The "fourth leg" of democracy: An interview with Ireland's Art O'Leary
The "fourth leg" of democracy: An interview with Ireland's Art O'Leary
The Irish Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission is a big believer in Citizens' Assemblies. Here's how he answers the skeptics
This is the third in a series introducing members of the DemocracyNext organisation: see our interviews with James MacDonald-Nelson and board member Robbie Stamp.
Art O’Leary is Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission of Ireland and former Secretary General to the Irish president—he’s also a member of DemocracyNext’s International Advisory Council. Since 2012, Art has led the creation and operation of Citizens’ Assemblies in Ireland, which he calls the “fourth leg” of their system and which he says have transformed Irish democracy.
In this conversation, Art discusses the upcoming 8 March nation-wide referendums in Ireland on whether to approve Assembly recommendations to change the constitution; he describes his experiences with Assemblies over the years; how his conception of democracy has changed; and what others may be able to learn (or not learn) from the Irish model. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
I want to get a little personal and ask what democracy means to you—and how the concept has changed for you over the years?
I've never been asked that question before. But it's such an interesting one, because my journey is that I used to be a civil servant working in a political environment. My sole function was to support the people who were elected to Parliament. I viewed my part in democracy as providing support for the people who were elected.
Since then, I spent seven years working for our president, I’ve spent three or four years doing Citizens’ Assemblies, and now I'm the Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission.
My view has changed dramatically, because I understand now that I was looking at this issue through the wrong end of the telescope. I saw the key role as being to support individuals who are elected in a democracy. Now I can see that it's actually about a much broader base of people who are important.
My mind was dramatically changed at the Citizens’ Assembly meeting last year, the Citizens’ Assembly on drug use. There was a chap speaking about the drug treatment centre he worked in, and he said, “There is no such thing as a hard-to-reach person or a hard-to-reach group, there are only hard-to-reach services.”
So my job now is to go and hang out in places where people hang out, rather than me being in a nice office in Dublin Castle, saying, “Oh, look, that group over there, they're very hard to reach, what am I going to do?”
My job is to get them involved and engaged, whether that is in Citizens’ Assemblies or to get them on the electoral rolls and then get them out to vote—to play a bigger part in politics.
Growing up, what did you think democracy was?
I had a very theoretical view: Government for the people, by the people, etc, without ever having talked too much about what that is. Growing up, you tend to have so much going on in your life: you're studying, and you're trying to think about girls and your big night out on Saturday.
You tend not to think about running the country. It's something that old people do. And then every election comes, you vote in a new crowd — that's what I had in my head.
Interestingly, when I left school, I went straight into the civil service when I was 17. So I've been doing it for a long time now. It’ll be 40 years in the civil service later on this year. I've just aged myself there.
But in that time, I have got to see behind the scenes of our democracy in action. Perhaps I have seen what politics in action is behind the scenes rather than democracy in action. It's only in later years, when we see Citizens’ Assemblies and people starting to become much more active—now we're starting to see democracy in action, as opposed to politics or government or parliament in action, which is what we were taught democracy was.
With the French and American Revolutions, there was an emphasis on constitutional republics and elections. But if you go back to the root of democracy, you see sortition used by the ancient Greeks, in China to select civil servants, and by others. This idea of people selected by lottery making decisions is quite old and has a long history throughout the world. How do you explain this to people who are skeptical? How do you explain a Citizens’ Assembly to someone who says, “Isn't that the politicians’ job?”?
The short answer is, I don't. Because [DemNext Founder/CEO] Claudia Chwalisz and I have a difference of opinion about the short-term implications of Citizens’ Assemblies. Ireland has used Assemblies as a support for representative democracy. I'm Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission, so what else would you expect me to say? I am a believer in elections.
I had this conversation with Hugh Pope, who's also on the DemNext advisory board. He’s talking about something that might develop over hundreds of years. Perhaps we might end up in a situation like that.
But the big fear that governments around the world have — when they start exploring the issue of Citizens’ Assemblies — is of the threat to them personally and the threat to the political system.
I have been very strong in suggesting that Citizens’ Assemblies, as they are currently constituted in Ireland, pose no threat to the political system at all. The Irish people elect governments to make hard decisions and Irish governments uses Citizens’ Assemblies as part of the policy development programmes to improve the process of making decisions.
So it's getting a perspective from a randomly-selected group of people in order to improve the process. We still have political party manifestos, politicians get elected, they still have the benefit of the civil service who provide policy advice, they still engage with other stakeholders. All we have done with Assemblies is to add a fourth leg to this three legged stool, where we educate a 100 randomly selected individuals and ask them a question as well: What do you think we should do?
The real power of Citizens’ Assemblies is to improve the process of decision-making, as opposed to the replacement of the political system.
Politicians embracing the idea that randomly selected citizens would replace them? Why on earth would they agree to that? It would be like turkeys voting for Christmas. I think this will move much slower. But political systems need to get used to the idea that citizens can play a role in policy development, and that they will help the quality of decision-making.
