough
time right now isn't it we've had uh
trust in government in the US is it's
lowest ever in history around 40% of
Americans think that the 2020 election
uh was rigged and of course there was
January the 6 I mean these are all signs
of quite Dee rooted problems aren't they
yes yes they are it's all around the
world actually I think that democracies
are in trouble or twoth third of
Americans and French and German think
their governments are corrupt I mean
this is really worrying it's been going
on for a while but I feel like the
crisis is getting uh really acute and
set against this we've got the new
challenges of Technology we know that uh
over the past 20 years technology has
created a small number of winners and
lots of losers and now we've got got
artificial intelligence looming through
the friendly face of chat GPT and and
others threatening to to flood our media
and social media environment with fake
material this is all looks to me like
it's quite bad news well to me these
Technologies are as you you know forces
of nature as you said they they are
flooding our systems but precisely it's
it's a responsibility of our
socioeconomic political systems to
channel those things and to protect us
from them and I think that's what's
failing the most actually at the moment
what's happened with this uh
representative democracy where we we
tick the box is that most of the
decisions are made by political parties
and what we might call political Elites
and then you or I as ordinary citizens
are given very very limited Choice some
of the new
Innovations bring back a sense of
dignity respect capability capacity to
the individual Citizen and they say you
actually do have the faculties to
participate in the decision- making that
otherwise takes place
you know in the Smoke Filled back room
of a party headquarters these are things
that you have called uh miniu what is a
mini public and and what are the the
different sort of subtypes of mini
public so a mini public is as the name
indicates a sort of a miniature version
of the larger public that you select on
the basis of a random selection through
Civic lotteries so what you mean by that
a Civic Lottery a Civic Lottery well
it's it's a phrase has been coined in my
world to to try to make it more um
Visual and enticing than so not the
lottery that I lose every or used to
lose no exactly you're supposed to win
in that scenario so basically you you
you receive an email or a letter in the
mail that says oh you've been selected
to join this citizens jury or the
citizens assembly or or this
deliberative poll where you're going to
meet other people just like you selected
at random from the entire population to
deliberate about issues of interest you
know um uh it could be a Health Care it
could be immigration it could be end of
life issues it could be infrastructures
Economic Policy anything and and then at
the end uh the group you know writes up
a set of recommendations that are
supposed to be transmitted to the
government so we take a random selection
of the population the the taller and the
less tall the uh more sporty the less
sporty the more interested in politics
the less interested in politics the the
women the young the old uh the working
the not working this random selection
that represents the nation and we give
them a really difficult question you
talked about end of life or health care
that politicians haven't been able to
solve y and you put them in the room and
you hope that at the end of that process
they come up with recommendations that
are better than would otherwise have
come through the traditional politic
iCal process right I mean it sounds
quite uh quite ambitious dare I say it
yeah I suppose it sounds crazy to some
people but actually it works um so the
some famous example are the citizens
assemblies in Ireland in 2012 and 2016
they were respectively on um uh marriage
equality and abortion abortion very very
contentious issues you know contentious
issue in a Catholic country like uh like
Ireland where they had actually made it
a a crime right and so they had a sample
of 99 randomly selected uh um citizens
who deliberated over the course of
several month and at the end they
recommended that um abortion be
decriminalized and Parliament which had
been incapable of coming up with that
kind of you know conclusion over decades
put that proposal to a referendum and
2third of the Irish population voting
population approved of that changed when
I was reading about the Irish citizens
assembly on on abortion I was really
fascinated by uh one part of the
research and it suggested that the
discussions amongst these participants
were much
more
dignified and were better able to deal
with difficult questions than the nature
of the discussion that had happened
within parliamentary committees within
the Irish Parliament that those would be
filled with
showboating uh and inflammatory talk and
would steer away from harder question
question absolutely it's my experience
and I think the evidence shows that
that's always the case in Parliament
people grandstand and and fight and you
know debate in this extremely
adversarial you know manner in citizens
assemblies they actually deliberate they
engage in a sort of respectful exchange
of arguments and Views with people who
disagree with them but they take them
seriously and they listen carefully and
I think the reason is structural like
