Center for Blue Democracy Explainer

Why Two Separate Monitoring Teams?


Introduction

Citizens’ assemblies often deal with important public issues. When stakes are high, ensuring process quality becomes crucial. While evaluation after the fact is valuable for learning and improvement, active monitoring during the process allows for identifying and correcting issues as they arise – when adjustments can still make a difference.

Monitoring plays several vital roles: it ensures process integrity and legitimacy, provides real-time oversight and enables course corrections, protects against undue influence from any single actor, helps manage the complexity of the deliberative process, and builds trust through transparent oversight.

The coordinating team necessarily holds significant power in designing and running a citizens’ assembly. At the same time, proper monitoring creates appropriate checks and balances, ensuring transparency and maintaining high standards without restricting the team’s ability to effectively manage the process.

Why Two Monitoring Teams?

A citizens’ assembly requires oversight of both process integrity and the learning phase content. These areas demand different types of expertise and involve different stakeholders. Having two monitoring teams – one for standards and one for program – creates a balanced and effective oversight system.

The Standards Monitoring Team brings expertise in deliberative processes and public participation. Their independence and knowledge enables them to ensure compliance with key standards like fairness, inclusivity, and transparency. Their authority matches their expertise – they can make binding decisions about process integrity and serve as arbiters when needed.

The Program Monitoring Team focuses specifically on the educational component of the assembly – the learning phase where experts present information and various perspectives on the topic. This team provides a formal opportunity for stakeholders to be meaningfully engaged in the process through input on educational content, expert selection, and program balance. Their role isn’t to control the program but to ensure diverse perspectives are represented and no important viewpoints are overlooked during this crucial learning stage.

This dual structure creates appropriate levels of influence based on specific competencies. Each team has powers that match their expertise and role, creating effective oversight without compromising the coordinating team’s ability to manage the process.

The Standards Monitoring Team

The Standards Monitoring Team plays a crucial role in ensuring the integrity of the entire citizens’ assembly process.

Requirements for Experts:
– Members are independent experts with knowledge of deliberative democracy and participatory processes
– They must be impartial/neutral in relation to coordinating team members
– They have no direct stake in the topic being discussed

Selection Process:
– Members are nominated by academic deans/department heads in social sciences (specifically those with expertise in democracy, deliberative democracy, or public participation)
– Final selection is done through random drawing from the pool of nominated candidates
– The coordinating team has limited veto power (can only challenge selections based on lack of competence or lack of impartiality)

Scope of Oversight:
– Monitors all aspects of the process against established standards
– Reviews procedural complaints and concerns
– Ensures transparency requirements are met
– Oversees the fairness of participant selection
– Monitors the overall balance and fairness of the process

The Program Monitoring Team

The Program Monitoring Team focuses specifically on overseeing the learning phase of the citizens’ assembly – when experts present information and various perspectives on the topic.

Composition and Selection:
– Includes representatives of various stakeholders (political groups, NGOs, informal groups) connected to the topic
– Selection process combines different methods (appointment for some institutional positions, voting and random selection for NGO representatives)
– The emphasis is on including diverse perspectives relevant to the topic
– Stakeholders with clear connection to the topic can apply to participate

Role and Authority:
– Reviews the educational program design
– Can raise concerns about missing perspectives or imbalances
– Suggests experts and topics for consideration
– Monitors whether key viewpoints are adequately represented
– Can initiate arbitration process (with sufficient support from team members) if concerns aren’t addressed

Design Principles for the Monitoring System

At the core of the design is the principle of matching authority with expertise. The Standards Team’s significant powers in process oversight align with their expertise in understanding democratic principles, while the Program Team’s input on educational content reflects their topic-specific knowledge and stakeholder perspectives. This alignment ensures that decisions are made by those best qualified to make them.

Transparency and trust-building are woven into the system’s design. Rather than asking stakeholders to simply trust the process, the system creates meaningful opportunities for engagement and oversight. The Program Team’s role in particular transforms stakeholders from outside observers into active participants with legitimate channels for input, while maintaining appropriate boundaries on their influence.

This system recognizes that effective monitoring must be active and ongoing, not just evaluative. Both teams can identify and address issues while the process is underway, when corrections can still make a difference to outcomes. The real-time oversight helps maintain the integrity and quality of the entire citizens’ assembly process.