There are many reasons why more democratic and deliberative approaches to economics are necessary and valuable: shaping better and more informed economic decisions, promoting transparency over economic priorities, and strengthening the quality of democracy and public debate. Following an intense process of public engagement, the RSA Citizens’ Economic Council has published its first interim report, setting out emerging findings, and introducing the Citizen’s Economic Charter.
In this report, the RSA project team calls for economic institutions such as HM Treasury and the Bank of England to institute deliberative citizen juries and assemblies to help empower citizens and work to build a greater level of trust in decision-making. A documentary film, capturing some of the work of the Citizens’ Economic Council has also been released. The full report can be accessed on the RSA website.
Related Links
- Prof Graham Smith, Chair of the FDSD board of trustees is a member of the CEC Advisory Group, and introduced the innovation project in a blog post in 2016.
- A recent CUSP paper argues that understanding deliberative systems is a key element for nurturing a deeper, more authentic democracy: “Both, small-scale experimental and large-scale institutional and legislative innovations have the potential to induce greater consideration for environmental concerns and a long-term perspective in our political decision-making”.
