On Episode 40
The Citizens' Chamber in the Canton of Vaud
In this episode of Rules in Perspective, I review the podcast episode 40 on the Citizens’ Chamber in the Canton of Vaud, a discussion I had with Rodan Bury and Charly Pache.
My 3 takeaways from episode 40:
- Designing complementary institutions
- Citizens’ Chamber & direct democracy
- Improving existing institutions
Listen to episode 40 and find the show notes here.
Letter from Switzerland: Where the People have the Veto
It would be great to hear your opinion and feedback on this new format. If you want to send me an email, you can reach me at [email protected]. If you find my discussions interesting and you’d like to support my work, consider buying me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/rulesofthegame
Related Episodes:
Deliberative Democracy and Citizens’ Assemblies with Ian O’Flynn (Ep. 22)
Full Transcript:
My name is Stephan Kyburz. This is the fifth edition of Rules in Perspective. Here are my 3 takeaways from episode 40 on the proposed citizens’ chamber in the Canton of Vaud in Switzerland, a conversation I had with Rodan Bury and Charly Pache on my podcast. If you’d like to listen to that episode or read the proposal of the Citizens’ Chamber, I link to both in the show notes.
You find all editions of Rules in Perspective both as a video on my Youtube Channel and as a bonus episode on my podcast. It is important to mention that these are my personal comments and do not necessarily reflect the views of my guests or the organizations they work for.
Point 1: Designing complementary institutions
In my first point I want to provide some additional details on the proposal of a citizens’ chamber that we didn’t really have the time to talk about in the episode. To recap, the main part of the citizens’ chamber is to conduct a number of citizen’s assemblies that are topic specific. In each of these so-called citizens’ chambers, 200 randomly selected citizens meet over the course of several months at a time to propose, deliberate and pass new laws. Also what we have not mentioned in the episode is that a citizens’ chamber may be initiated by citizens collecting 10’000 signatures, so it’s a bottom-up process.
As an example, upon the collection of 10’000 signatures, a citizens’ chamber convenes for several months to propose new solutions and pass legislation to improve public recycling systems and the way we deal with plastics.
Now, if you have listened to the episode, you may have asked yourself during the conversation how this chamber is constituted and in particular who sets the agenda and the rules of conducting the citizens’ chambers. In the episode, we did discuss some aspects and briefly touched on the framework, but still I want to explain a bit more so that you can better understand what the institution of the citizens’ chamber would look like.
The proposal actually makes rather specific suggestions regarding the different features of the institution. A rather important element that we only briefly discussed is a more permanent body, called the Citizens’ Senate. The Citizens’ Senate consists of 150 members that are randomly selected from the group of citizens who participated in one of the previous citizens’ chambers. Or in other words, citizens that have participated in a citizens’ chamber would be eligible to become Senators in the Citizens’ Senate for a term in office of one year.
The Citizens’ Senate is a supervisory body that is responsible for appointing important leadership positions in the whole citizens’ chamber framework and it may set the agenda. The Citizens’ Senate may select up to two topics for a citizens’ chamber for every half year. It also appoints the director of the Legal Bureau that helps the citizens’ assemblies draft legislation. It also appoints the Standards and Procedure Council, and the Coordination Centre for Deliberative Democracy, that are both responsible for the regulations around conducting the citizens’ chambers.
The idea of using a random mechanism not only for the citizens’ chambers, but also for the citizens’ senate is meant to remove any political bias and keep the workings of the chamber separate from the ordinary parliament.
I think it’s an interesting case of designing a complementary set of institutions. It makes us scrutinize existing institutions and think outside the box. Of course, the proposed version of the citizens’ chamber would bring about substantial institutional changes in unknown political territory. That’s why I called it quite ambitious in the conversation with Rodan and Charly.
It is also important to mention that this version of a citizens’ chamber would only become official once it is approved by the citizens themselves at the ballot box. So the citizens of the Canton of Vaud would keep having the final say on any institutional changes.
Convincing the citizens and winning the popular vote to inaugurate a citizens’ chamber may turn out to be the hardest task after all.
