| To give a specific example: traditionally, church council went off and worked out the budget, presented it to the congregation which made a few minor changes, then voted on it. Our current process has evolved to a three meeting process - the congregation gathers to identify our core mission for our fundraising drive, we then hold another meeting at which we examine budget options - with various levels of staffing and spending, then hold a third meeting at which a budget is formally adopted. This process results in better outcomes - and in fact doesn't actually require more time but requires more planning (the first meeting to determine mission is held at about the same time council traditionally began working on budget the final meeting is held at about the time the budget would normally be adopted). The outcome has been a stronger shared commitment to mission and budget and overall a better sense of who we are, what our strengths are and our goals. (Other examples abound - for instance our council business meetings used to be fairly formal but are now more casual, oriented toward conversation and group building; decisions often flow more smoothly as a result, even when there is strong disagreement we are able to work through it in more positive ways.) As a result, the congregation is healthier than it was - but many of the changes came indirectly - we didn't for instance change a policy and watch the outcomes, we changed how we did things and people were able to move into a deeper sense of community which resulted in more members feeling empowered to do things.
There's an old saying - you will never dismantle the master's house with the master's tools. It's a way of saying that if you want different outcomes then you need different processes. As for example, in Switzerland, one of the cities wanted to build a new community center/visitor center. The people in charge of the project did the usual processes came up with ideas proposals etc. Then, they created an intentional creative visioning group of local residents. This group met for a period of time, were given the basic facts of funding and resources, informed about the goal (i.e. let's build this center on the shore of the lake) and then encouraged to examine the problem from a variety of angles, looking at objections, problems and alternatives. The citizen's group proposed a novel solution that worked, that addressed many of the objections and reduced the cost of the project; the citizen's solution included some architectural changes to make the project more earth friendly, moving the actual center to the second floor of the building and using the first floor as the parking area (which reduced the cost since underground parking is very expensive to build). The results were widely lauded by the community.
Adam Kahane tells stories of being invited to extremely fractious groups and challenged to facilitate their conversations. Kahane talked about leading a group of lawyers and legal scholars in Argentina. This group was frustrated with the start of Argentine law and devised a wide array of solutions and ideas. They then talked about them and talked with people who weren't there. Without this group of people ever directly advocating their ideas to the government many of their reforms were enacted.
The ancient Greeks are purported to have had a saying "Democracy ends when voting starts." That provides an interesting insight, guiding us toward a different way of engaging community and decision making. Deliberative democracy invites us to make decisions in very different ways. Through conversation and discussion, not only do a variety of alternatives appear, but those alternatives are often more creative, more far-reaching and more widely accepted than what was first considered by the small group of decision makers.
Kyrsten Sinema recounts the story of how Arizona became the first state to reject a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. Sinema and her peers invested a great deal of time talking with Arizona residents about the proposed amendment. They realized that it would have banned domestic partnerships between heterosexuals as well as same sex couples and realized that was the key to defeating the amendment. Suddenly, Arizona's retirees many of whom were in relationships or knew people in relationships that were domestic partnerships were opposed to the amendment. For many retired persons, getting married again means the loss of income as they lose their deceased spouse's pensions or other income. But they are in committed relationships - domestic partnerships. This became the central argument against the amendment and Arizona voters defeated the amendment. (Two years later, a much narrower amendment passed the voters - the original proposal outlawed domestic partnerships, the later one outlawed only same sex marriage and not domestic partnerships - and if you ever wanted a clear demonstration of heterosexual privilege this would be a good example.)
A while back Jeffrey Feldman argued:
The problem is that these same Democratic Party leaders are the people who long-ago decided that passing a health care bill depends 101% on making anodyne arguments that persuade people who (1) already have health care, (2) are too self-interested to want reform to help others, and (3) only care about reducing their monthly expenses. That means the organizers of the town halls see these meetings more like open enrollment information sessions than historic battles in the push for reform.
In other words, it is the Senate, Congressional, and White House Democratic Party communication teams that have created the ideal, quiet conditions for a half-dozen fever-pitched teabaggers to shout "tyranny!" and disrupt the hushed sessions.
If, by contrast, the Democrats leading these sessions had gone into them with more passion, the political stage available to the teabag protesters would have been radically diminished, if not eliminated altogether. Beyond just inviting people to kick off the town halls with a story of how their families have suffered as a result of the health insurance industry, Democrats could have followed communications strategy where the overall goal was to control the emotional symbolism of the town halls--wherein everyone who attended would be so shouting mad and teary-eyed in favor of reform that there would be no silent vacuum that could have been filled by protesters.
It's a simple and profound insight. The town hall style meeting is a good idea but the entire approach that has become standard is deeply flawed. It begins with the actual physical space of the meeting - a podium facing rows of seats. The structure of the meeting is all about questions from the audience to the elected official. The entire structure of the meeting frustrates the dynamic nature of deliberative democracy and creates a space in which astroturfers and teabaggers can disrupt the meeting and create mayhem. (Not for nothing but I think the modern town hall meeting is not consistent with the spirit of democracy; it has become a staged event, devoid of passion and dynamism.)
There's been a second problem with the health care debate. It is difficult for elected officials to realize this, but DC is a profoundly insular city and most Americans regard DC and its denizens as out of touch with our needs, concerns and ideas. Any successful reform proposal, has to work around that perception.
There a lot of Americans working in the area of decision making, group facilitation and group processes. This is an area in which American thinkers are important leaders. These persons are an invaluable resource for elected officials. The insights of these persons have the power to revolutionize government.
I want to look at the health care and how it could have gone.
