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BLOG | AUGUST 10, 2020
While citizens showed high levels of trust in their capacity to make decisions within deliberative groups, policymakers remained sceptical. Can we bridge the trust gap?
Read Vesa Koskimaa’s & Lauri Rapeli´s blog in Discover Society – Policy and Politics here.
MARINA LINDELL | AUGUST 2, 2019
Deliberative Walks (DW) is a method where participants, by deliberating in small groups and joining facilitated walks, tackle a complex policy issue that has highly intertwined social and physical dimensions. DW builds on the principle that two participatory methods, Citizens´ Jury and Development Walk, are joined together. The origins of Development Walks can be traced back to women’s safety audits, developed in Canada in the late 1980s and in Sweden in the early 2000s, as a response to increasing concerns related to insecurity and violence against women. The focus on safety walks is on both the physical and social dimensions of the localities, the underlying idea being that the ones who have the greatest knowledge of the local environments are those who actually live there.
Studentlab Deliberative Walk
In October 2017, 19 students participated in the “Studentlab Deliberative Walk” at Åbo Akademi University in Vaasa. During five days, they deliberated about the development of the university campus and its surroundings. Although formally arranged as a master´s course, with the aim to introduce a new method for learning and citizen participation, it was organized as a DW, including a citizens´ jury and a development walk.
In practice, a development walk is arranged within the frame of a citizens´ jury. The Studentlab Deliberative Walk was realised in five 4-hour sessions. During the first two sessions, the participants received information and had the opportunity to cross-examine selected experts. The aim was to give participants different insights into the issue. It was interesting that they did not accept the experts´ visions all together, but they started to visualize and make their own visions in the small group discussions that followed. Discussion rules (and a facilitator) emphasized open-mindedness, respect for other´s opinions, and encouraged them to express their opinions and try to justify them.
The third session included the development walk. A walk-leader gathered the group on campus and guided them on a pre-scheduled route. During the walk, six experts were waiting at different locations, giving a short introduction about their specific area and expertise. The main idea was to give the participants an overview of the university and the surroundings by visiting places, seeing and feeling them. The participants had the opportunity to pose questions to the experts, to discuss with them and with each other while walking to the next stop. Some of the presenters joined the walk to discuss some more and to learn new things themselves. Informal discussions between the stops clearly increased informal interaction between decision-makers and participants as well as enhanced an open exchange of thoughts. After the walk, smaller-group discussions followed. It was clear that the mindset had changed for many of the participants after these first-hand experiences and getting to know more about the different places at and surrounding the campus.
Reflections on Deliberative Walk
Interviews with participants highlight the development walk as the most important element in enhancing learning and increasing interest to participate, but it is the variation and combination of methods and learning situations that is the most important feature of DW. The results also indicate that it is fruitful to experience an issue with all senses. It is astonishing that there is such a big increase in civic engagement despite the process not being fully connected to real decision-making.
The approach offered by DW offers openings for wider and deeper citizen engagement in democratic processes. The combination of the formal citizens´ jury and the informal development walk as well as different discussion formats allows for both rationality and emotions to be included in the deliberative process. Many liberal democracies are under attack from anti-democratic forces these days. Promoting active citizenship and developing civic skills seem more important than ever.
MAIJA SETÄLÄ | MARCH 12, 2019
Citizens’ Initiative Review and Finnish local politics
In February 2019, 21 residents of the municipality Korsholm (Mustasaari in Finnish) in Western Finland convened over two weekends to deliberate on the proposed merger of the municipality with the neighboring city of Vaasa. This was the first time the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) was carried out in Europe. The CIR, developed by the non-profit organization Healthy Democracy, has been used in Oregon since 2010, and there have been several pilot projects elsewhere in the US. The CIR involves a Citizens’ Jury that deliberates on a ballot initiative. The statement by the jury, including ‘key findings’ as well as three arguments for and against the measure, is sent to all those eligible to vote before the ballot. The purpose of CIR is to help voters make more informed and considered choices and in this way to address problems of mass participation, such as voter ignorance and the polarization of public opinion.
The municipal merger was a challenging issue for a CIR process, not least because of its multidimensional character. In Finland, municipalities are autonomous political units with the right of taxation as well as important providers of public services. Therefore, a municipal merger has potentially a variety of effects on residents’ every-day lives as well as local democracy. In the case of Korsholm, the potential municipal merger has language political ramifications. Both Korsholm and Vaasa are bilingual; however, about 70% of the population in Korsholm is Swedish-speaking, whereas about 70% of the population in Vaasa is Finnish-speaking. Public debate on the merger has especially focused on the language issue.
The CIR pilot in Finland was part of the PALO project (Participation in Long-Term Decision-Making). Municipal referendums are relatively rare events in Finland and, like in the case of Korsholm, they have usually dealt with municipal mergers. Moreover, referendums are always initiated by municipal councils, not by citizens. From the perspective of the PALO project, the referendum in Korsholm was a good case when it comes to both the timing and the topic.
