Pattern #12
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Collective Wise Oversight of Governance
Credits: Council House Nottingham: Wikimedia – Smashman / Group: rawpixel.com – Shutterstock / Group 2: ASDF_MEDIA – Shutterstock / Magn. Glass: iadams – Shutterstock
Pattern Heart
Wherever decisions are made and power exercised that impact public affairs, separate sources of wise oversight should be in place. So ensure that citizens, stakeholders, journalists, experts and institutions are able to effectively observe, comment on, and act to coordinate and correct each other’s behaviors towards wiser outcomes.
Some related patterns: 17 Constraints on Concentrated Power
25 Deliberation 28 Equity 47 Integral Political Will 52 Microcosms and Populations 74 Rich Feedback Dynamics 84 Tackling Cognitive Limitations
Collective Wise Oversight of Governance – going deeper …
This is an edited version of the video on this page.
One of the reasons that elites kept a good measure of control in the U.S. Constitution was their concern about mob rule. They figured popular rule was not necessarily wise rule and the elites considered themselves more wise. But there’s a dynamic tension between concentrated government that acts in the self-interest of the people and interests that are controlling it versus popular government and popular will.
True, we want knowledgeable people being able to run things as opposed to crazy mob rule and immediate gratification of the masses, which was supposedly the way the founding elites felt ordinary people thought. But that’s not necessarily the way ordinary people think, if they are given the right support. And elites, themselves, certainly have a checkered track record in governance.
This dynamic tension between elite rule and popular will has been going in politics and governance for hundreds if not thousands of years. With wise democracy structures and ideas we are trying to get beyond that dynamic tension. We are trying to empower ordinary people to be able to wisely influence what happens in governance. Ultimately it is good if people can be their own self-governance, which happens most effectively at the personal, neighborhood and local levels. But it is harder to wisely manage direct popular governance of a whole country with millions of people. That often requires some people doing governance functions for the people, which is the idea (theoretically) behind elected representatives and bureaucracies.
But if somebody else is going to be running the government day to day, you need to have some kind of oversight so they don’t go off the rails and become too centralized and oppressive or acting in their own interests rather than in the popular interest. So we want to build the confidence of the people – and the right infrastructure – to enable the population to exercise wise oversight of governance. That requires at the very least that governance is transparent. The people can watch what’s going on in government operations so that they can oversee what’s going on and redirect it as needed. We also need to increase the capacity of “we the people” – the ordinary people and their various civil society institutions – and to imbue that whole system with more collective intelligence and wisdom rather than collective stupidity and folly.
So we have to get beyond “groupthink”, “mob rule” and ignorance. We have to get beyond people not knowing what’s going on, not being aware of what’s needed, and being divided amongst themselves. This pattern description mentions “factionalism”, which refers to people not being able to get it together, fighting amongst themselves and getting nothing effective done. All this can and does happen in government without the public even being involved, but it we add in all the separate public factions, it can get even more wild.
So we are trying to say that what is needed is to actually engage the people in overseeing and directing their governance, and to help them do it wisely, which is what this pattern language is all about. I say “governance” in most cases rather than “government” because governance can include any function that shapes what people do, and government tends to be focused on the formal institutions of governance. But people can govern themselves in many ways without these institutions. That is the distinction that I make between the terms governance and government. But we want people being able to oversee government institutions when they aren’t governing themselves.
Video Introduction (14 min)
This video was made for the 1.0 version of this pattern – Competent Popular Oversight of Governance. In version 2.0 the heart of this pattern has been slightly revised to expand what it covers, but the video still largely applies and so remains.
Examples and Resources
- Citizen review boards Link-Legal Dictionary
- John Gastil’s Advisory Panels (in By Popular Demand)
Link-John Gastil - Investigative journalism and bloggers
Link-Blog Journalistics
Link-Reveal News
Link-The Next Web
Link-Academia-Smartphones in the Arab Spring - Citizen ballot initiatives (with Citizen Initiative Review panels)
Link-Wikipedia
Link-Healthy Democracy - Quality of Life Indicators
Link-WD-PL-Quality of Life Indicators
Link-R Progress.org - Government transparency – publicizing legislation with citizen engagement like
Link-Unpan1
Link-Wikipedia - DemocracyOS in Argentina
Link-Fast Company
Link-Democracy OS - Freedom of Information Act Link
Link-Wikipedia - Watchdog groups and whistle blowers and defenders of whistleblowers
Link-Wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower
Link-Journalism That Matters - Citizens using cell phone videos for police surveillance etc.
Link-Eff
Link-New Yorker - Marin County Civil Grand Jury – Link
- Open Source Everything Link-book Link-Interview
So what kinds of things help us do that?
There is already in the US an institution called Citizen Review Boards where various people are appointed who have volunteered to do work overseeing various government functions. They have various forms of power, depending on local rules and conditions. It’s usually done at the local level and they locally organize their own processes. That’s one institution we already have.
