Page 115 - Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections

A degree of self-selection still occurs with the stratified random selection in a civic lottery because potential participants are free to decide whether or not to accept the invitation (unless somehow participation is compulsory in a similar manner to a jury service). Despite that, a cross section of any community drawn this way is far more representative and diverse than would occur through an open call for participation and is less open to influence from special interests. You will mostly reach people you’ve never seen before. Selection processes do not need to make claims of being a perfect statistical match (in a survey there is a fixed pool of answers so it’s easy to test repeatability; this is harder to answer with an open extended process where people freely respond). You should instead aim to achieve a descriptive match to the population: aim to get “people like me” involved in the decision, something that you can consistently achieve with groups of 30-45 people. Think of this in terms of people with different jobs and lives. This group size is large enough that it captures a wide descriptive diversity while also being manageably small enough that the facilitation task does not become too complex. You should resist the tendency to equate size with legitimacy. More people might mean more diversity in the room, but it also makes it harder for the facilitator to get people to deliberate an find common ground. Put simply, reaching common ground between 300 people is much more difficult than with 30 people. And if you’re one of 30 people you tend to take more responsibility for your role than in a large group where you can hide. 113