Yves Sintomer

Professor for political science, Paris 8 University (CNRS research center CRESPPA-CSU)Senior fellow, Institut universitaire de France

Associated researcher, Sociology Institute, Neuchâtel University, and Marc Bloch Center Berlin

Transformation of democracy and the challenges of citizen participation

in Europe

Workshop « How to Make Good Citizen Participation Relevant in European Regions », Land Baden-Württemberg/ Robert Bosch Stiftung/ European

Institute for Public Participation, Stuttgart, 5-6/12/2012. Responsible : P. Nanz

Questions

• Can citizen participation bring something valuable for the future of European democracy?

• What kind of participatory experiments, especially at regional level?

• What are the main challenges of citizen participation?

• What are the scenarios for the future?

First partCitizen participation: what for?

After party-politics?

• XXth – XXIth century: few political innovations: party politics remains the hegemonic model within the institutional political system…

• But it loses its real functionality• Signs of distrust: fall of party membership, relations

to associations and NGOs, fall of turnout• Between media-democracy and new forms of civic

engagement

The decline of political trustUntersuchung der BAT-Stiftung für Zukunftsfragen, für die repräsentativ 2000 Bundesbürger ab 14

Jahren befragt wurden, November 2012

Denken Sie, dass Politiker zukünftige Herausforderungen lösen können?

Ja

Bundespolitiker 10,4 %

Landespolitiker 8,6 %

Lokal- und Gemeindepolitiker 7,2 %

Europapolitiker 6,0 %

Flourishing of citizen participation experiments

• Exponential growth of participatory devices• Various devices, various methodologies• New professional skills, transfers, and the

growth of an “participatory (and deliberative) imperative”

• The need for real benchmarking and international networks

Participation at regional level

• Some backwardness, a growing interest• The regional level: incubator for local experiments

and/or specific level for participatory experiments• Various devices: open public debate, participatory

budgeting, citizen juries (Planungszellen), regional agenda 21, user participation…

• Special need for benchmarking and networking

Two domains

• More “deliberative” representative democracy• Development of direct and participatory democracy

Primaries as an example of participatory democracy?Two debates during French socialists primaries, September-October 2011

Personalization of the ballot against parties’ powerFrankfurt/Main city, 2006

A more “representative” representation?

Selecting candidates by lot?French Greens choose their candidate using lottery in Metz (2012)

Regional public debate on the “Great Paris” French National Commission for Public Debate, April 2011

Electronic town meeting on landscape, Tuscany, 19/02/2010

High-schools participatory budgeting, Poitou-Charentes, France

• Ségolène Royal’s political will

• High school communities decide on 10 million euros

• Democracy and modernization of public service

Development of the initiative, the recall, the referendum

British Columbia (Canada) citizen Assembly for the reform of electoral law, selected by lot, 2004

New types of representatives? “We are […] adding new elements to both representative

and direct democracy. These […] add […] a new set of representatives, different from those we elect. As things stand now, both streams of decision-making are highly influenced – almost captured – by experts and special interests. The idea of deliberative democracy is essentially to import the public interest, as represented by random panels, as a muscular third force. The traditional representatives we elect are chosen by majority consensus, for an extended period, as professionals, with unlimited jurisdiction to act in our name. The new kinds we are talking about are chosen at random, for a short period, as ordinary citizens for specified and limited purposes”

Gordon Gibson, creator of British Columbia’s Citizen Assembly and councilor of the Prime Minister, 2005

Second partChallenges of citizen participation

The scale: beyond participation at local level?

• Citizen participation used to be considered mostly at local level

• Growing numbers of experiments beyond local level

• New facilitating technologies (selection by lot, Internet, electronic town meeting…)

Rationality: can citizen be wiser than experts?

• The effect of election is “to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose” James Madison

• Vs. “the world has suffered more from its leaders than from the masses” John Dewey

Rationality: can citizen be wiser than experts?

• The user knowledge• A broader spectrum of social experiences• A discussion on the common good without

interest preferences• Combining participatory or direct democracy

with deliberative democracy

Participation: do citizens really want to participate?

• The passive citizen, a characteristic of modern democracy?

• Ambivalent but more positive findings• Organized civil society and citizen selected by

lot• Citizens tend to participate when it does

matter

Readiness for more political participationBertelsmann Stiftung Umfrage

Die Bereitschaft zu mehr politischerBeteiligung in Prozent

Ja Nein

Wünschen Sie sich mehr politischeBeteiligungsmöglichkeiten für die Bürger?

81% 16%

Wären Sie bereit, sich über Wahlen hinausan politischen Prozessen zu beteiligen?

60% 39%

Glauben Sie, dass die Politikergrundsätzlich mehr Mitbestimmung durchdie Bürger wollen?

22% 76%

Practices of political participationForm der Beteiligung Habe ich schon

einmal gemachtoder käme fürmich in Frage

Kommt für michnicht in Frage*

Teilnahme an Wahlen 94 % 5 %Volksentscheide-Bürgerbegehren 78 % 21 %

Teilnahme an einer Bürgerversammlung 64 % 36 %

Mitgliedschaft in einem Interessenverband 55 % 44 %

Online-Umfrage im Internet 51 % 48 %

Beratungen über kommunalen Bürgerhaushalt 47 % 52 %

Teilnahme an einer Demonstration 47 % 53 %

Teilnahme an einem Bürgerforum / Zukunftswerkstatt

39 % 60 %

Mitgliedschaft in einer Bürgerinitiative 34 % 65 %

Mitgliedschaft in einer Partei 30 % 69 %

Does it matter?

• A number of “fake” experiments• Housing, building, painting (Patterson)• Focusing on painting in order to avoid housing

and building?

The political willWhy would politicians give up their power?

• The most difficult challenge• Sincere conviction: politics cannot be reduced

to a zero-sum game• Political strategy: against adversaries,

countervailing the international market• Historical antecedents: Bismarck and the

beginning of the Welfare state

Conclusion: scenarios for the future

A convergence of several deep crisis

• Social and economic crisis of neoliberal capitalism• Ecological crisis and unsustainability of our economic

development• Crisis of the postcolonial order: is it realistic and desirable

to reproduce the Western political system everywhere?• Crisis of sovereignty• Social acceleration of changes (Internet, social

networks…), when institutional politics remains the same• Two specific political factors in Western Europe: - the end of mass parties (Volksparteien)- Subaltern groups tend to be less politically affiliated

4 nonrealistic scenarios

• The status quo: representative party democracy goes on with some slight changes (the “Cameron-Aznar-Hollande-Steinbruck scenario”)

• The coming back of “big classical politics”• The long-run domination of technocracy (the Draghi-

Monti scenario) • The victory of the margins (the Toni Negri scenario)

4 (more) realistic scenarios

• Democratic politics becomes a performance without real policy effects (the “Tacitus” or “post-democratic scenario”)

• The authoritarian involution of democracy (the “Hungarian/Russian scenario”)

• The collapse (the “Greek scenario”)• A new “mixt constitution”(the “Icelandic

scenario”)