people who come into Parliament come in
with a mandate or at least some
pre-commitments and an allegiance to a
party whereas in citizens assemblies you
have people who come in as who they are
but no one knows whether they are
republican or democrat or pro-life or
you know pro-choice you don't know
anything you just know that they're your
peers so it it Fosters much more um
open-mindedness and is much more
conducive to listening to each other and
I'm quite curious about the individual's
journey in that in that process they
come in shy and skeptical and vaguely
stressful of the process they get to
know each other and then by the third
meeting usually there's a it's like
dating I always compare it to that
because there's a sort of moment where
they click and and and then they gel and
they form a collective it's no longer
just an aggregation of people truly a
collective United by a common purpose
which is very rare in our experience as
Citizens when we we vote we don't have
that we have it's very sort of abstract
this idea of of a collective so they go
through that and then by the end I mean
they they usually say it's been the you
know the most transformative experience
of my life now these citizens assemblies
have a new fan in your home country
which is France I understand that
president maon has rather fallen for
them yes um
so I think the yellow vest uh nudged him
a little so these are the the populist
popular protests for the last four or
five years in France over initially cost
of living issues and now other issues of
sort of political uh representation and
so on exactly so social movement social
movements basically trigger this
deliberative experiment uh in the
country because in nove November 2018
you know uh it got really bad and so
macron said okay let's talk to each
other so he launched this great National
debate and I was followed by the first
sort of Nationwide citizens assembly in
in my country of France with a
convention on climate Justice and
because it was sufficiently successful
it wasn't perfect but it was
sufficiently successful
he uh convened another one uh the one on
end of life issues that I got to covern
I was on the on the governance Committee
of that one it's the second uh
Convention of this type in France and
this one was I dare say more successful
than the first one I think because for
many reasons we were the second to test
this process we had a slightly easier
topic I believe narrower um you know
less technical in many respects and but
emotionally uh very very important and
touching on
issues conneting to religion culture
morality because it was end of life uh
care questions of even of euthanasia I
mean these are difficult questions so
you're right they were very difficult
and and particularly emotionally and so
we plann for that actually by having uh
psychologist onsite from day one and
they were very useful and absolutely
needed the whole time but what I meant
by it was slightly easier than climate
Justice I think it's it was because the
country was ready to move uh in the
Direction I think over 90% of French
people are in favor of liberalizing the
law and favoring some kind of assisted
suicide um and also the economic
Dimension or costs involved in reforming
the system I think are slightly less
dating than on climate so I think we
managed to get the the group to like you
know work together and make proposals um
but my my biggest um my source of Pride
if you want is that we we really
maintain the Trust of the citizens
throughout and briefly what was the
final recommendation and how will it get
turned into into a law so the final
recommendation is one uh invest
massively in paliative care and make it
so that it's a universal right more or
less and universally accessible second
liberalize the law to allow for forms of
assisted dying and forms of euthanasia
under conditions including of course
consent so let's think about where we '
got to we know that democracy is sort
facing this tsunami uh of threats but
we've also identified that that that
there are ways citizens assemblies
amongst them of getting citizens to look
at difficult contentious political
issues coming forward with a consensus
which then traditional political systems
can take forward and turn into law but
I'm quite curious about why citizens
assemblies actually work I mean what is
it about them that taps into this
collective intelligence and this this
desire to to find a
consensus one I think uh is because they
bring together this diverse group of
people that in the best case scenario is
actually descriptively representative of
the larger population you maximize what
I call the cognitive diversity of the
group you bring poor people you bring
minorities you bring a lot more women
you bring a lot more you know young
people and these perspectives are
currently lacking in our Parliament so
when you bring that you the richness of
of perspective and information that you
get is is much higher it's really
focused on okay we we're in it together
we have a problem to solve how do we
solve it but you must get show offs at
these oh you do of course you do but the
difference is that they're not rewarded
for that behavior the way a politician
is rewarded on the contrary it's very
interesting because you you you do have
all the human types so you have the
politicians type in those groups but it
doesn't work you do have also natural
leaders that are actually very much
