100. The wiki constitution

Constitution of Athens, British Museum Credit

Ok, so only one more of the 101 localopolis posts to go after this.

As this is 100 I thought it would be cool to link back to my first in April 2010 (!!).  In that post I suggested that the messy complexities of local accountabilities could be sorted if only we had a single local constitution for the area.  This would cover the council and all of the public service providers in the area as well partnerships, community councils etc.  I think it has some things in common with the idea of a local public accounts committee since promoted by the Centre for Public Scrutiny.

The other thing I did in that post, which I've occasionally tried to do in other posts since, is to underline how few ideas are truly new.  In this case the Politics by Aristotle could be seen an early discussion of the local constitution idea.  Always worth checking if the Greeks got there first.

My suggestion here is to go one step further and make the local constitution open source.  In fact it doesn't have to be an all embracing local constitution - why not make council constitutions open source as a first step?

Constitutions are the operating codes for local democracy so why not open them up to citizens to edit and improve?

The technology is out there and it is easy.  Wikipedia provides a model that works and that everyone understands.

Of course there would have to be some editorial control - if we are talking about a local council we just need a small weekly committee to consider any edits that have a minimum set level of support by citizens.  So maybe this committee wouldn't agree everything but it would be in public and the very fact that there was an open conversation would so much better than the closed legal process we have now.

I was going post this anyway but I think it fits really well with this James Smith Open Source Democracy workshop at next week's Notwestminster event.

This is one suggestion about open source democracy - there must be many others.










 

4. A Sovereign and Powerful Citizenry

In the localopolis pamphlet (pdf), Colin Copus argues that the authority of local government should come from the citizenry and not from central government.  As Colin points out, unlike many other countries where local government is established as a part of a national constitution, in the UK local government is a 'creature of statute' which has only as much responsibility as central government chooses to give it.  Instead, Colin argues, local government should draw its political authority upwards from the people.

This type of argument is not new of course.  Colin quotes Thomas Paine who said:

“A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution, is power without right”

Whilst Tom Paine was a 18th Century republican arguing against the divine right of monarchs rather than the authority of central government the comparison is still an interesting one.  Why can't we apply the principles of Tom Paine to UK local government?

In this version of local democracy local citizens have the ability to determine the size and shape of their local political institution and to set up new ones if they are unhappy with the existing arrangements. 

Crucially, local government is politically independent and this implies the need for a national constitution to protect this independence.

In practical terms this version of citizen controlled local government requires a mix of representative and direct democracy to make it work.  This starts with the referendum which establishes its constitution and it continues with further referenda as required.  In fact referenda would be needed for all important council decisions and could be instigated by the citizens. In his article Colin Copus also argues for recall elections, shorter terms in office and a limit on the number of consecutive terms in office to restrict the power of councillors.

Colin Copus sums up his argument as follows: 

"...a powerful alternative exists to current constitutional arrangements; an alternative resting on a sovereign and powerful citizenry, not sovereign political institutions. It is a model to which those calling themselves localists should give some thought as it provides a clear route by which localism can overturn the centralism inherent in a unitary state"

1. Local Constitutions

This was one of the three ideas I put forward in my essay in the original SOLACE pamphlet (pdf).  I argued that, because politics and accountability at the local level are so messy (different arrangements for health, police, local government etc), there should be a single written constitution for each local area which sets out the rights and responsibilities of citizens and explains who all the local organisations are and how they are accountable. 

This is not a particularly new idea.  Aristotle, in his book the politics, described how the constitution was at the heart of the Greek city state (aka the polis) giving legitimacy and transparency to political business and, while the constitution is a 'kind of organisation of the state’s inhabitants', it is much more than that as it embodies the 'spirit of the people'.

Local constitutions would define the powers of the different parts of the political whole and provide a focus for public debate and participation. They would set out the rights of citizens and the limits of local lawmaking and be used as a focus for teaching citizenship in schools. Changes would need to be made through referenda and this would provide an opportunity for widespread public debate. In fact the development of local constitutions would be an excellent way to get people involved in local debates about how their politics should be. 

In the UK local areas are already required to community strategies which could be the starting point for developing local constitutions.