Deliberation on a polarized and multidimensional issue
Participants of the jury were recruited as follows. In January 2019, a random sample of 1400 citizens eligible to vote in Korsholm were invited to participate in a Citizens’ Jury on the merger issue. From 73 volunteers, a 24-member panel was formed so that it represented the population of Korsholm in terms of socio-demographics and opinion on the merger issue. Some of those selected dropped out, when replacements with similar socio-demographic characteristics were invited. In the end, 21 citizens turned out, including 14 Swedish speakers and 7 Finnish speakers, 12 men and 9 women. The youngest participant was 18 years old and the oldest was 65, the average age being 48. The panel reflected the population rather well also when it comes to place of residence and opinions on the merger issue.
The task of the Citizens’ Jury was to write a joint statement in order to provide voters with reliable and relevant information on the municipal merger before the referendum. The polarization and multi-dimensionality of the issue was reflected in the working of the jury. While the first two days of the jury were dedicated to gathering information and learning about the issue, much of the third day was spent on weighing the relevance of different arguments for or against the merger. The scope of arguments covered a large variety of issues, such as the role of the Swedish language in Finland, linguistic division in the region, availability of public services in both languages, local democracy, quality and costs of public services – especially social and health care, as well as future of education and the economic prospects in the region.
Moreover, the fact that many participants had strong views for or against steered the discussion towards hopes and fears related to the merger, rather than factual arguments, e.g. on economic effects of previous municipal mergers. While the focus of deliberation was on the relevance of value-laden arguments pro and con, it almost seemed as if the other ‘filter’ built in the CIR process, namely the reliability of arguments, was ignored. Although this caused some concern among organizers, it was clearly important for the members of the jury to have an opportunity to deliberate on difficult interest and identity conflicts and to establish an agreement (or ‘meta-consensus’) on what is at stake in the merger issue.
In the beginning of the fourth day, the members of the jury had a chance to review the arguments they had developed and consider possible ‘glaring omissions’. At this point, participants realized that they had to come up with more neutral arguments to be included in the ‘key findings’ of the statement. Overall, the fourth day was largely devoted to improving the factual accuracy of the relevant claims. The fourth day also demonstrated the participants’ ability to engage in constructive and critical discussion and to overcome their own opinions on the issue in order to improve the quality of the statement.
Can CIR work in a bilingual and polarized context? Some reflections
The organization of a bilingual Citizens’ Jury was one of the challenges in the CIR pilot in Korsholm. The linguistic division turned out to be manageable, mostly because most jury members were bilingual or at least capable of understanding the other language. Moreover, there is a strong tradition of bilingual communication in the region. In spite of this, there was a need for translation, especially from Swedish to Finnish, provided by bilingual moderators. In the end, the Swedish and Finnish versions of the statement were developed in parallel.
Overall, the CIR procedure showed its capacity to prompt critical thinking among deliberators with strong and conflicting opinions. The statement by the Citizens’ Jury was sent to about 14.800 voters in Korsholm about three weeks before the referendum day (March 17). The statement summarized key findings as well as three arguments for and against the municipal merger. In the polarized opinion environment of Korsholm, reading the statement may be one of few opportunities for voters to encounter and reflect on arguments from both sides. Obviously, the impact of the statement will be established later, after the PALO research team has analyzed the data from surveys conducted in various stages of the process.
In Finland, municipal referendums are advisory only, and there are indeed several cases where municipal councils have made decisions against the result of a referendum. Given this reality, one should hope that the statement by the jury does not only serve the voters in Korsholm, but also local politicians who will have the final say on the merger issue – and also on what happens after that big decision.
Photo: Christofer Björklund
Christensen, Henrik Serup; Leino, Mikko; Setälä, Maija; Strandberg. Kim (2022): Knowledge, Trust or Perspectives? A Causal Mediation Analysis of How a Citizens’ Jury Affected Voting Intentions in the General Public. Swiss Political Science Review.
Setälä, Maija; Christensen, Henrik Serup; Leino, Mikko & Strandberg, Kim (2021): Beyond polarization and selective trust – a Citizen’s Jury as a trusted source of information. Politics.
Setälä, Maija; Christensen, Henrik Serup; Leino, Mikko; Strandberg, Kim; Bäck, Maria; Jäske, Maija (2020): Deliberative mini-publics facilitating voter knowledge and judgement: Experience from a Finnish local referendum. Representation.
Leino, Mikko & Bäck, Maria; Christensen, Henrik; Kulha, Katariina, Setälä, Maija, Strandberg, Kim & Taskinen, Mari (2019). Puntaroituja äänestyspäätöksiä? Kuntaliitoskysymyksen käsittely Mustasaaren kansalaisraadissa. Politiikka 61:4.
