Reclaiming democracy through citizen assemblies | George Zarkadakis | TEDxThessaloniki

Informed participation in political discourse requires time in order to obtain the necessary knowledge. Acknowledging that we may not have the time or inclination to gain a deep understanding of absolutely everything, we delegate responsibility to our representatives but trust in politicians is declining. How can we protect democracy and ensure we don't fall prey to demagogues? George Zarkadakis has taken part in citizen assemblies and argues that this may be the way to reclaim our decision making power.
Ανακτώντας τη Δημοκρατία μέσω συμβουλίων πολιτών
Για να συμμετέχουμε ουσιαστικά στον πολιτικό διάλογο, πρέπει πρώτα να διαθέσουμε τον απαραίτητο χρόνο για να ενημερωθούμε σωστά. Αναγνωρίζοντας ότι δεν έχουμε τον χρόνο και, ίσως, την διάθεση να εμβαθύνουμε σε κάθε ζήτημα της επικαιρότητας, αναθέτουμε την ευθύνη για την λήψη αποφάσεων στους πολιτικούς, τους οποίους όμως εμπιστευόμαστε όλο και λιγότερο. Πώς μπορούμε να προστατεύσουμε την δημοκρατία και να μην πέσουμε θύματα των δημαγωγών; Ο Γιώργος Ζαρκαδάκης έχει πάρει μέρος σε Συμβούλια Πολιτών και σ'αυτή την ομιλία υπερασπίζεται την δυνατότητα που μας παρέχουν να ανακτήσουμε την θέση μας στην συμμετοχική δημοκρατία.
Music by audionautix.com
George Zarkadakis is the head of Willis Towers Watson’s consulting practice in Great Britain & Western Europe on domains as “the Future of Work & the impact of Artificial Intelligence in the workplace”. He has over 25 years of experience in management consulting, media, marketing & communications, as well as in digital strategy & innovation. He holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence & is the author of “In Our Own Image: will Artificial Intelligence Save Us or Destroy Us?”. He is also the author of several novels published in Greece, Italy and Spain. Apart from his professional and writing career George has a keen interest in the popularization and communication of science and technology. He launched and directed "Focus", the biggest popular science magazine in Greece, and wrote "Eureka!", a very successful popular science television program. For his international work in the public engagement of science, he was awarded a knighthood by the French government. He lives and works in London This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx

[@MistiClectiCisM]

Time is coming for more real Democracy, thanks for these great ideas.

[@thephoenix756]

Question: How would you prevent such a small group of people being bribed, intimidated or induced into voting a certain way?

[@cruzergo]

The representatives in the assembly can do debates , the people can vote on issues.

[@gary010971]

That's a poignant question. Of course it depends on the subject that's being discussed. But, if the subject is one where immoral people may try to intimidate or bribe the citizens (the decision makers) - we use the same methods that we use to try and prevent elected politcians from being intimidated or bribed (e.g., citizen laws, investigative news reporting, etc). In general, it will be easier to mitigate corruption in an open citizen assembly, than for example, a governemnt that makes decisions behind closed "doors" and recieves private "donations".

[@snowdolphvov4193]

how would you prevent judges from that? there are simple ways, like having anonymity or they live for their term in a protected environment, where unchecked people can't enter, nor even call or message anyone

The same question applies to our current elected democratic systems. It's an interesting question, but it's not specific to the proposed idea of citizens assemblies. In particular it cannot be used as an objection.

[@AlexThoby]

thanks !

[@electron8262]

I think this needs to replace the European Comission in the EU if it hopes to ever be seen as something else than a central dictating authority by the average citizen.

[@Thaddeus28]

who decides who the experts are?

You could easily come up with some reasonable (but somewhat arbitrary) rules like: an expert is someone who has done full time research in the area for at least 5 years with publications and acceptance by the scientific community. Then you could choose randomly from that pool of experts...

[@blahdelablah]

@ I'd guess you'd want to choose experts based on what was representative of the broader range of views on a topic, rather than it being a fully random process.

@@blahdelablah what I suggested wasn't fully random, since you restrict the pool to people who have somehow proven to be experts on the area. I don't see how your suggestion of "broader range" is in opposition to that. Or maybe I don't understand what you mean "broader range". How would you define broader range and choose from those people? To make this more precise: how would you define what experts with a broader rage of view on climate change are? And how would you choose a representative sample from those experts?

[@blahdelablah]

@MichaelBachtold For climate change, expertise would include climate scientists but not exclusively climate scientists. For example, how do you weigh the impact and effort. If resources were infinite then you could make every helpful change at once, but that isn't realistic so we need to focus on what to prioritise. Also, knowing how quickly a change would "pay off" is helpful. For example, let's say that one option is to insulate every home in a country to reduce demand on energy for heating and cooling. This is a nice wish, but it needs to be more detailed to be taken seriously. Where will the materials come from? Who can do the work and are there enough people to do it? Will the people that could do the work have the required training and is there a way to adequately compensate them for this work? How long will it take to deliver and how much of a benefit is it likely to provide? These are the types of questions that it would make sense to answer, and climate scientists will not have all those answers, so a broader range of experts would be needed to allow more well rounded proposals. Also, whilst something like home insulation is relatively uncontroversial, when it comes to more controversial proposals you'd want experts with varying views to help having more detailed debates, for example geoengineering projects may be more controversial.

[@EdSurridge]

The assembly after offering training in choosing experts. Also Critical Prejudice Theory Training offered . Assembly members can use AI to design their assembly

[@gerontodon]

Delphi Technique

[@Thaddeus28]

I would not trust an unelected citizens assembly

[@gary010971]

The point of being elected is to represent the majorites views. Also, bare in mind, a citizen assembly will generally debate a specific subject - so it's not like a national government. The "trust" aspect is related to citizens making informed decisions. So, I assume, if you were randomly selected for a Citizen assembly, you'd trust that you'd make a better decision, on, for example, medical issues if you could discuss the issues with medical Doctors? The point is - are people generally rationale? If so, citizens being informed, rather than disinformed (e.g., by biased industries), on any subject, are more probable to make better democratic decisions. In a way, citiizens assemblies remove the "election" part (that's "old school" party politics) - because they use a random selection method that represents the general people's views. Basically, this is also how a lot of the scientific methods work. If we want a more accurate representation (sample) of a majority decisions on a complex subject, and we can't expect everyone to be, for example, medical doctors, we can take a sample of the population. And they can be informed by those that have the relavent experience (i.e., professionals). The citizens then make the informed consent (vote) for all of us. Of course, to mitigate fraud - there will have to be systems in place. One important feature of a citizen assemby is citizen moderators (that can also be randomly selected) that make sure that all the selected citizen have a voice. In other words, in a grownup democracy - it should not be those that "shout" the loudest that are heard.

[@faithtait_smileymind]

Is a citizen's assembly supposed to 'forge public opinion'?