For someone in Ireland, how do you explain why it’s worth it for citizens to come together in an Assembly? They're not experts, they may not know the issue. We hear this refrain of, “Well, this is the job of politicians.” How do you respond and what is the value of having random Irish citizens gather in rooms and talk about these things for multiple days?
Well, nothing succeeds like success. Ten years ago, Citizens’ Assemblies dealt with two of the biggest social issues this country has had in the last 50 years. They did they did it in a very transparent, simple way. So it works.
The two big criticisms of Citizens’ Assemblies are all the same. You've just identified them: “We already have an Assembly, it's called the parliament. So why do we need another thing?”
Again, this is not a replacement for the parliament. It is a mechanism to enhance the quality of policy development and decision making.
Secondly, the objection of, “Well, these people are not experts!”
The difference between a focus group and Citizens’ Assembly is exactly that. We build up expertise in the room. We give 100 citizens an opportunity, over six or seven months, to develop a mini-expertise in these issues. At the end of that process, we ask them for their answer. The difference between this and that focus group is that we have a room full of highly engaged and highly informed individuals who have looked at issues from every single perspective, they've heard the voices from all sides of the argument, and they will take all that information, balance it against their own life experience and then make a recommendation. They'll vote exactly to their conscience.
For people who don't believe that this works, look the experience that we have had particularly on issues like abortion. The Citizens’ Assembly made recommendations which went way beyond what the political system and the media were expecting. They recommended a more liberal regime of women's reproductive health. The government said, when the recommendations were published, that the Irish people would never go for that. The result in the Assembly room was 67 to 33 in favour of this very liberal regime. When the question was put to the Irish people in a referendum, the vote was 66-34.
That proves two things: First, that room was perfectly representative of the Irish people. They could speak on behalf of their community. But secondly, and more interestingly, perhaps, the Irish people were more sophisticated and nuanced in their thinking on this issue than the Irish political system gave them credit for. The behavioural economists call this the wisdom of crowds.
I want to ask for your perspective on this as a civil servant. Sometimes civil servants are in the weeds, deep in the details of budgets or complex social issues and policies. I often have the sense that they feel ordinary citizens have no business dealing with that stuff. After all, they're the experts. They make a living going deep on these issues. What is your view and what have you heard from other civil servants in Ireland?
I'd say two things here. And they might contradict each other, but I'll say them anyway.
One is that whatever is a priority for the Prime Minister is a priority for the civil service. So if the Prime Minister says we’re going to do Citizens’ Assemblies, then the civil service follow suit. And they're engaged, because their only role here is to support the political system.
On the ground, however, this is difficult. I always look forward to the first engagement with the civil service after an issue has been selected for consideration by an Assembly. Because they always ring and say, “We can help you here, putting the agenda together, helping you identify speakers, etc.”
I always say the same thing to them: The government has had the benefit of your opinion on this issue for a long time. And they're not sure, so now it’s time for citizens to take a look. So you can't set the exam paper, sit the exam, and correct the homework. You have to let somebody else sit the exam.
We don't allow them to take part and they're always very disappointed. Because as you said, they’ve built up an expertise in this area. They feel they know very strongly about it. There is some nervousness around Citizens’ Assemblies, when they come to trample all over the “weeds” that you mentioned.
You will find academics, people like David Farrell in Ireland, who are heavily critical of the fact that any civil servants at all are involved in running a Citizens’ Assemblies, because he feels they ultimately are beholden to the government. I fundamentally disagree with that. I've run the majority of Citizens’ Assemblies in this country and I would challenge anyone to find anything that was, in any way, favourable toward the government. I completely stand by the independence and impartiality. But there are all kinds of views around that.
This connects to my next question. If you zoom out, someone might say there is a trend of these Assemblies coming to more liberal conclusions. I saw that Irish MMA star Conor McGregor is saying to vote “no” on the referendums coming up on 8 March. How do you answer those who believe Assemblies are a fake democracy and they are just being used to ratify liberal priorities?
Assemblies reflect the feeling of a representative group of people. If they make liberal recommendations, guess what, maybe the country is more liberal than the some of the conservatives would like to believe.
The result in the the abortion Assembly is a perfect example. People with a more conservative view of life were horrified at this recommendation, but that’s what democracy is. I don't have a view on left, right, or whether people vote yes or no, or whatever. My job is to ensure they have enough information in order to be able to make good decisions.
People feel strongly about our constitution. I love the fact that there is at least a debate. These two referendums coming now emerged from the Citizens’ Assembly on gender equality.
These will be fifth and sixth referendums which which emerged from Citizens’ Assemblies, which didn't exist 10 years ago. Now they are an indispensable part of the decision making framework.
