People Before Profit and Sinn Féin have strongly criticised the decision to hold a Consultative Forum on International Security Policy, rather than a citizens’ assembly on neutrality. Richard Boyd-Barrett has made disparaging comments about the forum being a “total stitch-up” designed to make people fearful and, therefore, more likely to approve of joining Nato.
Naturally, Government parties, already smarting from Michael D Higgins’s dramatic intervention, have vigorously denied these allegations. It is an interesting question, though. Why do People Before Profit and Sinn Féin favour a citizens’ assembly and why has the Government decided to avoid it?
The fact that two citizens’ assemblies on drugs and education are already under way is not a reason to avoid holding a third if it is the best democratic option.
[ Security forum chair Louise Richardson rejects claims panels are ‘hawkish’Opens in new window ]
Fear of populism means that deliberative democracy is in vogue – that is, facilitated discussions by a randomly selected group of citizens who will come up with recommendations for policy issues. Citizens’ assemblies garner Ireland huge praise internationally. Academic articles on deliberative democracy often reference Ireland in the first paragraphs, mostly positively.
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In 2019, when Theresa May was failing dismally to find a way forward after Brexit, a group of people – ranging from Blur frontman, Damon Albarn, to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams – wrote to the Guardian calling for a citizens’ assembly to break the impasse. The letter states: “Citizens’ assemblies operate around the world to create a neutral forum for evidence-based, participative decision-making.”
But are citizens’ assemblies really neutral? There has been some research which shows that public approval for citizens’ assemblies is outcome-contingent – that is, people like them when they feel they will achieve the outcome they desire.
Would Ireland be held up as a model of deliberative democracy if, say, the assembly on the 8th amendment had proposed some modest change that essentially preserved the right to life of the unborn?
The obvious riposte is that public opinion had changed dramatically on abortion and no citizens’ assembly that was truly representative would have endorsed the status quo.
Is it really that simple? Was the assembly just a neutral mirror of reality? Academics who broadly agree with it have suggested not. For example, Colm O’Cinneide of University College, London, suggests that the “unexpectedly strong support for radical law reform” by the assembly primarily affected the political classes, “mainly because it suggested that the general public might be more supportive of reproductive freedom than most politicians and media commentators had assumed”.
Neutrality, oddly enough, is one issue where it is acceptable to have a diversity of opinion
I believe that the media gratefully ran with the narrative of radical change. This created a feedback loop affecting politicians that nudged them towards more extreme legislation than would have been the case had they simply been taking the temperature in their constituency clinics.
Eoin Carolan, founding director of the Centre for Constitutional Studies at UCD, talks about how “pro-retention groups ... largely dismiss[ed] the process as unrepresentative, undemocratic and illegitimate”. Not only that but midway, when it briefly appeared that the assembly was undermining the whole idea of Repeal, suddenly Twitter was awash with all sorts of pro-choice concerns about the validity of the process.
He drily concludes that this raises “a question mark about the extent to which the perceived legitimacy or success of the assembly is based not on the process but on its outcome”.
If we think military neutrality is difficult to practise even though desirable, neutrality is even more difficult when it comes to organising a Citizens’ Assembly. The focus may be on the allegedly random selection of citizens, which has already been shown to be flawed.
The citizens, however, are arguably the least influential aspect of the process. Those who steer the process, select the allegedly impartial experts, decide on the time allocated to various viewpoints and methods of discussion – these are the really important people.
These key people are mostly drawn from the legal profession and academia and are likely to hold broadly similar liberal viewpoints. Even when people are trying to be scrupulously fair, it is virtually impossible to be free of the conditioning of an influential elite, given that holding certain unacceptable views would seriously damage your standing. Groupthink is real.
Neutrality, oddly enough, is one issue where it is acceptable to have a diversity of opinion. Even though significant parts of Ireland’s influential elite favour abandoning neutrality or, at least, important aspects of it, there is still sufficient support that a citizens’ assembly would be unlikely to reach radical conclusions.
It is not too much of a stretch, then, to believe that People Before Profit and Sinn Féin would have preferred a citizens’ assembly because it would be much more likely to reach a conclusion with which these parties would agree. Potentially more of a stitch-up, ironically, but just a more acceptable outcome to them.
Nor is it much more of a stretch to say that the Government probably decided on a consultative forum to increase the chances of changing policy on neutrality, despite widespread public approval of the current status quo.