OPINION:Innovations such as citizens' juries, deliberative opinion polling and even comic democracy have been used to connect citizens to politics, writes Clodagh Harris.
RESPONDING TO the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by the Irish electorate, Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin spoke of a disconnection between the EU institutions and its people. Others referred to a disconnection between the Irish people and the political elite. A turnout of 53 per cent revealed that these so-called disconnections were not matched by disengagement. Although lower than turnouts for general elections, the Lisbon level was higher than those for the two Nice referendums and the poll on the Single European Act. It was, however, lower than the levels recorded for the Amsterdam and Maastricht referendums but the Amsterdam poll coincided with the referendum on the Belfast Agreement.
Instead, these disconnections were evident in the levels of knowledge voters professed to have on the treaty and their decision to reject the calls of all the political parties in Dáil Éireann, with the exception of Sinn Féin, to vote Yes. The preliminary results of the Eurobarometer's post-referendum survey in Ireland reveal that a lack of knowledge of the treaty was the main reason for voting No.
In a democracy, political parties are agents of political education. This function requires them to provide the electorate with information and choice. While many on the Yes side endeavoured to do so, particularly in the latter weeks of the campaign, others opportunistically used the referendum to display posters to (re)introduce themselves to the electorate in advance of next year's local and European elections. These posters, of which there were many, displayed little or no information on the Lisbon Treaty. In contrast, the No posters placed greater emphasis on messages - that were often sensationalist and inaccurate - than on photographs.
Opposition and Government TDs, namely Fine Gael's Leo Varadkar and Fianna Fáil Minister of State Noel Ahern, have been critical of the Referendum Commission's information campaign. Yet it seems hardly fair to blame a commission that has witnessed a significant reduction in its powers in recent years as the Referendum Act 2001 replaced its function "to foster and promote, and where appropriate, to facilitate debate or discussion in a manner that is fair to all interests concerned" with the more minimalist remit to "promote public awareness of the referendum and encourage the electorate to vote at the poll".
As we head into a "period of reflection" what can be done to (re)connect people?
The National Forum on Europe, established after the first Nice referendum to promote national debate on the EU and Ireland's role in it, will have a key part to play. In its endeavours to meet its remit, the forum has produced high quality comprehensible documents on the EU and more recently on the Lisbon Treaty that can be easily accessed. Its use of Facebook and YouTube reflect its commitment to reaching a wide audience. By contrast, however, the way in which the forum conducts its business is rather staid and elitist. Membership of the forum is limited to members of the Oireachtas while MEPs, from North and South, have the right of attendance and participation. There is also a wide observer pillar. For the most part the forum operates in plenary session in Dublin Castle, yet it has also held a number of regional outreach meetings at which members of the public have been able to directly participate.
Yet sole responsibility for (re)connecting the Irish people with the EU cannot be laid at the feet of the National Forum on Europe in the same way that the onus for information provision cannot be placed squarely on the shoulders of the Referendum Commission. The active involvement of the Government, the Opposition parties and the EU institutions will be vital. One way in which they could meet this challenge is to use consultative and deliberative innovations to supplement their more traditional approaches to information dissemination and citizen engagement.
Innovations such as citizens' juries, deliberative opinion polling and even comic democracy have been used successfully elsewhere to increase citizen awareness of a given policy issue and provide them with meaningful opportunities to communicate their perspectives. Citizens' juries, which involve a small group of citizens who after hearing evidence and cross-examining selected experts issue recommendations in a final report, have been used in the UK since the mid-1990s and are recognised as a mechanism of citizen consultation in the 2007 Green Paper, The Governance of Britain.
Deliberative opinion polls (DOPs) such as citizens' juries create a space within which citizens can deliberate on a public policy issue. However, they involve a much larger group of citizens (250-500). Again the citizens meet over a period of two to three days, hear evidence from specialists and deliberate in small groups. However in the case of DOPs the citizens are polled at the beginning and end of the process. Tomorrow's Europe held in autumn 2007 was the first Europe-wide deliberative poll. It was part of the EU Commission's (plan D) Democracy Dialogue and Debate that was drafted after French and Dutch rejection of the constitutional treaty.
Comic democracy is another consultative innovation. It uses comic books to inform decision-makers of citizens' views and involves a cross-section of citizens participating in workshops that deliberate on a public policy issue and produce a short comic book. The books are then distributed throughout the wide community with a view to increasing local awareness and understanding of an issue. It has been used in Salford in the UK on issues such as voting and local budgeting processes.
These are but a few of the consultative and deliberative mechanisms used internationally to communicate information to, collect opinion from and connect with citizens. The onus is now on the political establishment in Ireland to look to other ways of connecting with the citizens. While EU searches for plan C, the time has come for Ireland to engage in its own plan D.
• Dr Clodagh Harris is a lecturer in the department of government, University College Cork