respected they an influence the voice um
you know really carries a lot of weight
but that that doesn't mean that they're
above the others the only thing that
gives you more weight is if you have a
better argument or a better information
but but there are people who are taking
you through this process it's not like
the noela Lord of the Flies right we're
all just left on the island to figure
our own way so you're right so a third
element is definitely the curation that
goes into this right so you have expert
facilitators at the small group level
that make sure that all voices are heard
that there are not some dominant uh
voices that that crush the others that
if there's a conflict it's resolved
peacefully it is quite interesting
because even if this sounds alien of
course most of these countries have
already established the principle that
citizens drawn randomly can get together
in a process and make judgment because
that's what a criminal jury is as jury
jury trial is so we already have some
sort of precedent in this process
absolutely and so these manyi publics
are just you know taking the concept and
and putting it on steroids right it's
much bigger for example citizens
assemblies Ren between 100 350 people
they last much longer it's can be month
they also are you know solving issues
not on the basis of like unanimity but
plurality or majority role now one area
that I am really interested in uh right
now moving at exponential rates is
artificial intelligence and a major
question is how do we govern artificial
intelligence how do we get it to align
to human values part of the problem is
we don't know what those values are and
we don't know what people want from this
technology how could we use miniu to
look at that
question that's a really good question I
think in the ideal we'd have a global
deliberative process uh involving all of
humanity at different levels of
different polities we don't organize any
sort of formal enforced laws globally I
mean there are some Global agreements
but countries break them really nearly
we're organized by nation states
fundamentally but you're saying for this
it should be Global well given the expon
exponential Dimension I feel like
there's an urgency in finally setting up
the global infrastructures we need so
why not see the the you know the
question of AI as like the impulsion to
do that um where would the political
legitimacy for that come from in the
case of the right to life uh citizens
assembly in in France the legitimacy
came from the existing legitimate
political authorities who said we want
this process to run so I guess the UN
it's not ideal right so I think we have
to work with existing institutions at
least that's
my my experience with the successful
citizens assemblies at the national
level they always start from a
cooperation with existing institution so
I think we have to start there but could
you do something else could you achieve
that legitimacy through a a multi
natural process where you you just get
enough of the players to to get together
a bit like a snowball so you get the US
and and France and the UK and perhaps
Brazil and Nigeria and India and then
you've you've got enough momentum
perhaps to to drag a lots of others with
you but you know what's going to happen
all these countries are going to pick
their best and brightest and it's going
to be yet another you know Davos of the
Rich and and and beautiful making
decisions for the rest of us and I think
that finally we have a chance to do
something something a little bit
different we have the Technologies the
Civic Technologies to involve you know
an Afghan Shepherd a Brazilian
sress uh a Chinese uh um software
developer to talk about issues that will
affect all of us I think it's time to be
a bit more ambitious more democratic and
and more Visionary and and in fact I
think AI could help for example I was
talking about the role of those um
facilitators right it's very hard to
sort of synthesize the uh input right so
and the output so could AI help with
that I believe that I think it would
bring down cost it would perhaps debias
actually a lot of what's happening and
um and as long as humans are still in
control at the end and and throughout I
think it would allow us to scale to the
global level it's fascinating the bit
where you surprised me was when you said
well we could actually use these
Technologies to ensure Global
participation and the output actually
seems to me for the the first time we
would have a a global consensus on an
issue that is not a set of back room
deals exactly papered over to look like
a consensus but actually look is is a
real consensus yeah so the way I see it
is that you start doing them locally and
you you get the output and you you that
will form the material that this Global
assembly can think about absolutely that
makes you rather than go straight to the
global the thing that struck me was that
maon you told me yesterday got the
national the grand debates going not in
two years but in a couple month months
yeah right in two months and we got coid
vaccines not in 11 years but in 16
months exactly so we've got precedent of
getting these things up and running very
very quickly exactly so in addition to
going to the Moon let's focus on doing
something really bold and and ambitious
uh about
democracy so let me recap where we've
got to we recognize now that citizens
