Welcome to How to Save Democracy, the podcast for people who love democracy but know it needs to change. I'm Omezine.

I have to confess that before meeting you, John, I hadn't heard about any of this sort of thing at all. Maybe the only thing I can think of is participatory budgeting and, it was implemented after the revolution in my home city, La Marsa in Tunisia. My mom came, to came home, after a city council and she brought with her, a leaflet talking about this this process. And and I was a national politician then and, I was too busy with clever stuff at the national level, and that's it. And I didn't pay attention anymore. Then I started her hearing all the stories you were sharing with me. And now this. Your guests totally got me inspired. I am fascinated by citizens assemblies. Especially Louise. There's nothing like first hand testimony.

Most of people in the audience, I can see, are too young to remember the financial crash back in in 2008, 2009, 2010. And we had a a general election in 2011, and the Irish people elected a government on the basis of transformation. The old ways of doing things didn't work. We made a mess of it, and we need to try new things, you know. And this is where the germ of the idea of a citizen's assembly came along. Our constitution was 75 years old, and the government said, well, we'll create a forum where we will include randomly selected people, and some some members of parliament as well, and put them in a room together to have a look at, some of these issues to see if we can find some solutions. I was sitting at home on on my couch one evening around 11:00 at night, and my phone rang, you know. And, I I don't know about any of you, but nobody ever rings me at 11:00 at night to say they're having a good day, you know. So, I I was working in the parliament at the time. I had responsibility for communications, media broadcasting, that kind of stuff. So I assumed that it was a newspaper editor with a story that was gonna make my life miserable with some scoop for the following day. So I nervously answered the phone. Hello? And it was Arteshuk, the prime minister. And, he said, hi, Art. I I have a job for you. We have this thing in the program for government. It's never ever going to work, but we promised we would do it. And we're a government that was elected to keep our promises, so I'd like you to do it. And I said, well, what is it? And he said, it's called a constitutional convention. And I said, well, what does that mean? What does it do? So he said, we're gonna put a 100 people in a room, and we're gonna ask them a whole pile. Most of them will be randomly selected. And, we're gonna ask them a whole pile of really hard questions about things like marriage equality or electoral system and all kinds of other things that we don't know the answer to. And at the end of that process, they're gonna tell us what they think, and we're gonna see what we're gonna do about it. And I said, yeah. That's never gonna work. You know? So, he said, I know it's not, but we promise to do it, and we have to do it. So we we spoke about the ins and outs of how this might work. And, I said, let me see if I have you straight, Tishuk. As long as I don't kill anybody or spend any money, I can do whatever I like with this bunch of people. And he said famously, I knew you were the fella for me. You know? So so so that's where it started. It was as simple as that. I rang my boss and said, I have to go and do a thing. I'll be back in six months, keep my seat warm. And I never went back to work in the parliament. But there's something going on in the world right now. Yeah. You know? Increasingly, political systems are looking for ways of including citizens in the development of policy and making better political decisions. And increasingly, citizens are looking to become more involved beyond electing people every five years. So in in the last two and a half years, I have been in 81 different countries talking about Ireland's experience with citizens assemblies because we are considered to be the world leaders. I mean, we have set up citizens assemblies that delivered transformational social change in this country, the abortion assembly. We delivered marriage equality. We had a citizens' assembly that delivered our climate action plan, which introduced carbon taxes without even a murmur from the public. In France, they were setting cars on fire at the notion of carbon taxes. We had a citizen's assembly. Everybody saw how the process worked and and what had happened. People accepted it. It turned into the government's climate action plan, turned into legislation. And now that single citizen's assembly, which people give out about spending a million euro in running, has determined how Ireland is going to to invest €50,000,000,000 between now and 2050. The one thing I would say is that we need to stop thinking of citizens' assemblies as having a cost. They're an investment. Yeah. You know? Because even the simple things like the abortion referendum and the marriage equality referendum, It cost us around €20,000,000 to run a referendum in this country. Is it not wise that we would spend 5% of that making sure we got the question right? These are investments, not costs. We try and make sure that every citizen's assembly is better than the one that went before us. We went from a situation where we're knocking on doors. Now we use on post our national postal service, geo directory map to select randomly select households based on where people live. So it's a big heat map of the country. And so we send a small few to Mullingar and a lot to Cork City and depending on where people live as well. We are much more sophisticated in the selection. And I'll finish on this point, perhaps. To understand this properly, the the, there are some things about representing rep get getting Ireland in one room. Some of the stuff is easy. We've got 51 women and 49 men. We've got 28 people who live in Dublin, because 28 of our population live in Dublin. We've got 12 people between the age of 18 and 24, but we don't stop there. So age, region, and gender is easy. We in the overall group, we need four farmers, you know, because 4% of our population are farmers. We need 11 people with a disability. We need 17 people, who aren't born in this country. And the list goes on. Layer by layer by layer, you randomly select individuals. So at the end of this process, which we call Ireland in One Room, every single person in Ireland should be able to look into that room and see themselves there. And if they don't see themselves there, they should see their opinion represented there. And the results of the abortion assembly, and I I won't spoil all of the surprise here, Louise, except to say that that assembly brought forward recommendations which shocked the government and the media to its core, went way, way beyond what was expected by the government because they were hoping for or they were expecting perhaps something a little more modest, but they they recommended a very liberal regime of women's reproductive health. They voted in the room 65, 35 in favor of this regime. When that question was put to the Irish people in a referendum, the result was sixty six thirty four. Think about that. First thing it proves that that room was perfectly representative of the Irish people. And more importantly, it proved that the Irish people were much more nuanced and much more sophisticated in their thinking on this issue than the political system gave them credit for. They were way, way ahead of the politicians. Behavioral economists call this the wisdom of crowds.

