| Evaluative Democracy-- Provincial/State Model |
Notes:
The Public Forums are chaired by a thirty-person Citizen Panel to decide the basic collective priorities of the
province/state. Members of the panel would be randomly selected from any adult of the province/state wanting to be on it. Moreover, members of the Panel would be come from every region of the province/state, and be in proportion of population. (I.e. a more populated region would likely have more members on the Panel than a smaller population region.) An evaluation test would be conducted to screen candidates for the Citizen Panel, in order to ensure a quality of result.
The Panel would hold public forums in every region of the province/state, and open to all citizens of the province/state. (The Panel's decision-making would entail an evaluation of the proposed priorities in terms of their more soundness, and be subject to public dispute and criticism. Also, the Panel can ask relevant experts to present information.)
Examples of possible basic collective priorities would be clean drinking water (including adequate protection of watersheds), clean air (which entails pollution control), adequate housing, low unemployment, preserved environment, financial soundness, reasonable urban congestion, low crime rate, and adequate health care. The Panel would clearly define the priorities, and prioritize them.
The evaluation of political candidates by the Citizen Evaluation Committees would be based on what candidate is more sound in terms of the basic collective priorities of the province/state. The evaluation process (for a constituency) would be viewable by citizens of the constituency, and the citizens would have access to both a summary of the evalation and the complete evaluation.
The public dispute and criticism process would entail written public submissions (from citizens of a constituency), which the Citizen Evaluation Committees (of the corresponding constituency) must respond to.
Positions in a provincial/state government would be determined by an internal self-nominating process and an evaluation of the candidates by the other serving political representatives and in terms of the basic collective priorities of the province/state. If hypothetically all serving political representatives want the same position, then one of the Citizen Evaluation Committees would be called upon to evaluate the candidates.
The citizen-initiated evaluations would be restricted to gross failure of a political representative to adhere to the basic collective priorities of the province/state and gross misconduct.
It should be noted that the Panel is only required to determine basic priorities, rather than specific priorities.
Notes:
Because there are no political parties and no voting, the Provincial/State Assembly would be devoid of party politics including party conformity. Also, because of the Assembly's emphasis on the province.state's basic priorities, the role of lobby or special interest groups would be minimized or at least channelled through the Assembly's commitmemt to the province/state's basic priorities.
The Assembly would function as a cohesive unit directed to upholding the basic priorities or collective interest of the province/state. (Every member of the Assembly would have been determined the better candidate (in his or her constituency) for meeting this collective standard.)
The main positions in provincial/state government, such as Governor, Heads of Departments, Ministers, would be derived through an evaluation process by the Provincial/State Assembly. (For more information on this process see the Model for Provincial/State Government.)
The important part of the Evaluative process is the Public Forums on determining the provincial/state collective interest or basic priorities, because they establish the guiding framework for political representatives and government itself.
The Provincial/State Assembly is open to the general public,and the evaluations of policies and bills, barring sensitive information, is available to the public. Moreover, members of the Provincial/State Assembly are accountable for their decisions and non-decisions according the collective interest or basic priorities set out through the Provincial/State Public Forums.