Back in February, despite dealing with a series of economic crises, everyone in DC knew health care reform was on this year's agenda. Congressional progressives should have immediately convened a series of discussions in their districts - not anodyne townhall meetings, but real exploratory discussions. Invite members of the public to a series of public meetings at which they would have been invited to tell their stories to each other in small groups - sharing good and bad experiences with health care. The goal of these meetings would be to define the problems as we the voters experience them and to define the strengths of our current system as we the voters experience them. Since the goal of reform would be to leave the good stuff in place and address the weaknesses, these meetings would have prepared progressives with talking points about health care that would resonate with average voters. Quite literally, progressives would have been able to say, "At the health care meetings in my district, I heard lots of comments about problems people have faced, let me share some typical comments . . ."
Having held those February meetings, progressive Dems needed a second round of public meetings - this time with the goal of looking at the problems and generating ideas. At these meetings, the process would engage people in small groups looking at the problems the previous meetings identified. Again, this process would create a host of talking points that would resonate with voters - "When people in my district were asked how to control costs, they had lots of ideas, let me share some of those ideas with you."
These first rounds of meetings would have the sole purpose of giving more people a voice in the process. It is also a progressive, democratic process of problem solving.
In Kahane's book - Solving Tough Problems - he describes a means by which participants are challenged to create scenarios and then name the scenarios and choose between them. Following the first round of meetings, progressives would have had a large catalog of solutions to choose from - solutions which could be arranged in a variety of ways - so that one solution would be leaving the system as it is, making no changes. Another scenario is a single payer system. Another scenario is government owned and controlled health care and so on with everything in between. Following the first rounds of meetings, progressives should have gone into scenario generating mode - based on everything we've heard, here is the range of scenarios we see playing out. (Kahane recommends having participants generate the scenarios and that can be done as well - as long as the process is open and transparent, I'm not sure it matters if the scenarios are generated by participants or by a third group.) The scenarios are governed by a simple set of rules - they have to start with the present reality, they have to be reality based (i.e. you can't imagine that insurance are going to suddenly stop caring about making profits) and they have to tell a reasonable, plausible story.
Once you've got your scenarios you present them to the public and let people choose between them. The names of the scenarios need to describe the scenarios accurately but without necessarily imparting judgement - a tough challenge but Kahane describes the scenarios generated by South Africans used metaphors of the natural world - one was called something like a Flock of Birds Taking Wing which invoked the idea of the whole nation rising together, slowly.
The process with health care would invite people to examine the scenarios and choose between them. Once that happens, again progressives have a powerful and public case to make, one that can easily sway public debate. It's easy to make the case that given the choice people agree we cannot keep the current system (which is in fact the public position but backed up by polling - but its not a position which carries any of the passion that sways public debate). What's more, a well named scenario has the metaphorical power to sway debate - for instance the vision of "a rising tide lifts all boats" is powerful and evocative. Naming a health care reform something The National Umbrella (I just made that up so it's not great) invokes the idea of health care reform protecting everyone from the storms of life. The point here is twofold - first off using publicly generated ideas and giving them evocative descriptions goes a long way toward creating an environment in which public debate is positive and deliberative.
From the side of elected officials there are a couple important roles. Public officials have a unique ability to control the public microphone; after the first round of discussions which are aimed at identifying what's working and what's not, progressives are in a place to make strong cases about the need for reform, using powerful personal stories from their constituents without turning their constituents into props like Joe the Plumber. Progressives would be able to invoke a powerful frame of "talking to the people, then talking to the people about talking to the people." It would work. It would also create a powerful progressive frame for reform, one that was in fact the voices of the American people.
After the second round of meetings, progressives would be able to talk about the variety of ideas. For instance, "At the meetings in my district, a mother of three talked about how important it is to her to make certain that her children always have access to affordable health. She suggested that all children should always be covered by their own health insurance program." Or, "In my district, a man who lost his job lost his insurance because his COBRA coverage was $1000 a month and he could not afford it. They don't want insurance for free, they just want health insurance they can afford. He suggested that a third option - a government program you can buy into when you don't have other insurance."
Once the scenarios are articulated, and named, it becomes easy for progressives to talk about insurance - i.e. "In my district, voters like the idea of the National Umbrella - it covers everyone and protects us from bad weather of life. We're all in this together."
While elected officials are doing that, the people who participated in the meetings, speak in public about their experiences at the meetings - about the power of having a chance to share their experiences and have those experiences truly heard by elected officials and about shaping public policy. Their stories of participating would reinforce everything that elected officials were saying in public.
Once there's a preferred option, one chosen by the public, advocating for that option becomes incredibly easy. When it comes for the August break, you invite people to speak who attended the earlier meetings to speak, to talk about how the proposed reforms were those favored by the people at the meetings. Since these persons were involved in creating solutions, they have a commitment to them which will spread to people who know them. Even the best politicians don't realize that to most Americans, DC is insular, distant and out of touch; a process like this one involves average voters, which directly addresses the great weakness of DC based solutions.
All told, a process like this requires planning and requires elected officials to do something they're not comfortable with - step out of problem solving mode for a while. Let the public guide the solutions if not the process. It also requires that elected officials get really good at facilitating group meetings - and if they're not, finding people who are.
The end result of a process like one may not produce any ideas that aren't already in the proposals in Congress but that's actually a minor concern. The real issue is using progressives processes - engaging lots of people in identifying problems and proposing solutions - to generate solutions. A solution created by average voters in a transparent and open process is one that more people can support. It introduces the key passion Feldman identified as missing. Ultimately, progressives in Congress made a fundamental mistake of assuming solutions generated by Congress could be sold to a public fed a steady diet of anti-government bs by conservatives. A solution generated by the public is one more of the public can support. The August town hall meetings would not have been sales meetings - they would have been opportunities for people to talk about their problems with health care and how the proposed solution addressed them. The outcomes would have been better, stronger and if history is any guide, more progressive (the American public is actually more progressive than our political classes). |
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