E-Deliberation in Irish local government:

Developing the SOWIT model

Vanessa Liston (TCD)Clodagh Harris (UCC)

Mark O’Toole (Kilkenny County Council)

Can we enable citizens’ political participation in a way that enables inclusion, social learning and political co-operation towards the development of sustainable policy?

Challenge

“An obvious precondition of participation is that citizens need evidence that their participation can change policy outcomes, and evidence suggests that low participation rates are linked to a perception that participation has little impact” (The Power Inquiry, 2006)

Rationale

Context Participation in Ireland

Citizen Participation in Irish local Government

Local government participation limited to a number of committees and through the planning process’ (Meldon et al, 2000:6).

The 2008 Green paper – Stronger local democracy – options for change considers petition rights, town meetings, participatory budgeting and plebiscites as means as strengthening the connection between citizens and the local government

Citizen Participation in Irish Local Government: Baseline study Data on public submissions and citizen

consultation events is maintained internally by individual local authority departments

It is neither centralised nor published

Participation

Population Year of Review

Submissions Received Total % pop

Pre-draft Draft Proposed Amendments

Kilkenny city & county

87,558 2006-2008

175 264 26 465 .005

Sligo town & county

53,243 2010 140 20 160 .003

Table 2: Submissions received to development Plans process

Table 1: Numbers of Submissions received for Local Area Plans: Kilkenny Town Population

(2006) Year of Review

Submissions Received during each stage

Pre-draft

Draft Material Alterations

Total

Bennettsbridge 685 2008-2009 17 12 8 37 Callan 1,771 2008-2009 10 23 2 35 Castlecomer 1,531 2008-2009 18 20 4 42 Graiguenamanagh 1,097 2008-2009 26 13 4 43 Kilmacow 526 2008-2009 54* 36 23 113 Thomastown 1,837 2008-2009 21 28 6 55 Piltown 968 2009-2010 12 11 6 29 Fiddown 194 2009-2010 5 4 5 14 Gowran 487 2009-2010 10 6 3 19 *Kilmacow was unusual in that there were 2 submissions periods for the pre-draft stage.

Numbers attending Kilkenny

Stage

Venue/meeting No. attended

Pre-draft Castlecomer 9 Callan 14 Graiguenamanagh 22 Mullinavat 20 Kilkenny (1) 12 Kilkenny (2) 9 Focus Group 1 Older People 4 Focus Group 2 Youth 8 Focus Group 3 Travellers 2 Focus Group 4 Asylum seekers 4 Focus Group 5 Marginalised communities 7 Focus Group 6 Disability 4 Focus Group 7 Social housing rural 3 Focus Group 8 Social housing urban 4 Total 122

Draft (approx. only)

Castlecomer 12 Callan 15 Mullinavat 6 Graiguenamanagh 2 Kilkenny (1) 20 Kilkenny (2) 14 Total 69

Table 3: Numbers attending meetings for Kilkenny Development Plans process

Citizen participation

Need for deeper and wider citizen participation.

◦ Wider - ‘any growth in the numbers involved in political participation’ (Power Inquiry, 2006)

◦ Deeper - ‘any change which allows a more direct, sustained and informed participation by citizens in political decisions’ (Power Inquiry, 2006)

Web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. (Wikipedia)

Web 2.0 technology

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TkeV_JgZq4&feature=youtu.be

64% of young people(16-24) use Facebook for social networking

1.9 million users of Facebook (+500% since January 2009)

Youtube 1.3 million users Twitter 180,000 users

Social networking in Ireland

Online LAPs ◦ lap.kilkennycoco.ie◦ lap.finalcoco.ie◦ wiki

Government organisations tweet and publish to Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Flickr.

Draft Sectoral Plan : Web 2.0 to connect with citizens

Online gov-citizen interaction

Create a model for enabling online citizen engagement in policy development processes that◦ Measures impact

◦ Is inclusive [towards sustainable policy]

◦ New view of representation: builds on innovations in deliberative theory by Iris Young, John Dryzek and Andre Bachtiger.

◦ Is integrated to the policy development system

Aim of the SOWIT project

Proposed model rooted in deliberation theory

Impartialism: ◦ Emphasis on consensus◦ Abstract and narrow (Held, 2006)◦ Promoting a single form of reasoning above others

Equality : ◦ Rhetorical standards act as a barrier to the full participation of all

citizens.

Common Good: ◦ Restrict the scope of discourse.◦ Ideal deliberative environment does not exist (Young, 2000)

Habermas: criticisms

Move away from common good towards harnessing social differences as a resource.

For sustainable policy outputs deliberation must be oriented towards: including the broadest range of views present in society and; enabling discussion with the aim of understanding and accommodation.

Innovations on which SOWIT builds A: Iris Young

Representation of discourses in policy

‘Policy should resonate with discourses in the public sphere’ (Dryzek, 2010)

Meta-consensusAgreement on the domain of reasons andconsiderations pertaining to the issue at hand aswell as the nature of the choices to be made Normative Epistemic Preference

Innovation B: Dryzek’s Discourse Representation

Good enough deliberation: Relaxes Habermasian criteria, including

sincerity Rational discourse allocated to one point

only in sequential deliberation All communication types allowed at earlier

points

Innovation C: Bächtiger’s Sequential Approach

Deliberative Model

A public space, without barriers to communication

An empowered space, hosts deliberation among actors in institutions that produce collective decisions (e.g. Council).

Transmission: a means by which deliberations in the public space can influence decision making in the empowered space

Accountability: a process in which empowered space answers to public space

Meta-deliberation: deliberation about how the system should be organised

Decisiveness: the extent to which the above five elements determine the content of collective decisions.

Dryzek’s deliberative framework

Public Sphere◦ Social networking◦ Contact with representatives◦ Evolving learning framework◦ Aggregate output and sentiment reports on monthly basis for Council meetings◦ Discourse ‘representatives/influencers’ emerge for dialogue sphere when a policy

draft is open for consultation

Dialogue Sphere◦ Discourse influencers deliberate in the dialogue sphere on draft policy◦ Distance between discourses is scored and visualised ◦ Aim is to incentivise co-operative behaviour towards problem solving and

inclusive policy proposals◦ Feedback loop to public sphere

Empowered Space◦ Output of dialogue sphere is input to policy deliberations in Council◦ Final Council policy is scored for similarily/difference to deliberated citizen policy

draft. ◦ Provide direct feedback and accountability link to public sphere

Components

Proposed SOWIT policy process

Preliminary consultation

Draft compiled

Public Consultation Manager’s report

Council

SOWIT Public Sphere

SOWIT Public Sphere

SOWIT Deliberation

Sphere

SOWIT Deliberation

Sphere

SOWIT Public Sphere

SOWIT Public Sphere

Revised policy

SOWIT Public Sphere

SOWIT Public Sphere

Feedback

Questions