Point 2: Citizens’ Chamber & direct democracy
My second point is on how I imagine a citizens’ chamber could also work. I am very much in favor of thinking through different designs, not only for a possible experimentation with a Citizens’ Chamber, but also with other institutions. We should contemplate improving our political systems.
I briefly mentioned in the episode that a citizens’ chamber could be a more permanent second chamber that would work like the ordinary first chamber. Like the first chamber, it would propose and revise legislation. This differs from the discussed citizens’ chamber since members would be randomly selected to hold office for a four year term like members of parliament.
A second parliamentary chamber selected by sortition could increase the capacities of parliament to work on legislation while reducing political bias. Of course, this would require a full 4-year commitment from citizens selected for the chamber. It would almost be like running for office as a politician, but instead of being elected, members are randomly selected.
My argument for such a second chamber is inspired by the referendum process that is used in Switzerland. And I recently wrote an article on that topic, titled “A Letter From Switzerland: Where the People Have the Veto”. I will link to it in the show notes.
Parliaments in Switzerland both at the national and at the cantonal level draft legislation, and regularly use a consultation process to include the opinions of public corporations, lower level governments and their administrations, trade unions, and NGOs. The consultation process is meant to integrate all important stakeholders and political opinions in the legislation, to improve it and make it more acceptable. The consultation process is an integral part of the legislative process that attempts to reduce the likelihood of a referendum. If a proposed law is not drafted with care, including all relevant important political groups in society, the higher the likelihood that one opposing group starts collecting signatures to request a popular referendum decision on this law. The consultation process should make sure that at least a simple majority in the population is in favor of the law.
And this is where the citizens’ chamber could play a key role. A large crowd that is only indirectly included in the consultation process are the individual citizens. Even though the whole consultation process is public and anybody could raise and submit their opinion, individual citizens have little weight when it comes to influencing the legislative process.
A Citizens’ Chamber could institutionalize that consultation process, and hence scrutinize and improve a law before it is passed by parliament. I’d expect a random sample of citizens to be able to thoroughly deliberate proposed laws and actually improve its quality.
The second chamber, the citizens’ chamber would have to approve and pass the law, like the first chamber does. If a law was passed by a representative random sample of citizens, that would likely make it worthy of approval for society as a whole. And so it would greatly reduce the probability of a referendum and reduce the number of popular votes.
By reducing the number of referendum votes, resources would be set free for other purposes.
Point 3: Improving existing institutions
My third point is on the importance of improving and optimizing our established representative and direct democratic institutions.
A common argument in favor of citizens’ assemblies is that our parliaments are not very representative of society as a whole and that lobbyists, corporations and wealthy people have way too much political influence compared to ordinary citizens. This may affect legislation, increase rent seeking, and, of course, influence who holds political office and power.
As I mentioned in the introduction of the episode, there are many institutional factors that determine who is sitting in parliament: the type of electoral law, the size of the assembly, the party system, the rules of fundraising, and the costs of running for office, etc. etc.
While I am aware that there is lots of enthusiasm for and hope put in citizens’ assemblies, we should not forget to question and try to improve the existing main institutions in our democratic systems.
In most countries the people do not have the final say on their constitutional amendments or legislation. That to me seems a problem that we only resolve by improving existing institutions and especially by making representation in our parliaments better.
But how can we improve representation and change the character of our parliaments to better reflect our society? We can increase the assembly size. We can improve our electoral systems to make parliaments more proportional to political groups. We can make fundraising for political parties more transparent. We can reduce corporate lobbying by changing regulations. We can use referendums to be a strong, anticipatory check on parliamentary work. We can improve participation of citizens in consultation processes.
There are many ways to amend our existing institutions without having to revolutionize the system as a whole. Of course, whether it is politically feasible to implement all these rule changes that I’ve just mentioned is a whole other story, and heavily depends on the political system in place.
That’s it for the fifth edition of Rules in Perspective. Thanks for taking the time, I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to send feedback to [email protected]
As always, I link to related episodes in the description below. I appreciate you’ve taken the time to watch Rules in Perspective. See you next time.