Democratic dreams

Another post with some dreams – very much from a personal perspective and as someone who has been thinking and researching in this space for a fair while now…

While devolution is a huge and wide scale shift in how our democracy and state will operate its very very light in terms of democratic innovation right now. Despite some rumbling about citizens assemblies earlier on there is little in here – apart from the huge change of course which is the create of a whole ‘class’ of politicians in the form of Mayors and perhaps to quiet removal of another group in the form of police and crime commissioners.

I also think that the fact that the public consultation for all of this is going to be run centrally is a pragmatic choice but not necessarily a democratic one.

Its also a very hard ask for anyone to be part of a process of designing themselves out of the picture and our councillors are no different in this – despite this I am encouraged and have huge admiration for the way the politicians I work with are thinking about this in terms of the opportunities for their communities and not just trying to hold onto to things as they are.

Because of the commitment to democracy that I see across local government, I like to think though that there is still a huge amount of space here to start to create democratic opportunities in all of this if we start to shape it:

• I would love to see a programme of citizens assemblies – or deliberative events. These could explore the new devolution footprints and to examine the potential unitary configurations as well as looking at opportunities for greater collaboration. More importantly they could start to help articulate a shared vision of place and identity which is the engine that will drive successful devolution
• I’d like to see these acknowledged as a permanent bridging space that joins up decision making and agenda setting across the whole devolved area.
• I’d design these around mission blocks and use them to engage communities – of place and of interest – in delivery of change in a meaningful way.
• I’d really like to see a proper consideration of the role of town and parish councils in these new devolved footprints. Much of the defence of districts as an organisational form is in our proximity to community but I would argue we are not close enough – I think really effective town councils can create spaces to hold the join between democracy and coproduction – especially if they are properly wired into the decision making structure of the larger places they are part of. If we go back to the democracy stack you could see the towns and parish as being participatory communities of place and the citizens assembly in this model holding the deliberative space.
• Given you are currently in my dream I’ll go further and underpin this with simple but effective civic tech which helps people self organise as well as engagement with the missions a finally funding this as key infrastructure of place. Our democracy is both fragile and precious and it is struggling to cope with huge global changes. The impact of social media has been immense and as we look back at 20 years since Facebook was launched and forward 20 years to consider what AI will bring about its important to realise that we have a small window to make sure we have created trusted, safe publics where citizens can come together to debate and deliberate the things they think are important with the attention and participation of their elected representatives.

There is a lot being written about the risk of democratic deficit in the removal of hundreds of council seats and I think that concern is real but it could be mitigated for an improved on with real democratic innovation being built into the huge programme of work we are all about to embark on.