Skaftafell, Iceland, Credit: Kris Williams (CC-BY-SA-3.0) Iceland’s recent experiment in re-drafting its constitution has challenged the assumptions that a constitutional process needs to be exclusive and opaque. CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF ICELAND (No. Is it the people or is it not? Iceland’s old constitution was based on that of former master Denmark and was seen as out-of-date, so 25 citizens were brought into into a Constitutional Council to help create a new one. Who should write the constitution of a democratic country and, indeed, any country? During a time when many countries were still recovering from their own financial crises—and questioning the political systems that enabled them—the Icelandic people re-writing their constitution was aspirational. For example, when the elections to the constitutional assembly were held, it was unclear what would happen once its work was done. It appears that the population will be given the chance to vote on the new constitution after the Alþingi (national parliament) reviews the draft.In April 2011, Iceland decided to rewrite their constitution by crowdsourcing ideas and suggestions from the Internet. Iceland is trying to do just that, by crowdsourcing its new constitution to its citizens through social media. The success of any constitutional process is largely dependent on rallying major political actors and maintaining legitimacy throughout. As notions of sovereignty have evolved across time — from god, to a king, to an elite, and finally, to the people — the people of the world look to each other for inspiration. It is the case of Iceland, who faced a deep financial crisis that has led to the failure of the three largest banks in the country and the ensuing economic collapse. In the Icelandic case, various choices seemed a little arbitrary. While the crowd did not ultimately “write” the constitution, it contributed valuable input. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. More recent examples of constitutional processes involve the usual elites: professional politicians and state bureaucrats. In that respect, it might actually have been a good idea to make a discussion of the process part of the National Forum or use crowdsourcing at that early stage too. Building on the values identified by 1,000 randomly selected citizens, Icelanders launched a process to crowdsource a new constitution. As corporations seize control of more and more of OUR Constitution, thanks to the ... Smari McCarthy, International Modern Media Institute, joins Thom Hartmann. These citizens were gathered in a one-day meeting and asked to list the principles and values they would like to see embedded in the Icelandic constitution. Anyone interested in the process was able to comment on the text using social media like Facebook and Twitter, or using regular email and mail. Similarly, while the work of the Constitutional Council members was mostly done in closed sessions, it included open meetings that were filmed, recorded, and disseminated as PDF files on the council’s online platform. This outcome, though disappointing, far from proves that democratic constitutional process designs are bound to fail. A new constitution has been called for many times since the founding of the republic, but the council A translation of this essay was published in Iceland in March. The role of expert consultants in the process should be clarified and a sensible division of labor worked out with, in particular, the members of the constitutional assembly. All contents © 2021 The Slate Group LLC. Write on Medium, Why Voting by Mail Is Part of the Right to Vote, Epstein at Harvard: We’re not finished yet, The Privacy Confusion: first thoughts on clearer thinking, You are the Culinary Creator of Today. In the summer of 2011, the Interwebs began buzzing with the most hopeful application of crowdsourcing yet: the Icelandic Constitution. It looks as though a crowd-sourced constitution, developed in 2012, could finally be about to … Sheila Riley. But it is also a question for the world. 5. The rise and fall of the world’s first crowd-sourced constitution begins in the wake Iceland’s 2008 bankruptcy, when its government decided that a new constitution was in order. Thomas Jefferson, drafting America’s Declaration of Independence, spoke of the people’s “unalienable right to alter or abolish” a constitution. The situation would be different for a country writing a constitution for the first time. The first one was a so-called National Forum—an upstream consultation of a demographically representative minipublic of 950 quasi-randomly sampled citizens. The other was the constitutional crowdsourcing. Check The History. Iceland residents voted overwhelmingly in favour of a new Constitution written by a Constitutional Council of 25 citizens who gathered feedback through social media. Finally, the inclusiveness of the process was enhanced by a limited but still unprecedented level of transparency. Yet the parliament of Iceland has refused to allow this constitution to go into effect. The idea was a consequence of a general distrust towards political parties in Iceland following the disastrous effects of the collapse of the country’s financial system in 2008. Iceland's experiment with participatory constitution drafting thus demonstrates both the possibility of impactful online public engagement, and the potential pitfalls of such a politically … The society took no stance regarding the content of