Politique canadienne

A21(a) - Electoral and Institutional Rerform

Date: Jun 5 | Heure: 03:30pm to 05:00pm | Salle:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Jonathan Malloy (Carleton University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Jonathan Malloy (Carleton University)

Advice Not Taken: Canadian Citizen Assemblies and Subsequent Referendums: Lewis Krashinsky (University of Toronto), Christopher Achen (Princeton University)
Abstract: The citizen assembly on electoral reform in the province of British Columbia (2004) has drawn enthusiastic attention from proponents of deliberative democracy. However, subsequent referendums on the recommendation, as well as similar attempts in both Ontario and Prince Edward Island, all failed to pass. Most scholarship has attributed the referendum losses primarily to lack of information among the voters. Using surveys and official vote returns, however, we show that partisanship played the decisive role. Minor-party voters would have benefited from electoral reform and they generally supported it, while major-party voters, who would have been harmed, largely opposed it and drove it to defeat. Thus, the electorate behaved in ways very familiar from empirical studies of voting but quite different from their assigned role in models of the citizen assembly process. In consequence, the Canadian evidence raises major questions about the intellectual foundations of deliberative democratic theory.

Removing Barriers to Effective Citizen Participation in Policy-making and Accountability Processes: How a Proven U.S. Method Provides a Model for Canada: Duff Conacher (Democracy Watch)
Abstract: The paper will present an examination of the barriers to effective citizen organizing and participation in policy-making and accountability processes in both the public and private sectors in Canada, and how a U.S. method of forming and funding citizen watchdog groups provides a model solution that removes more of the barriers at a lower cost than the methods that have been used by Canadian governments, and how the method could be implemented in Canada. Several surveys show that a large majority of Canadian voters feel that politicians are out of touch with their concerns, and don’t care, and that the country is divided between “ordinary people” and “elites”, and that a large majority of voters want more say over government policy-making, and are also dissatisfied with the community, customer-service and complaint-handling accountability processes of various big business sectors. Even with technological advances such as email, video- and online-conferencing, websites and social media that have lowered the costs of citizens monitoring government and big business policy-making and accountability processes, and organizing to participate in and advocate their interests in those processes, many barriers still exist. Barriers include the fact that Canada’s population is spread across a very large geographical area (at the national level, and in many provinces and territories), and the ongoing costs of monitoring these processes, undertaking research to develop expertise, and organizing a significant number of voters to participate in these processes. Another barrier is that these processes, whether policy-making or a and accountability process for poor service, wrongdoing etc., often take years. These and other barriers, which the paper will detail, make it difficult for citizens to sustain effective participation in these processes. In contrast, as the paper will detail, big business executives in any industry sector are a relatively small group of people who can easily organize to advocate their interests, and they have easy access to exponentially more funding than citizens (other than citizens organized into labour unions) to pay the costs of research, and the costs of advertising, lobbyists and lawyers to communicate their interests in policy-making, legal, regulatory and accountability processes. Citizens actually fund big business participation and advocacy in these processes as a portion of the price citizens pay for every product and service goes to pay for the businesses’ researchers, advertising, lobbyists and lawyers. Thirty years ago, in a few U.S. states, a low-cost method was implemented for forming and funding democratically structured, broad-based and self-sustaining citizen watchdog groups over a few business sectors. The method was proven to help significantly to balance the marketplace of ideas (in policy-making processes) and the market itself (in accountability processes). The paper will examine the U.S. method and the research concerning its effects, and compare it to other methods Canadian governments have used to form and fund citizen advocacy organizations, and place the U.S. method and Canadian methods within political economy frameworks. Finally, the paper will examine how the U.S. method could be implemented in Canada to remove barriers to effective citizen participation in policy-making and accountability processes in various government and big business sectors.