Why Citizens' Assemblies Work

This article was first published on Stephanie’s blog and is syndicated here with permission.

Like the Pennsylvania groundhog, I emerge from my cave to see if spring will come again.

This article has been bumping around in my head for a few days now and I THINK I've pinpointed what annoys me about it: none of the people pushing for citizens' assemblies actually understand how they succeed, and in fact are pushing a really shitty narrative about people, society and politics as they do.

"It provides a safe environment to have a conversation. There is zero tolerance for conflict in that room. You're allowed to express your opinion, whatever that opinion is, in complete safety, and people will be respectful of you too."

The reasons put forward in the piece are basically: "true deliberation" solves political conflict; "ordinary people" come up with the best solutions because they find the "middle ground" and "reduce the noise" of "complex and divisive" issues.

And honestly, bullshit on most of that, and on the general ~vibe~ of the piece that "intractable" or "complex" or "divisive" issues are just ~matters of opinion~ and ~if we all sat down together~ and ~saw the human on the other side of the table~ we'd come to ~a true consensus~.

Consensus is great. And citizens' assemblies are great. The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand are pretty hot on both.

But I think citizens' assemblies work for very different reasons, and those reasons matter, and shutting down this wilfully apolitical, "we can all get along if we just stop shouting" narrative is important.

Here's my take:

1. The majority of people hold progressive views. No, they don't think of themselves as political, they haven't Done The Readings, they wouldn't necessarily place themselves square in the bottom left quadrant of politicalcompass.org. But they care about other people. They want their family, friends and community to be happy and healthy and free to live their lives. They value schools and hospitals and parks and pools and being able to get to work or school or indoor netball, to have autonomy in their lives and to know where to go for help.

They don't really care if someone is gay or trans or has an unusual haircut, unless they are told lies about those people. They aren't worried about immigrants opening cool new restaurants in their suburbs or someone getting to rest up after an injury unless they are kept in a state of personal economic anxiety, and told those other people are to blame.

And we know this. We know the majority of people support gay rights, trans rights, wealth taxes, paying teachers and nurses more, having thriving local shops and good jobs, bodily autonomy, and accepting and celebrating diversity.

So no shit Sherlock when you get a bunch of them in a room and ask them to devise solutions to social/environmental/political issues, they'll deliver progressive results, which is to say: supporting human rights and equality.

But what about the opposition? What about the other side? If it's so easy, why did thousands descend on our Parliament and set the goddamned playground on fire over vaccination?

2. The true opponents of progress are a fringe minority of a minority who run scared if they're forced into real conversation about their views. And no, I don't mean "everyone who opposes gay marriage" or "everyone who grumbles about taxes", I mean the hardline, dyed-in-the-wool types who will never shift.

The grumblers? The anxious ones? Take the citizens' assembly approach and put them in a room where they're expected to listen to others' views, consider the evidence, and form a clear-headed view. Reality has a left-wing bias. The talkback radio/InfoWars/Facebook Boomer meme arguments don't stand a chance.

The hardliners? There are so few, and they are so unrepresentative they probably won't get in the room. If they do, most will hide their true leanings. That's why there's still multiple New Zealand knitwear designers on Ravelry who I have to remember not to purchase from - because they don't wear their "founder of Voices For Freedom" badges loud and proud on their business profiles, strangely.

But if that's all true, Stephanie, why don't these good changes just happen? Why don't our political decisions match our community views?

3. The real obstacle to most progressive change is political will. Not lack of political will, not an absence of action, but a proactive, considered decision that nothing should be done. Ruling things out. An obstruction of good ideas by left-of-centre parties across the world who, if I'm charitable, believe the ridiculous myth that doing good things isn't politically popular.

(That they're not financially popular, I can agree with.)

There's also the trap of organisational inertia. Once you've been in central government spheres - whether the Treasury benches or Opposition - you just get used to a certain way of doing things. Of course we can't just feed the poor, do you know how many agencies and regulations and funding rounds and tripartite consultations would be involved? Of course we can't just pass a good law, the other side will simply repeal it!

(My plea to the Labour Party for the new year is to notice how much National/ACT/NZ First do not care about such things.)

The RNZ piece itself discusses the way that people frequently ARE "ahead" of the political curve, and what our politicians consider "acceptable" or "responsible" or "vote-winning" policies. But that's the point: citizens' assemblies work, when they work, because not only are the majority of people caring, compassionate, progressive, and realistic, they're also unconstrained by dogma about what is and isn't politically possible.

So why does this even matter? If I like citizens' assemblies and people are promoting citizens' assemblies, why write a thousand(plus) words quibbling with their reasoning? Two reasons:

1. Painting basic human rights issues as "complex" is a copout, and portraying both sides as equally unreasonable, extreme or bad faith is harmful.

From the article:

"[Ireland], for the last 60 years, was unable to have a civilised conversation about abortion, because the minute the conversation starts, the people speaking retreat to the extremes and start shouting at each other," he says.

The opposing "extremes" in the abortion debate are people who want to access healthcare and people who want to force people to be pregnant against their will. Those things simply aren't equivalent. Pregnant people "shouting" because another side wants to use the power of the state to coerce them into undergoing pregnancy even if it kills them is not the same goddamn thing as anti-choicers "shouting" that doctors are murderers and pregnant people are sluts.

(Also, please stop falling for the right's tactics of yelling about something and then insisting it's "divisive", when they're the people doing the dividing.)

2. Telling people who are oppressed that they have to sit down and respect their oppressors is really shit. When people are fighting for their right to exist, to live good lives, to have basic equality, it is lethal to turn around and say "well you just need to sit down and break bread and form an understanding with the person who wants you silenced, closeted and/or dead" and to imply in the process that direct action like protesting or obstructing motorways is bad or unhelpful (they can be! But they aren't inherently!)

This was my issue with the Human Rights Commission's "dial it down" campaign during COVID which proposed "netiquette" to "take the heat" out of COVID discussions online and honestly I don't have enough sarcastic quotation marks to express my scorn at the idea this is a ~both sides~ problem instead of a public health crisis being exploited by grifters and well-funded extremists to undermine our democracy.

Let's conclude with the suggestion in the RNZ piece, that a citizens' assembly could be useful for the "issue" of te Tiriti. And yes, that sounds a lot better than ACT's bullshit referendum, but we must understand and state out loud that this isn't a debate where two sides just happen to have different views for no reason. One side has facts, human rights, international law and decades of pre-existing constitutional debate to support its views and the other side just has racism.

A citizens' assembly would not reach a good conclusion because ~the issue of te Tiriti is so nuanced and complex and we need to get ordinary people to take time to digest it~. It would (probably) reach a good conclusion because people are fundamentally progressive and the fringe minority are tiny and cowardly. Because one side is grounded in reality. Because these issues are not really complex and the obstacle is wilful political inaction.

That is how citizens' assemblies succeed. And it's important to say so, instead of depowering progressive politics and erasing the reality of our struggles, and the opposition we face.

Stephanie Rodgers is a feminist lefty greenie public servant māmā and former Green candidate living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, playing board games, raising a toddler and shouting on the internet. You can find her on Bluesky