Demarchy

Demarchy is a term coined by Australian philosopher John Burnheim[?] to describe a political system without the state or bureaucracies, and based instead on randomly selected groups of decision makers. These groups, sometimes termed "policy juries," "citizens' juries," or "Consensus Conferences," would deliberate and make decisions about public policies in much the same way that juries in U.S. courtrooms reach verdicts on criminal cases.

Demarchy attempts to overcome some of the functional problems with conventional representative democracies, which in practice have often been subject to manipulation by special interest and a divide between professional policymakers (politicians and lobbyists) vs. a largely passive, uninvolved and often uninformed electorate. According to Burnheim, random selection of policymakers would make it easier for everyday citizens to meaningfully participate, and harder for special interests to corrupt the process.

Some people, such as Australian professor Brian Martin, think demarchy could develop into a viable system of government. Although there are no examples of this in practice, lotteries were part of the system for distributing power in Athenian democracy. More recently, Consensus Conferences have been used in Denmark and other parts of Europe as a process for giving ordinary citizens a chance to make their voices heard in debates on public policy. In the United States, several consensus conferences have been organized by the Loka Institute, a nonprofit organization concerned with the social, political, and environmental repercussions of research, science and technology.

To organize a Consensus Conference around a particular topic, the Loka Institute publishes advertisements seeking local "lay volunteer participants" who are chosen to reflect the demographic makeup of the community and who lack significant prior knowledge or involvement in the topic at hand. The final panel might consist of about 15 people, including homemakers, office and factory workers, and university-educated professionals. The participants engage in a process of study, discussion, and consultation with technical experts that culminates in a public forum and the production of a report summarizing the panel’s conclusions about the topic at hand.

"Not only are laypeople elevated to positions of preeminence, but a carefully planned program of reading and discussion culminating in a forum open to the public ensures that they become well-informed prior to rendering judgment,” says Loka Institute director Richard Sclove. "Both the forum and the subsequent judgment, written up in a formal report, become a focus of intense national attention - usually at a time when the issue at hand is due to come before Parliament. Though consensus conferences are hardly meant to dictate public policy, they do give legislators some sense of where the people who elected them might stand on important questions. They can also help industry steer clear of new products or processes that are likely to spark public opposition."

A similar proposal was written in 1985 by Ernest Callenbach[?] and Michael Phillips[?] in the book "A Citizen Legislature".

Related links

• Brian Martin, "Demarchy: A Democratic Alternative to Electoral Politics (http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/92kio)," Kick It Over, No. 30, Fall 1992, pp. 11-13.
• Ernest Callenbach & Michael Phillips, "A Citizen Legislature (http://www.well.com/user/mp/citleg)", 1985
• Publications on demarchy and democracy (http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/demarchy)
• Richard E. Sclove, "Town Meetings on Technology (http://www.loka.org/pubs/techrev.htm)," Technology Review, July 1996.