I love this. I really love this. We seem so far from what we call today representative democracy. The current model of elected MPs where most are career politicians, and they seem so disconnected from people's realities. I mean, I was a politician. I know many people are there for the good reasons, but this kind of representation is another level. And I also really love this insight that societies are indeed ahead of their establishments. And it is difficult to measure when you think of it, you know, you have polls, surveys, studies, protests, and revolutions. But this citizens assembly is another level. They showed how advanced people are compared to politicians and and, who who who who are supposed to represent them. Right? And the more I think of it, the more incredible I think it is to be able to take a snapshot of societies, through I mean, think of it like it's society beliefs, values, and thinking in a process that ends up with passing a legislation based on those. And to the Irish politicians' credit, Right? We we we need to acknowledge that for them. They were humble. They were smart. And they were visionary, you know, to set up the citizens assembly. And it's and it's like for them giving or sharing their power. Right? Like, they didn't see it as a threat to their power, but rather as a tool to give them authentic, legitimacy.

Just to touch you, Lou Louise mentioned it, and and I think it's very important. One of the the key principles of, every citizen's assembly is that there is zero tolerance for conflict. There are very few rules in the room, but every one of those 100 citizens have to be able to walk into a room and express their opinion in a safe environment. We've had a couple of occasions where we've we've had to ask people, I think you go for a walk around the block now. Clear your head. And when you're prepared to be respectful, then, then we'll let you back in as well. And I think that's absolutely key. And this is the that was so important for the citizens because everyone has their own life experiences, their own opinions on on these things as well. And what we created was a safe environment in which to express those opinions. And people were much more willing to be open and honest about this knowing that there was no judgment coming from around the table.

They convinced me citizens' assemblies can help solve intractable issues. When you think of it, who could have thought that a predominantly Catholic country would vote for such a progressive regime for women's reproductive health? I wanna be disabled's advocate, but your guests are so sincere and convincing.

That feels so important. I think people are really fed up of seeing politicians and experts talking at them. The fact that normal people, people just like them, were randomly selected, learned about the topic, and came up with recommendations, all in a transparent process, changes from the usual suspects. Political leaders seen as disconnected from reality, biased,

It feels like we have two systems that need to coexist. One represents old power structures established since a long time, as long as eighteen, eight eight hundred years in The UK. The first assembly was formed in the thirteenth century to approve the king's taxes. The elite, whether from power, wealth, or education, or all of the above, devising and making decisions behind closed doors. And, and, and they see their roles as maintaining stability and managing state affairs for as long as they can. And the other system represent new powers, you know, open structures where randomly selected citizens represent representing all levels of societies have open deliberations that could be followed by anyone who's interested in the process. These citizens return to their everyday life After their contract is achieved, so they are perceived as genuine, truly independent and honest. Citizens assemblies seem to create spaces where these systems can come together and actually trust one another and also politicians more, when you think of it, and actually build those relationships again, you know, relationship between citizens and politicians, which is so much better than what is happening in so many places, right? Where when countries go through crises, people give the benefit of the doubt to the strongmen who cut through complexity, use binary devisive, but a simple language that can be understand by anyone.

