The biggest barriers to deliberative democracy (thoughts?)
I can think of two barriers. First is that practically nobody has ever heard of things like citizens' assemblies, etc. I was at a local political party meeting (provincial), and nobody had heard of citizens' assemblies. Even the constituency chairperson and the candidate in the previous election had no idea. Even though, in the adjacent province (BC), there was one back in the early 2000's to look at possibly changing the constitution.
And second, if someone has heard of citizens' assemblies, they might just associate them with populism, which is pretty much the polar opposite. Ignorance prevails. The following clip is from the book Democracy's Second Act, which I've slowly been reading and have posted about in a separate thread. Check out what the massive corporation BASF thinks. (It's regarding the French citizens' assembly on climate change policy).
the last few words on the next page are \"they wanted it to go.\"
Evan Bedford on deliberative democracy, social cohesion, and civic journalism, etc