John Gastil, in his book By Popular Demand envisioned advisory panels where if there’s a controversial local ordinance coming up to be decided and either the city council or a popular petition says, “Delay voting on this law until we hold a day-long randomly selected citizen panel who listens to the people who are upset about it and the others who support it to find out how important it is.” And if this little one day panel then decides it’s really important, they say, “This needs to be evaluated by a week-long randomly selected advisory panel” (what I call a citizens deliberative council or a citizens jury). So an advisory panel would be convened and study the proposed ordinance and say whether it should be passed or not. The city council would wait on deciding until the advisory panel had issued its findings and recommendations. If the council then went against the advisory panel’s recommendations the community might be more inclined to remove the councilors since they went ahead and passed something that “the people” clearly didn’t want. This is not just a popular vote. This is an informed group of ordinary citizens who have made their judgment of what should be done with this ordinance.
In version 3.0, this pattern should be reframed as Popular Wise Oversight of Power to include (a) individual as well as collective action and (b) monitoring power dynamics throughout society, including not only governance but other power centers and power that derives from privilege and oppression in all circumstances like relationships, families, groups, organizations, etc.
I read the description and the comments, and found myself asking how it is ever going to be possible to change current governance and government systems. I agree with the concept of “engage the people in overseeing and directing their governance, and to help them do it wisely”. I think one way to lay the groundwork to achieve this, is to build the art and skill of thoughtful and inclusive dialogue and discussion into education curriculums as a foundational skill for all children. Imagine kindergarten to high school students leaning, practicing and applying these skills in the same way they learn to read and write. Wow! Perhaps, if we all knew how to authentically, honestly and compassionately talk with others, the ability to collectively and wisely govern would be easier. Maybe I’m a dreamer.
And you’re not the only one. 🙂 Consider, for just one example, https://democracyinpractice.org/.
It has long frustrated me that there are almost no government-level institutions that have figured out better ways to make decisions than “the majority rules,” even if it’s only by one or two votes. I know many groups and organizations are working on re-examining the premises behind this, and trying other options. But it doesn’t look like that’s taking any root in the culture. “Majority rules,” by vote, is where everyone seems to feel they need to start–or finish.
The Citizens Review Board sounds like a step in the right direction. A group of “representative” citizens are educated by various stakeholders and experts on the significance and details of an ordinance. These people are not elected and have no ongoing role in decision making, but they are gathered for a short-term, intensive experience of exploring the issues. The result of their experience is simply written advice to fellow citizens, to be shared in ballot booklets. Choosing the 25 or so folks to participate, as well as the educators is, of course, an important element of credibility, but with computers, all things random are possible!
My favorite thing about this (I observed such a process in Oregon) is that it opens participation by almost any citizen, doesn’t require being elected, and there are no limits on which institutions and groups (formal, informal, interpersonal) can use the process.
My favorite quote (I think from one of Tom Atlee’s books) is “I didn’t know who were Republicans and who were Democrats.” We could all use more of that, couldn’t we?
Thanks, Holly. This basic form – picking some people at random, giving them balanced information about an issue and facilitation to help them think together, and sharing their findings and recommendations with the public and public officials – is a category of public engagement I call “citizen deliberative councils” (CDCs) which are the central concern of the Microcosms and Populations pattern https://www.wd-pl.com/52-microcosms-and-populations-v2/. There you’ll see a list of a number of different models in use around the world. Oregon’s Citizen Initiative Review (CIR) https://healthydemocracy.org/cir/ – is a kind of CDC I think you are referring to with “Citizens Review Board” (am I mistaken?). A CIR panel looks closely at a ballot initiative on behalf of the voters. (It is one of the very few official CDCs that came directly from my work.) But CDCs can serve many different purposes. Many places are now convening large CDCs called Citizen Assemblies to consider the “climate emergency”, stimulated by the Extinction Rebellion movement. Many deliberative democracy experts are even advocating establishing a randomly selected legislative body instead of or alongside of existing legislative bodies. The CDC idea is rapidly spreading around the world.
However, although there are a number of volunteer or appointed citizen panels (not randomly selected) at local levels that oversee various departments (often the police), I don’t know of any actual CDCs that perform that function. The closest thing I know is the Civic Councils in Vorarlberg Austria, most of which are convened by the state’s Office of Future Related Issues around specific topics about which the government wants citizen input (see https://www.wd-pl.com/activities/examples-using-the-pattern-language/) – but that don’t quite fit this “oversight” pattern. However, the state constitution now includes a section that tells the government to convene a Civic Council whenever 1000 citizens petition for it. It seems 1000 citizens could ask for a CDC that investigates the government, although I don’t know if that’s ever been asked for (most of the material on this approach is in German).
On the other hand, CDCs are a significant part of my vision of how “Collective Wise Oversight of Goverance” could be accomplished, so thank you for highlighting that possibility!