It it is one of the big features because it was only the first senate assembly, the constitutional convention, which had politicians. The five since were were 100 members, you know. And but David David is absolutely right. You know, the the first meeting of the citizens and the politicians was very, very difficult, you know, because the citizens were saying, we're not gonna be pushed around now. We want to have our say. And and, and and one politician took and I won't say who it is because he's a he's a minister now, so I I won't embarrass him. But he took the microphone on four occasions at the first meeting to say how important it was that the citizens had a voice, you know. Yeah. And the irony of that went over his head. What it did create when the reports went back from the citizens assembly to the parliament for consideration, the the recommendations to reduce the voting age for marriage equality. Unlike many of the other citizens assemblies, including British Columbia, there was an ownership in the room. Yeah. You know, they said, actually, no. We were there. We were in the room. We know this works. This was fair. This was a brilliant process. When Ken Carty in British Columbia sent his report to the parliament, they left it on a shelf for two years and said, who are these people? What are they doing? Who asked them to do that? And it just simply didn't work. That lovely sense of ownership. So it didn't require politicians being involved in the future because there has been continuing membership of that. There are still members of the Iraqtus right now who remember being in that room, staying up till 2AM, speaking to ordinary citizens, and that sense of family that was created about this shared job of work of which they are very proud.

what are we gonna do about this? And just on that issue, what you said about the two way nature of trust, I mean, strikes a chord with me because the political system, when they received the reports from the citizens, they trusted the process. They it was designed properly. It was thorough. People gave it their all, etcetera. But interestingly, on the first assembly where the politicians were involved, there was a lot of anger at politicians at the first meeting. At the last meeting, it was hugs and kisses, and it's beautiful. But the essence of that was that the citizens came out and said, do you know politicians aren't bad people? You know? They know an awful lot of stuff about an awful lot of stuff that we don't give them much credit for, and they work damn hard. You know? And that sense of trust because they got to be close-up to the political system was a very important feature, again, of that first assembly.

Totally. I agree. These processes seem to make it possible to have a respectful dialogue where there are rules to continue that dialogue, and at the same time have experts come and inform you about issues that you may not be familiar with. And you can have interventions that help you understand a topic, whether confirm or bring a new light to your previous thoughts. And when people come together and work together on topics they care about, and there is an environment that allows for genuine but also very personal conversations. I think there is a magic that happens. It brings the personal and the political together, and that I think is what we need right now. I think this is a human trait because always we are wondering, is this replicable? Is the citizen assembly in Ireland only successful because it's Ireland? Right? But when you you get to speak and have deep conversations, when you work together for quite some time on difficult issues, there is empathy that is created. And because sometimes maybe you will discover that there is one person who who wants to kick you because in this representation sort of exercise you can have anyone. Right? Yeah. And then that's what we usually afraid of. Are we going to have our adversary or our our enemy with us there? I mean, here we're not trying to be blind to racist bigotry or fascism, but at the same time, I believe these processes make these violent ideologies, sentiments stand out, you know, and when we see that they are a minority in a group. I, I fundamentally believe in, in humanity and universal values. And I think when you, even when you have this sortition kind of exercise, you will see that humanity is, is fundamentally, you know, not violent against each other. And I think in these kind of dynamics, we really see how small and not representative, these these awful ideologies are. And sometimes you have magic happen when when these people can see maybe that they were wrong all the time. Maybe they will understand that there are different life experiences and that there are different opinions and that's okay. We don't need to hate and kill each other because of that. And what I'm saying, I'm very influenced by my friend Diya Khan. She's a filmmaker. She filmed this incredible documentary called Meeting the Enemy. And, you know, Diya is a brown Muslim woman. The way she puts it is she, she always experienced racism, right? And, and, and hate from both communities. You know, she grew up in, in, in Norway and she lived in The UK. And she had she faced hate both from her brown community as she puts it, and from her white community. Like, and, and because she was raised as a musician and they were saying the the brown community would say, okay, Muslim woman shouldn't be using their voice, shouldn't be singing, shouldn't be artists. And the white supremacists that she would they they would spit at her, when she was Wow. A kid, and it would tell her go back to your country. But, when and she received death threats in The UK when when she was talking about how societies need to be diverse and multiple. And, she said that the the the British police told her we cannot protect you. Our advice to you is to stay away from windows. But, she she's crazy. She was crazy enough to go say, okay, then, I'm going to face my enemies. I'm gonna go and face white supremacists in The US. And she went to march with white supremacists in Charlottesville back in '26 2017. She actually, no. She didn't march with them. She walked with them and she filmed the marshes. And and there was this incredible story where after meeting with her, you know, she's been filming the the the founders of these neo Nazi groups. They've been transformed with talking to her and having them, you know, look at her pictures as a kid, going into her first marches, anti fascist, anti racist, and telling them, do you want to deport me? As a Muslim and brown woman, I represent the people you want to deport. And they said, no, you've become our friend. And there is this incredible, incredible transformation that at the end of the documentary, we two of them drop out of these movements and say we've been wrong. And now she, she goes with, with them to do talks and to speak about how this relationship that, that that was built between them, this new friendship, you know, is is really the antidote to fascism and the antidote to hatred.