It does remain up to government to decide on whether to accept Citizens’ Assembly recommendations. This goes back to one of the points you made earlier, about why on earth we need to use Assemblies? It is a support to the decision making framework. Ultimately, we elect governments, we elect members of parliament to make decisions, and that's what they do. This just helps them.
In terms of the referendums that are coming up on 8 March, could explain what those are about? Were you part of those Assemblies?
We had an Assembly which dealt with the huge spectrum of issues around gender equality. Our constitution, which was written in 1937, says a family is based on what might have been the societal norm back in 1937: a man married to a woman, probably with many children. The family was based on marriage.
The proposal here is that we would put the words “and other durable relationships” along with married people. The second referendum is about something a little more controversial. You may have heard of the famous women in the home clause, which exists in the Irish constitution. It says women who mind children and perform home duties shouldn’t have to go to work, because they make a contribution to the public good by staying at home.
Now that clause could be deleted. It would be replaced with another article, which says anybody in a family who is providing care at home should be acknowledged; that they provided a contribution to the public good; and that the government will try its hardest to make sure that they don't have to go to work to the detriment of their care responsibilities at home.
There is some controversy around this. The Citizens’ Assembly made a much stronger recommendation, to oblige the government to support people with caring responsibilities. The language being proposed doesn't go as far as a legal obligation. It's less than that.
After citizens have participated in Assemblies, do they often become advocates for the results they’ve come up with? Are they activated as citizens in a way that goes beyond voting?
My experiences are not dissimilar to the climate Assembly in France. When President Macron declined to implement some of those recommendations, many of the Assembly members became the greatest advocates for those recommendations.
In Ireland, back in 2012, we had 66 citizens in the first assigned randomly selected Assembly. On the day that the referendum result on marriage equality was announced, 65 of them got in contact with me to say, “I did that, I was involved in doing that.” That included many of the people who voted against the proposal as well.
They accept that we live in a democracy and they may have voted against it, but the process was fair. We have discovered over the years that the vast majority of people who've gone through the process are advocates for the issue, and also advocates for the process—because it has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for the vast majority of them.
Has there been a case of the larger population rejecting, in a referendum, the recommendation of an Assembly?
Yes, once, on the issue of presidential term lengths. Our presidential term is seven years and the government asked whether we should change it to five years. The Assembly said no, keep it at seven. But they made a supplementary recommendation that the minimum age for the presidency should be changed from 35 to 18.
So the government put that to the people and the Irish people said, “No, keep it at 35.”
The other three issues which were put to the people by referendum were agreed to. 8 March will be number five and number six. We’ll know shortly whether the Irish people agree with these recommendations or not.
You and your team have done a remarkable job of integrating this fourth leg, as you called it, into Irish democracy. At times, it almost sounds too good to be true, but that example suggests the system can handle disagreement—there is not always this perfect match between the Assembly’s conclusions and the wider population’s. Democracy can be messy and that’s actually normal.
This goes to to the last question: Do you believe the Irish model, if that’s how you conceive of it, can be applied in other countries? Is it adaptable and replicable? Or is there anything specific about Ireland that would make that difficult?
I’ve been asked this question many times. I'm not travelling around the world saying, “This is how you run Citizens’ Assemblies.” What I’m saying is, “In Ireland, this is how we run certain Assemblies and it seems to work.”
Ireland is a country with five million people. It's probably easier to get Ireland in one room with a hundred people than it is in larger societies, like the United States or Colombia, where I’ve spoken. It could be difficult to replicate, but not impossible, if you pay a bit more attention to the design.
However, involving your citizens in the political process in order to make better decisions? That's bulletproof. There is absolutely no doubt that can work anywhere. So all you're talking about are differences in design to suit a different scale and or different culture.
📚 What we’re reading:
In LA Progressive, columnist Joe Mathews writes about an effort to modernize Los Angeles’ charter which may be doomed by its reliance on local insiders and elites; Mathews suggests a city-wide Assembly to take up the issue.
Our friend Deb Roy of MIT’s Center for Constructive Communication writes in The Atlantic about “How to Tackle Truth Decay.” Roy suggests, among other things, that Citizens’ Assemblies can play an important role in “restoring Putnam’s factory for producing trusted knowledge.”
On February 26, Bologna's city council approved a resolution which accepts the proposals and recommendations formulated by the city's 88-person Climate Assembly. A write-up about the process notes that attendance at the meetings never dipped below 80%. ''
💪 What we’re up to:
Together with 40 other democracy organisations, led by G1000, we’ve sent a letter to EU leaders calling for greater democratic innovation, including increased funding and support for permanent Citizens’ Assemblies. More here, or read the letter itself.
Founding Head of Research and Learning Ieva Česnulaitytė will speak about at G1000’s Spring School in Eupen from 20-22 March. More here.
Are you a city official, developer, or civil society org? A reminder to apply to work with us to make transformative changes to how we make decisions about our cities—with Citizens' Assemblies playing a key role. Applications are open until March 19! Read more about the selection process here, or click here to submit an application.