assemblies could be a very powerful tool
to revive and refresh Democratic
engagement and tackle some of these
issues of polarization and lack of trust
we've seen and we've got an increasing
evidence base that they work uh across
the world what stands in the way of them
becoming part of the political Rhythm of
Life the way that a congressional
committee is just nothing out of the
ordinary they happen all the time I
think it's it's partly uh you know the
usual conflict of interests coming from
people who benefit from the status quo
right but it's also um a lack of
imagination and sort of attachment to
Old ideas about legitimacy
accountability what democracy looks like
an unwillingness to to try out new
things one issue being of course that if
you're a politician a process like this
looks like you're giving up power
absolutely and no one likes to give up
power it is giving up power in fact um
I'll tell you what happened on the first
day of the convention on end of life the
president of the National Assembly came
to greet this convention and the
president of the National Assembly is
that the equivalent of the Senate leader
well it's more the House of
Representatives leader but they they had
felt sidelined by the first convention
because they felt like macron was just
trying to connect with citizens without
going through Parliament right so this
time around she came to to address the
the new convention and it was a polite
thing to do and we appreciated it but
then the thing she said you are not
representative of the people you have a
legitimacy but not that to decide and
she was very angry even she she said
something like um there's it's out of
the question that uh randomly selected
people replace elected officials but in
fact I think that there should be a
transfer of meaningful power from
elected assemblies which have lost a lot
of legitimacy which are not doing their
work their job MH to those citizens who
can actually do their job better if he
takes on away some of their power and it
turns out that elected officials remain
quite good at certain things fine but
there needs to be a redistribution of
bar so revolutions aside it it sounds
like we have to figure out how to get
over this impediment of of the elites
not wanting to give up power but when
you also look at major political change
it often requires a charismatic leader
we can think of uh Ronald Reagan or
Margaret Thatcher or or Tony Blair in
the UK does a movement like this need a
charismatic political leader who can
stand up and articulate it oh God I hope
not I think there are other examples
like black lives matter the yellow vest
there were no charismatic leaders it's
all movements of the people with an
expressed desire to be as they call it
you know in the black lives matter
movement leaderful rather than having a
cult figure um showing the way I think
this focus on individuals as
saviors is is not good I think that that
individuals are saviors is a Mala that
actually exist in the technology
industry as well oh absolutely we look
at these Founders these entrepreneurs as
saviors and we ignore the role of
process and participation and engagement
of very very large numbers of of of
people so they're sort of twins aren't
they I don't know if you ask Engineers I
think they know who made the iPad
it's not the CEO it seems like another
thing that we could do to make this
system more prevalent is to make these
assemblies
permanent some of the ones we've talked
about in our discussion are oneoff and I
know that in some places the uh city of
of Brussels uh in in Belgium have
established permanent assemblies to look
at Key issues I think that could be one
way of of of normalizing that perhaps
having even a a a permanent citizens
assembly on artificial intelligence for
example yes I think that's probably what
we should um head for next in fact I
always thought that the the main purpose
of a randomly selected assembly of large
size should be to be a general agenda
Setter just like you know what was the
case in ancient Athens so in ancient
Athens the agenda Setter was actually a
body of 500 randomly selected citizens I
don't know how they figured that number
but and I'm also in awe of how they run
that thing because as I said I I I I was
part of a group that tried to govern an
assembly of 186 and it's it was so
difficult the premise for our
conversation today is that we will in a
few years look back at this time as a
turning point for democracy not its
death but the start of a new golden age
do you think that's possible I think
that's possible I think there's nothing
guaranteed and we have to work really
hard to make it happen but I think it's
definitely possible
reflecting on my conversation with Ln
I'm struck by the increasing amount of
evidence that deliberative systems work
they work to reduce polarization build
commonalities and find Creative
Solutions to difficult political
problems but they threaten many existing
players in our political systems the
politicians and the parties that support
them will those people give up their
power easily I'm not so sure I think
what might happen is that as we see
success from deliberative experiments
there'll be more credibility and little
by little they will unjam our clogged
politics I'm aimar and you've been
watching
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exponentially
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