Okay.

Should happen more often.

A significant feature of all of those was at the program for government stage. It's when coalition parties sit down together and say, what do we think about what are we going to agree that we're going to do in the next term of five years? For the first three or four of those governments from, from 2011, there were always issues that they couldn't agree on. And these tended to be some of these intractable political problems, things like climate change, things like abortion, marriage equality, illegal drug use, biodiversity loss, local government, and that kind of thing. The most recent government, as you you may know, is a follow on government from minus the Green Party. And they they have been working with each other for so long, when they sat down at the parliament for government, they found, well, actually, Gerald, we have solutions to most of these problems in mind already. We have many, many problems in this country. If you open up any newspaper, you'll see housing and cost of living and health care and all of these things. But the government has a plan for all of these issues. And it probably wouldn't be the best use of the citizens assembly to say, well, actually, will you just go and and have a look at housing for us? We have a plan, but correct our homework, RC. If you come up with something different, they are all they're already on a path. And David is a real expert on this. Unlike countries who have gone the institutionalization route where they have permanent citizens' assemblies who are generating problems for themselves to solve.

You would have to ask yourself, was it the most suitable subject for our citizens assembly? We did biodiversity loss. You know, how do we solve the biodiversity loss crisis? And that was as big a subject as I would ever hope to have to do again. It was enormous, and it was almost too much for the citizens to cope with. Education, when you think of preschool, primary, secondary, third level, lifelong education, big deal with groups facing educational barriers, etcetera. The first assembly that they ran in Scotland, you'll remember this one. John, what kind of Scotland do you want to live in? Some things are just too big to be answered because the only subjects that should be given to a citizens assembly are meaty policy issues where you have multiple possible options. The Citizens Assembly in Scotland came back with, we'd like, better education, less crime, more equality, houses for everyone, health care, la la la. No good. No use at at all to any government, and they have learned their lessons. And at the other end, binary questions don't suit either. You know? So, the our first constitutional convention looked at the length of the presidential term, which is relevant now. You know? So should it be reduced from seven years to five years? And our citizens said, well, no. We should keep it at seven years because every president should get the opportunity to serve over two governments. You know, so two different governments. And and that was fair enough. But they went off to make recommendations on the nomination process, campaign funding limits, the age of candidacy for the presidency, etcetera.

might have risked feeling like a big waste of time. That's the thing. You know, they they respond to citizens' assembly reports saying, here's all the recommendations that we're going to accept. Here's when they're going to be implemented. And more importantly, here's the ones that we're not going to accept, and here's the reason why. And a great example of that is the gender equality recommendation. The citizens recommended that the taxes would be raised in order to pay for the implementation of these widespread recommendations because all of them felt they took a vote amongst themselves. I would be willing to pay more tax to see my recommendations implemented. And the government stepped back from that and said, well, actually, no. We're we're not going to accept this recommendation because if we're going to raise taxes, we've got wider considerations. You know? We might like to build a children's hospital Yeah. Or build roads, more teachers, nurses, etcetera. But but they explained it. They came into a special debate in the chamber and said, this is our answer to your recommendation. Mightn't like it, but they understood it. Yeah. You know? And interestingly and perhaps ironically, this does introduce a sense of discipline amongst the citizens because they know if they introduce wacky recommendations that, it's gonna make them look foolish and, they're not going to be implemented anyway. So the, there is a responsibility on them to come up with very real ones. You know, what what do you do when the issues are tied to your identity? So how I'm gonna choose to interpret that in relation to the abortion referendum is, for example, some of the members would have been

