The deliberative poll offers new hope

Relatedly, but far less convincingly, McGuinness also suggests that all the deliberative poll shows is that "the forces of conformism in any group of Australians are very strong". In other words, people are likely to "go along" with what they perceive to be the majority opinion. Not only does this underestimate the ability of "ordinary Australians" to make up their own minds, it is simply not borne out by any impartial viewing of the process. Dissent from the floor was common during the plenary sessions, and it is completely unclear to me how, in a room of opposing experts, this conformism manifests itself and conveys itself to participants. Where a strong opinion was apparent in the deliberative poll about a republic was in the preference for a directly elected president. However, the conformism argument is blown out of the water by the fact that, the "after" poll on this topic showed the biggest single change of position. That is, if conformism was at work you would expect the minority in favour of an appointed president to fall in line with the majority: almost the exact opposite happened.

McGuinness also criticises the use of Barry Jones and Ian Sinclair as chairpersons of the plenary sessions and I’m inclined to agree with this. It is nothing against the two men themselves, just that they have become something of celebrities in their own right and I felt, especially in the second deliberative poll, that they detracted from the seriousness of the event. There are plenty of senior academics or corporate types who could run such an event without becoming part of the process in quite the way that Jones and Sinclair did and that would be all to the better. Plus their views on the topic(s) at hand are well known. I would like to see more neutral, less visible chairpersons.

In fact, I would say the second deliberative poll was much less impressive than the first in a number of ways. I don’t think the panel of experts was as well-balanced as in the first deliberative poll, though not nearly as biased as McGuinness would have us believe. In general, I would like to see a slightly less conservative choice of experts, though I realise that IDA are sometimes limited in that not everyone they ask to be involved is available. I also think the final plenary session in the second deliberative poll tipped over into advocacy with Ian Sinclair leading participants in a pantomime of "looking forward" and "looking backward" and generally "rah-rahing" in favour of reconciliation.

The final criticism I would offer is that deliberative polls do not, at this stage anyway, have the "recommending power" that the designers suggest they should. When asked by a reporter if the outcome of the deliberative poll would affect government policy, reconciliation Minister, Phillip Ruddock, gave a pretty definitive "no" response. Unless those in power give credence to the representative nature of a deliberative poll, it will tend to have a pretty marginal status. However, this is more a political problem than something that is inherently wrong with deliberative polls.

My conclusions

None of these criticisms undermines the concept of a deliberative poll. What I really like about them is that they provide a way for ordinary citizens and experts (I prefer the term intellectuals) to come together as equals, as citizens. In an unmediated forum, the intellectuals will tend to dominate discussion simply because people tend to defer to their expertise, because they (the intellectuals) are much more comfortable dealing with such issues in public, and because the mere use of a title (Doctor, Professor etc.) can be intimidating. The deliberative poll goes a long way to equalising this power imbalance by seeing to it that the intellectuals can only speak when spoken to; that they can be told to shut up by the chair; and that the chair openly encourages interventions from the other participants. In fact, deliberative polls provide an excellent (though flawed) model of intellectual practice where the role of the intellectual is to merely make themselves available for public deliberation and not to come in offering ready-made solutions that ignore the wishes or thoughts of ordinary citizens. They go a long way to bridging the so-called "elite/popular divide" by recognising the intellectuals’ expertise, while still recognising that no-one is an expert on "outcomes" (or ends) in a democracy.

The most telling recommendation comes from the participants themselves who, in every interview I have seen or read, feel that they have learnt something and feel inspired to become more involved in political/social discussion in general. For this reason alone, I would say that they are a welcome addition to the political landscape and my challenge to the out-and-out critics would be to come up with something better.