Page 102 - Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections

Design Choices Trade-Offs Resources More Advantages: Easier to organize and run high quality, well- supported processes Disadvantages: May drain resources from other worthy purposes; can cause public officials to avoid processes just because they seem too expensive Fewer Advantages: Easier to justify public expenditures, easier to conduct more processes on more issues Disadvantages: Processes that are poorly supported more likely to fail, with reputational damage to both the kind of process and the organizers 100 A Project of the UN Democracy Fund (UNDEF) The fundamental question, before consideration of any of the core elements, is whether or not the specific issue that is to be addressed is appropriate for citizen-based deliberation. This takes into consideration the type of issue and what the answer looks like (refer back to the problems-based approach from the introduction – Pg. 8). Ideal topics or issues focus on trade-off decisions that require a public to deliberate on and form a common ground view for what the community’s ethical or moral position should be, their preparedness to pay (and to what level) and thus their preferred intent for the direction of a public decision.