Re: <nettime> No evidence of digital wrong-doing...

[tbyfield <tbyfield@panix.com>]

I'd like to know more about the recent history of Citizens' Assemblies, 
in part because that context would probably dampen any tendency to treat 
them as yet another panacea in the medicine cabinet of utopianism. The 
idea of a random group selected to become temporary experts convened as 
a stage in some momentous state action is hardly new. Exhibit A: the 
jury. In that sense CAs seem a bit sketchy, somehow old and yet...not 
old. They're like a wolpertinger[1] made up of bits of juries, focus 
groups, and reality TV shows.

	[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolpertinger

The odd thing is the role of sortition, that is, the more or less random 
selection of participants. That technique for defeating or circumventing 
influence networks may not invest the process with positive legitimacy, 
but at least it aims to divest it of one obvious form of illegitimacy: 
corruption. But sortition is one of those latinate nouns that serves to 
mask agency: who or what is doing this (what's the verb?) 'sortiting'? 
The state of course. In societies where the state is widely seen as 
legitimate and functional, CAs would tend to work better; but in 
societies where society and the state are at each other's throats — 
say, the UK in the throes of Brexit debates — they're likely to be 
seen more in terms of reality TV shows than as juries.

'Transparency' is the conventional way to address that problem nowadays, 
but it's another panacea from the same medicine cabinet. Feel like your 
governance process is out of sorts? Try Transparency™! Unfortunately, 
huge swaths of The Spectacle now (if I may use that term) are devoted to 
perverse forms of transparency. Artificial TV dramas that lay bare the 
ins and outs of group dynamics, tell-all memoirs about participants' 
experiences in some huge fiasco, even meta-debates about how viral stuff 
spreads on social media — these are all subgenres concerned more or 
less with dissecting *how* decisions were made in the past tense.

In that respect, the only maybe useful thing I have to add about Brexit 
in particular is how asymmetric and alienated the debates seem to be. A 
lot of pro-Bexit rhetoric is cast in a 'historical' perspective, as if 
the speakers were standing outside it all and looking back on it all 
retrospectively. In many cases they *are* — moving their businesses 
abroad, lining up papers in other countries, etc. In contrast, a lot of 
Remain rhetoric is grounded in concrete benefits here and now and how to 
extend them — for example, to the next generations.


Cheers,
Ted

On 28 Jan 2019, at 8:55, Felix Stalder wrote:

> As far as I know from the German Pirate Party, the use of liquid
> democracy has been pretty problematic, to say the least. But anyway,
> these are different things, as David said, no either or.
>
> Citizens' Assemblies are for a smaller number of citizens coming
> together multiple times over longer period of times (say one year),
> discussing, in depth and with experts, contentious issues. The
> advantages of a small number is that you can be more clear with the
> selection process (ensuring a minimum of diversity) and you can
> materially suppor the participants (again, important is you want to
> include people who canno affort "free labor".).
>
> The advantage of such assemblies really lies in the qualitative
> dimension, people from different backgrounds being forced to listen to
> each other, respond face-to-face to each other, and seeing where
> agreements can be reached and were disagreement might be rephrased to
> change the question into something more productive.
>
> This is really hard to replicate electroncially and with large number 
> of
> participants.
>
> But to iniate this process now for Brexit, it's really too late. This
> takes a long time, and it would mean, in effect, to day inside the EU
> until the process is finished, and then we will see again, depending 
> on
> the outcome of the process.
>
> What I've always wondered by Labor hasn't come up with their version 
> of
> Brexit and then called for a new elections to make sure they have the
> majority to bring it through parliament. At least, then people could
> vote, even indirectly, for their prefered version of the thing, 
> without
> having to re-do the vote, which would be problematic, to say the 
> least.
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