have to go on a journey. They have to be willing to walk in the other person's shoes. Chris and Finbar, I still talk to them. I talk to them regularly. There was a film crew from Hollywood in town in May to film the pair of them talking about their journey. There'll be a documentary on Netflix sometime early next year capturing this journey. That moment that David described, that was the mic drop moment. That was the moment in the room where people said, actually, do you know what? Marriage equality. You know, is that we recognize you have come from a very dark place to being open to consider an alternative, you know, and I'm sure you came across this, Louise, as well. So it it it was extraordinary. I think what all of these processes

see what it's like from another perspective. And a citizens assembly, the roundtable discussions allow for that. Nothing succeeds like success. You have to start somewhere. Mhmm. You know, you can't say, well, people won't trust it, so we'll never do it. That you have to start somewhere. For our first constitutional convention, one in 40 people said yes when they were asked to be involved. You know? So knock on the door. We have a brilliant opportunity for you. You could come and spend ten weekends in in a room with 99 other people for no money, to answer some questions that the government thinks are important. You know? So they had doors slammed in their faces. And, finally, you know, the one of the, citizens who got the knock on the door was so disturbed by this preposterous notion that they rang the police and said, somebody's casing my joint, you know, because they came with an idea that was so preposterous. It's it's preposterous. It's not believable. And but nothing succeeds like success. Marriage equality, abortion, climate change. And the final thing I would say, I know I've spoken a lot, but, they, we we're always asking our citizens questions. You know, our biodiversity loss, citizens on their first day, the 100 of them arrived in. We asked them why they got involved. Why did you agree to spend what turned out to be eight weekends in a year, with 99 other people? So about a third of them said they were interested in the subject. About a third of them saw it as, a public service. My favorite third were the people who said citizens' assemblies are how Ireland gets hard jobs done.

Citizens assemblies are how Ireland gets hard jobs done. Can they be how every country, every city gets hard jobs done? I think so. It's like this couple go into the therapist and and I get I guess and the therapist office would be that safe space where they can have, the tough conversations. But in the beginning, they slowly need to build this trust with the therapist that could help them back, build the trust again with each other to face these tough conversations. And I think citizens assemblies, or at least this Irish example show that it's possible and that's what we need for our democracy. Build the the trust back in a safe space where rules are clearly clear and where, conversations can happen in a respectful manner and that we're here to solve the issues. And that's our main goal. At least that's what we agree we are here for. Yeah. I think I think totally. Yeah. That's the today's space we need for democracy.

I wasn't sure at the beginning of this. To be honest, like, I I I wanted to be the devil's advocate. To challenge you and your beliefs. And I like that. I I like that they aren't all sane. It's just one exact type of process. But I think the principle of this approach is something that we can work, with everywhere. At the core of it, it's this understanding that citizens aren't stupid. Yeah. That they can take on the big questions. I mean, I grew up hearing that citizens are stupid. You know, in Tunisia, it's it's like what dictatorship tells you. And, the next generation started a revolution. Period. Treating people people like they don't know better can only backlash. Look at what's happening with Gen Z protests. You know, youth led movements in the streets of Serbia, Kenya, Nepal, Peru, Morocco, and Madagascar. They are asking not only for improvements to living conditions, but also for broader changes in government accountability. They're asking for equality and the fight against corruption. They are tired of of their government's negligence. They they are tired of unrealistic policies and and and the lack of economic opportunity. In Morocco, for example, a collective called Gen Z twelve I mean, 212, it's like the telephone codes for Morocco. 212. They criticize high youth unemployment, but they also talk about poor education and healthcare systems. This is happening everywhere. And and these processes could provide the way those ideas can be heard, not just rejected, leaving us collapsing into strongman leaders.

This is How to Save Democracy, the podcast for people who love democracy, but know we've got serious work to do to save it. This episode was hosted by John Alexander and me, Omezi Inhifa, and produced by Joe Barrett. The studio engineer was Kristin Kabwicka.