Emerging forms of empowered participatory governance have generated considerable scholarly excitement, but critics continue to ask if such initiatives are “for real”: Are participatory governance processes sufficiently independent? Do citizen participants make good policy choices? An in-depth look at the case of the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform suggests that real citizen empowerment depends on both the institutional constraints of the participa-tory setting and how citizen interests and arguments for policy outcomes crystallize over the course of a participatory process.
and Adam Przeworski, “Deliberation and Ideological Domination,” both in Deliberative Democracy, ed. J. Elster (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
2.
On the issue of cultural capital, see Lynn Sanders, “Against Deliberation,”Political Theory25, no. 3 (1997): 347-376.
3.
In the United States, the single transferable vote is commonly known as “choice voting.”
4.
“Final Referendum Results,” Elections BC, June 9, 2005, http://www.elections.bc.ca/elections/ge2005/finalrefresults.htm (accessed October 15, 2005).
5.
See Fair Vote Canada, “Proportional Representation in British Columbia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Quebec” March 3, 2005, http://fairvotecanada.org/files/provsystems-march305.pdf (accessed August 4, 2006).
6.
See Shaun Bowler and Bernard Grofman, eds., Elections in Australia, Ireland and Malta under the Single Transferable Vote: Reflections on an Embedded Institution (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
7.
Field notes, Fall 2004.
8.
Staff Interview 1, December 2004.
9.
Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform, “Technical Report,” December 10, 2004, http://citizensassembly.bc.ca/resources/TechReport(full).pdf (accessed October 15, 2005).
10.
Several people of Aboriginal ancestry had attended the regional selection meetings, but by chance, none had had their names selected. The Chair pooled the names of these people and chose a man and a woman at random to participate as “Aboriginal representation.”
11.
Citizens’ Assembly Chief Research Officer Ken Carty, personal communication.
12.
Census of Canada, “2001 Census Profile: British Columbia,” September 2005, http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/cen01/profiles/59000000.pdf (accessed May 7, 2006).
13.
Citizens’ Assembly Chief Research Officer Ken Carty, personal communication.
14.
Staff Interview 2, December 2004.
15.
Assembly Member Interview, April 25, 2005.
16.
That is not to say participants were unaware of each others’ political leanings. But overt talk about politics was confined to the private spaces and the off-hours of the Assembly.
17.
All figures are from the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, “Technical Report.”
18.
Elections BC, “Registered Referendum Advertising Sponsors Disclosure Reports,” no date, http://www.elections.bc.ca/fin/refo_2005/refo_2005_sponsors.html (accessed October 15, 2005).
19.
and “BC Election Day Nears—Part IV BC STV,” May 14, 2005, http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/results.cfm?geo=1 (accessed October 15, 2005).
20.
Richard Johnston and Fred Cutler, “What Were They Thinking? And When? The BC Referendum Survey, n=2661” (paper presented at the Designing Democratic Institutions Workshop, University of British Columbia, June 2005).
21.
See “Electoral Maps/Profiles,”Elections BC, http://www.elections.bc.ca/map/edpro01.htm (accessed August 4, 2006).
22.
Lyn Carson and Brian Martin, Random Selection in Politics (New York: Praeger, 1999).
23.
Jane Mansbridge, “Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent Yes,”Journal of Politics61, no. 3 (1999): 628-657.
24.
Assembly Member Interview, April 8, 2005.
25.
Assembly Member Interview, April 26, 2005.
26.
Assembly Member Interview, April 30, 2005.
27.
One Assembly staff person told me that when they first were organizing the process, the staff joked about other dynamics that random selection could introduce into the Assembly’s work—if the group was truly representative of the general population, then they could expect that a certain number of alcoholics, drug addicts, and other difficult characters would participate in the Assembly. This, of course, did not turn out to be the case. Field notes, March 6, 2004.
28.
Donald Blake, Two Political Worlds: Parties and Voting in British Columbia (Vancouver: The University of British Columbia Press, 1985).
29.
Law Commission of Canada, Voting Counts.
30.
Field notes, March 7, 2004.
31.
Field notes, October 16, 2004.
32.
Assembly member Jack MacDonald, Randomocracy (Victoria, BC: PCG Publications, 2004).
33.
Assembly Member Interview, April 26, 2005.
34.
Assembly Member Interview, April 2, 2005.
35.
Assembly Member Interview, April 3, 2005.
36.
Donelson R. Forsyth, Group Dynamics, 3rd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1999).
37.
James Fishkin and Robert Luskin, “Bringing Deliberation to the Democratic Dialogue,” in The Poll With a Human Face, ed. M. McCombs and A. Reynolds (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum, 1999).
38.
Amy Gutman and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
39.
Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, eds. Deepening Democracy (New York: Verso, 2003).
40.
See, for example, a statement written by Equal Voice, an organization dedicated to increasing women’s political representation, October 20, 2005, http://www.equalvoice.ca/news_marie_102005.htm (accessed May 7, 2006).
41.
Government of Canada, 38th Parliament Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, “Evidence Thursday March 10, 2005,”http://www.parl.gc.ca/infocomdoc/38/1/PROC/Meetings/Evidence/PROCEV25-E.HTM%23Int-1168247 (accessed May 7, 2006).
42.
Jack MacDonald, Randomocracy. A former high-level public servant, Assembly member Jack MacDonald wrote the book to inform the BC public about the system in advance of the first referendum.
43.
and Ned Crosby and Doug Nethercut, “Citizens Juries: Creating a Trustworthy Voice of the People,” in The Deliberative Democracy Handbook.
44.
See also the Web site of The Citizens Initiative Review, http://www.cirwa.org.
45.
John Ferejohn, “The Citizens Assembly Model” (paper presented at the Designing Democratic Institutions Workshop, University of British Columbia, June 2005).
46.
also Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias (London: Verso, forthcoming).
