Nathan Gardels is the editor-in-chief of Noema Magazine.
The problem in a two-party system is that the rancor and partisan passions of electoral campaigns push voters into zero-sum camps. In reality, people’s views are nuanced. If disaggregated from the rigidity of this procrustean platform, their choices would reflect that.
After the Trumpist triumph, Democrats are rightly “soul-searching” to discover where they went wrong so they can once again compete for power down the road. If, in this process, they insist on defending their losing propositions defined by the zero-sum terms of the election, form political action committees on that basis for the next battle and limit their reflections within the bubble of the like-minded, they will only confirm what they thought they knew and lose even more traction with the body politic.
To reach out of the bubble and search for their soul among the public at large, the Democrats should organize a series of citizens’ assemblies or other deliberative forms of listening at scale precisely in order to discover the nuanced concerns of the average citizen, unaligned with the neat divisions of partisanship, and be responsive on that basis.
Deliberative Democracy
These deliberative practices are not focus groups that survey the already-formed opinions of voters. They are nonpartisan gatherings of citizens, online or in person, indicative of the public as a whole in terms of race, gender, region, education level, etc. They are convened with professional moderators in a neutral space, “islands of goodwill” outside the electoral arena and its partisan ploys. Pro and con positions on a given issue are posited, verified information is presented and, like in a jury trial, expert witnesses are called to answer questions and provide context.
Decades of experience with this process around the world by the Deliberative Democracy Lab at Stanford University has consistently shown that, once informed and empathetically exposed to the concerns of others, participants move from previously held dispositions toward a consensus. Citizens’ assemblies in Ireland on abortion and in France on climate policies after the “yellow vest” protests have shown a similar result: Consensus can be reached on even the most flammable issues.
In recent years, the European Commission has convened deliberative citizens’ panels on issues ranging from “tackling hatred in society” and energy efficiency to food waste, and even committed to “embed deliberative democracy in EU policymaking” on an ongoing basis. In September, the Democratic Odyssey project of the European University Institute organized the first “transnational citizens’ assembly” at the birthplace of democracy in Athens.
Taiwan has pioneered a participatory platform for listening to the public at scale to reach rough consensus on a range of issues from whether to allow Uber to operate in Taipei to the legalities of adoption for same-sex couples. When she was digital minister, Audrey Tang invented the vTaiwan online platform, which engages thousands of citizens at a time to weigh in on social issues or policy propositions. In essence, as each participant formulates a position on an issue, others chime in with their own versions. Extreme positions fall to the margins with minimal support, and the more consensus views aggregate in the middle. In turn, legislators and parties formulate policies in full knowledge of where the public stands.
Beyond Zero-Sum Camps
One can imagine what such deliberative practices might reveal not only for soul-searching among the Democrats but also about the nuances among those who voted for the Trump camp in the recent election.
It might reveal that many agree with same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ concerns, but oppose pre-adolescent hormone treatment and favor parental control over school authorities when it comes to a child’s gender identification.
It might reveal that many want to severely tighten border control and deport illegal immigrants who are convicted criminals, but oppose race-profiled traffic stops or raids on factories and fields to root out the undocumented and oppose ending DACA, which protects childhood arrivals brought to the U.S. by their parents on no volition of their own.
It might reveal that most people believe climate change is real and are not deniers, but are angry that the costs of the green energy transition fall unfairly on the less well-off who can’t afford Teslas or rising gas prices because of more stringent fuel-efficiency standards.
Public Consensus May Yield A Divided Party
Paradoxically, this search for public consensus through disaggregation might well not unify the Democrats, but divide them. The emergence of a “common-sense” wing that departs from the ideological dispositions of a “woke wing” would seem an organic development.
That eventuality should not be seen as somehow kowtowing to the Trump agenda to garner votes in the next election. It should be seen as affirming liberal values in a way that listens to very real public concerns instead of ceding a response to them to the illiberal forces in society.
