In July 2012, as part of the Inquiry into the Economics of Energy Generation the NSW Parliament will commission a jury style process to make a structured contribution to the public inquiry process. The Foundation will operate two policy juries – one in regional NSW and one in Metropolitan Sydney – in order to identify...
In May 2012 the City of Canada Bay Council commenced a process to devolve decision making to a random selection of 36 citizens drawn from the local government area. They are being asked the question ‘What services should we deliver in the City of Canada Bay, and how should we pay for them?’.
In July 2011 the NSW Government began a comprehensive review of the state’s planning system. The Minister sought submission and comments from the community and the Foundation has made two submissions which you can download here.
The level of confidence in our democracy today is at an all time low. Despite compulsory voting, citizens don’t turn up. Young people surveyed in a Lowy Institute poll saw only 39% agree with the statement “Democracy is preferable to any other kind of government.” Every survey of trust in elected representatives seems to find...Continue reading
Hélène LANDEMORE, Yale University, Connecticut Prepared for Presentation at the Annual Convention of the American Political Science Association, Toronto, Canada, September 3-6, 2009. The idea of collective wisdom—that is, the view that many heads can be smart and are in general better than one—is at least as old as Aristotle’s Politics, if not older (Aristotle...Continue reading
May 2012 Edited by: Gemma M. Carney & Clodagh Harris Deliberative and participatory democracy specialist group of the Political Studies Association of Ireland. The ‘Beyond the Ballot’ symposium, held in Dublin in March 2012, was a public, academic and civic event which questioned, criticised, investigated and celebrated the status of democracy. This book, which publishes...
(PILOT STUDY REPORT) May 2012 Authored by: Dr Annie Bolitho, Associate, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne Dr Carolyn Hendriks, Senior Lecturer, The Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University Mr Chad Foulkes, Research Fellow, World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention, Deakin University This report summarises the key findings from...Continue reading
Margaret Gollagher and Janette Hartz-Karp The intent of the paper is to contribute to the development of more systematic documentation and analysis of deliberative, collaborative governance throughout the globe. It endeavours to select case studies of decision-making processes from around the world that incorporate the coherent voice of public deliberations into policies and decisions, integrating...Continue reading
Keith Sutherland, Department of Politics, University of Exeter; In recent years a number of writers have argued that sortition (the random selection of citizens for public office by lot) should augment the institutions of electoral democracy, but there is little agreement on the precise role that it should play. At one end of the spectrum...Continue reading
January 1995 Edited by: Akhil Reed Amar, Yale Law School – Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 987 This proposal outlines a system whereby votes become, in effect, tickets in a lottery to select representatives. While it potentially allows for odd results in single electorates, on a system-wide basis the law of averages suggests it would yield...