G1000 - Analysis

Inclusiveness

Phase 1: selecting Issues

G1000 started with a call for citizens to suggest propose issues for deliberation. Thousands of issues were proposed by online participants. The participants also rated the different ideas. From the thousands of ideas, 25 issues were selected. The in a second round 3 issues were selected form the 25 issues. The three issues became the subjects of the next step of deliberation. Although internet site may seem to be an inclusive option, it is less inclusive then mini-publics. In the report it the number of participants in the online survey, but if we take into account that every participant suggested one issue the at most, several thousand participated. The population of Belgium at 2011, was about 11 million. That means that the percentage that participated was less than 0.1%. The characteristics of the participants could be heavily skewed. They can be more young, liberals or people with a lot of leisure time., whereas most of the population usually tend to have less time of leisure, and thus their issues may be different from those that was selected. We suggest that for inclusiveness, a random sample would have been much more inclusive.

Phase 2: Suggesting Ideas

In the second phase, a random sample of 1000 participants were selected. The sample was tested for representedness and was found to represent the population.

The mangers did change the level of representedness in favor of defense from majority roll. The Belgium Population is composed of 61% Flemish and 39% Walloons. To defend the minority form the sheer power of the majority, the organizers set the representatives to be 50% Flemish and 50% Walloons.

In addition to the main event, citizen could participate in an online version of the discussion and ideas proposal (730 participated). And also in 50 meetings around the country (356 participated).

All in all, the level of representedness is very high in the 2nd stage.

Phase 3: Creating and Selecting Solutions

In this phase 32 participants were randomly selected from 491 participants of the 2nd phase that volunteered for the 3rd stage. Due to the high resources the step of generating solutions and producing consensus consume, in time and mental effort (due to problems of deliberation), only tiny body can take part of it. Random selection seems therefore to be the best practical solution, although.

Phase 4: introducing the solution to the Government

The Legislators were introduced to the solution in the last stage. The Politicians seems to be from the high levels of the legislative branch.

Legislators are the major influencer on the Government, and therefor are highly influential stakeholders. They were not involved in the decision making in any part, and therefore their valuable knowledge was lacking. This knowledge is important for passing legislation process. A process that can influence the government. Not taking part in a decision also discourage legislators to from taking further actions to promote the legislation. This may have created the some of the fails of the government to follow the decisions.

As we understand from the report no member of the government was invited share knowledge or to take part in decision making, which also damaged to follow-up.

Total inclusive

According to inclusiveness scale:

• Agenda: 3/10
• solutions:
  • Citizens: 9/10
  • experts: 5/10
  • Legislators: 2/10
  • Decision Makers: 0/10

Total: 0.475

Corroborated Knowledge

From the report it is hard to understand what was the level of corroboration of knowledge. In stage 2 and 3, Experts were used, and we may presume that the synthesis of common knowledge and experts’ knowledge went well. Yet we do not know how the experts were selected. Experts can be highly biased. Experts, especially in social sciences could be politically motivated (e.g. neu-marxism). what kind of experts were selected? Were they from the academies? were they practitioners? both groups tend to have different levels of corroborated knowledge. What was the field of expertise of experts? We need to know the answers, in order to evaluate the level of corroboration.

Another group of experts that seems not to be involved in the process is politicians, which have the expertise to "move things" in the political arena. Another group, is the government employs that have a lot of expertise in implementing the solution. I suggest that not including these groups, heavily influenced the low impact the public decisions had on the government.

Process of Deliberation

The G1000 process of deliberation is classical in deliberation. From the many issues that bother the public, few were selected as the most important by the public. There are alternative methods that are more exclusive, for instance OST, where every body can bring an issue, but in G1000, the design meant to tackle the problems that are important to most citizens.

The process starts with selection of important issues. This stage seems to work well. In the second phase "ideas" were brought up. It is not clear what are these "ideas", but we may assume that they are solution or as we call them "options". The problem in G1000 process come when it passes information from phase II to phase III. In the 2nd phase, options are written done, and are selected for the best options. The best options pass to the the 3rd stage, but the people that created them, may not. Thus, the people with the best of knowledge of how to develop these ideas are left out.