Quick links:
- Official 2012 CIR Evaluation Report for the Citizens' Initiative Review Commission given to Healthy Democracy Oregon on February 21, 2013.
- Official 2010 CIR Evaluation Report given to Oregon legislature on December 16, 2010.
- Watch my November 10, 2010 research talk on the Oregon Citizens' Initiative Review. This talk is also downloadable here. You can also check out the latest news on this subject at Healthy Democracy Oregon.
“One of the imperative needs of democratic countries is to
improve citizens’ capacities to engage intelligently in political
life . . . In the years to come . . . older institutions will need to
be enhanced by new means for civic education, political participation,
information, and deliberation that draw creatively on the array of
techniques and technologies available in the twenty-first
century.”
—Robert Dahl, On
Democracy (1998), pp. 187-8.
A team of civic reformers, including Ned Crosby, Pat Benn, Elliot Shuford, and Tyrone Reitman, spurred the Oregon State Legislature to establish a Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR) process that draws on the core principles of deliberative democracy. In a nutshell, the Oregon CIR gathers a paid random-sample of Oregon residents to scrutinize statewide ballot measures. The results of each panel are then published in the official Voters' Pamphlet, which is distributed to every Oregon household that has one or more registered voters. The idea of the CIR comes from Ned's work with Citizen Juries, as well as the ideas of other processes that promote citizen deliberation in public policymaking.
With funding from the National Science Foundation, I am leading a
research team that is studying the deliberative quality and electoral
impact of the Oregon CIR. Results will be posted once they become
available. Click
here to read a brief abstract on the grant. Team members include UW
doctoral candidates Katie
Knobloch and Justin Reedy, along with Wisconsin professor Kathy Cramer Walsh and Mark Henkels.
Past Writings
The reason the CIR appears on my website is that it is a process
very similar to the one I have advocated in my earlier book,
By Popular Demand.
(Also see Ned Crosby's
Healthy
Democracy.) I also discuss the idea in The Jury and
Democracy and Political Communication
and Deliberation. Ned Crosby and I have written a series of
short essays
on the CIR idea and related research:
- Our Nov 27, 2006 op-ed in the Seattle Times on voter knowledge and the 2006 initiative election, as well as public opinion on the CIR proposal.
- Our Nov 18, 2004 op-ed in the Seattle Times described what we can learn from British Columbia's innovative Citizen Assembly process
- Our Nov 6, 2003 op-ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer documented with survey data just how little information voters have when filling out their ballots in initiative elections
- Our Aug/Sept 2005 opinion piece in Washington Law & Politics reviewed the results of the British Columbia Citizens Assembly and outlined our proposal for the CIR.
CIR in Washington?
Ned Crosby initially developed the CIR proposal as a bill before
the Washington legislature.
Read
it here. Ned Crosby and Pat Benn presented the CIR proposal to the
Washington legislature
in May, 2006. Thanks to TVW, you can
listen
to their presentation, along with questions and comments from
others, including myself, click here (the relevant audio starts about a
third of the way into it, so advance the play marker until you find
'em). You can also
read
a story on the CIR presentation in the Tri-City Herald.
Initial Evaluation Plan
Before the CIR was
implemented in Oregon, colleagues and I developed a plan for how to
evaluate the
effectiveness of CIR. In the last chapter of By Popular Demand, I
outlined such evaluative measures, but I am developing a detailed
research plan before the CIR becomes law. Click here to learn more about
the initial research plan.
