I’m not certain when I first came across Tom Atlee and his ideas about co-intelligence. With my return to political discourse as a dissertation topic, I’ve found reason to revisit his work. In particular, the concept of Citizen Deliberative Councils resonates with me.
Citizen Deliberative Councils (CDCs) are “temporary, face-to-face councils of a dozen or more citizens whose diversity reflects the diversity of their community, state or country.” CDCs can take several forms, including:
- Citizens Juries—Short-lived (2-10 days) groups of up to two dozen people with diverse backgrounds, tasked with producing a position paper for recommended social action. The Jefferson Center has promoted citizen juries for several decades.
- Consensus Conferences—Panelists help select experts to provide testimony in a public forum, and then deliberate to provide a consensus statement about an issue.
Example: Citizen technology panels in Denmark. - Planning Cells—A short-term (4 days) micro-parliament consisting of 25 people discussing a single issue in parallel. The final citizens’ report incorporates all of the final statements generated by the smaller groups.
Example: Planning cells in Germany. - Citizen Assemblies—A large panel (more than 100 participants) representing an electorate tasked with making a recommendation about a specific topic. The assemblies last for a year, meeting every other weekend, and culminate in a proposal submitted directly to voters for approval.
Example: 2004 CA on Electoral Reform in Canada. - Wisdom Council—A self-organizing agenda set by the participants, who come up with a list of consensus statements to contribute to an authoritative body. This structure has been proposed as part of a Citizen’s Amendment, which would randomly select and empower a group of representative Americans to set agenda as part of the State of the Union.
Example: Jim Rough’s High school wisdom councils and Canada’s People’s Verdict.
I’ll add to this list the Small Group Dialogues run by WebLab in the early years of the mainstream Internet. These, too, were curated collections of diverse individuals, constrained both in size (60 or so invited participants) and duration (about 6-8 weeks). Unlike the CDCs, WebLab conducted their facilitated discourse online. I participated in a few SGDs, including Reality Check (motivated by the Clinton impeachment process), What Now? (in the aftermath of 9/11), and a third-party men’s organization that borrowed the software. These remain my most fulfilling group interactions on the Internet.
Atlee sees the CDC entities as serving a variety of crucial roles in local and regional government. These citizen groups can delve into a particular issue of interest to elected officials or tackle a controversial one that the officials avoid. Panels can review candidates for public office, ballot initiatives, or referenda. They can serve as oversight to politicians and their budgets and policies. They could do the same for corporate bodies, as well. Finally, CDCs can simply serve to reflect the will of the people by setting a direction not tied to lobbies or election cycles.