the constitution as such, but simply advocated for awareness of constitutional issues and the creation of a new constitution. Article 2 Althingi and the President of Iceland jointly exercise legislative power. Among them was the Facebook proposal to entrench a constitutional right to the Internet, which resulted in Article 14 of the final proposal. If democracy is rule by the people — if the sovereignty of a democratic nation is ultimately the people — then this process and the constitution it produced is as authentic and binding as any in the world. The Constitutional Council of Iceland worked for three months on writing a new Consititution for the republic of Iceland in the summer of 2011. Publicly justify (and if possible debate) procedural design choices. This is a question, of course, for Iceland first. All rights reserved. Even contemporary political theorists such as Jon Elster insist that the ideal constitution process is hourglass-shaped, with widely open consultative moments upstream and downstream of the drafting, but a tiny waist, corresponding to the exclusive and closed moment of actual writing by a select few. The Icelandic process thus suffered from the antagonism of several key players: The Supreme Court, which struck down the first elected constitutional assembly in January 2011 for what seemed like minor procedural irregularities in the elections; the liberal party, which decried the whole process as illegitimate from the beginning; the academic community, which kept voicing skepticism about the process as “too complicated”; and the media, who ignored it for the most part. The resulting constitutional proposal was approved as the basis of a constitution by two-thirds of the voters in an October 2012 referendum, but the bill based on it ultimately stalled in Parliament the following spring. And if it is the people, will the people demand that their will be respected? 1. The University of Iceland & the Citizens Foundation created a connection to the government where the public can influence the proposed constitutional amendments. Article 1 Iceland is a Republic with a parliamentary government. Not only were such expert interventions a violation of popular sovereignty, but they objectively worsened the quality of the proposal. The Icelandic constitutional process included three original features. Although it didn’t result in any actual constitutional change, the Icelandic experiment has definitely challenged the view that a constitutional process must be exclusionary and secretive, creating a precedent for a more democratic design. For a longer discussion of this topic, see the author’s recent article in the Journal of Political Philosophy. Yet astonishingly, that constitution remains unenforced. The third unusual feature was the decision by these 25 constitutional drafters to use social media to open up the process to the rest of the citizenry and gather feedback on 12 successive drafts. It is, for example, not clear why the National Forum favored aggregative practices of opinion elicitation as opposed to deliberative ones, or why the constitutional assembly included 25 elected members as opposed to, say, a randomly selected 100. From Brexit to Donald Trump, to a general lack of trust in politics, disillusioned voters are expressing their frustration in strange ways. The resulting council was characterized by relative gender balance—including 10 women and 15 men—and diverse professions beyond the usual doctors and lawyers, including a farmer, a pastor, an art museum director, a radio presenter, a trade union chairman, a consumer spokesperson, a student, and a filmmaker. More than 3600 comments were offered by the public, leading to scores of modifications. No doubt, the procedure for crafting and ultimately ratifying the constitution included as the final step Parliament’s sanction — just as the procedure for selecting a government in Britain is subject ultimately to the Queen’s sanction. Crowdsourcing a Constitution : Iceland and Mexico City — Pioneers of Participation at the Highest Level. Building on the values identified by 1,000 randomly selected citizens, Icelanders launched a process to crowdsource a new constitution. Never in the history of constitutionalism has anything like this ever been done. A group of 25 citizens presented a draft of the constitution to Iceland's parliament. Many have heard the inspiring story of Icelandic people crowdsourcing their own constitution. 2. Do not try to bypass entirely other existing representative institutions. This experiment—sometimes dubbed the “crowdsourced constitution”—should prove inspirational for people around the globe intent on writing, or re-writing, their own social contract. Involving lawyers in the wording of the Icelandic constitutional proposal was arguably a good idea (to ensure vocabulary accuracy and compatibility with international treaties), but on several occasions it ended up distorting the drafters’ intent. It was this aspect that attracted probably the greatest degree of international attention, often framed as “Iceland is crowdsourcing its constitution”. 33, 17 June 1944, as amended 30 May 1984, 31 May 1991, 28 June 1995 and 24 June 1999) I. Would there be a binding referendum on it? In Iceland, they are taking a more proactive, hopeful approach – and it’s a lesson to the rest of the world. And the question that anyone in the movements for democracy across the world must ask is just this: By what right? More than 2/3ds of voters endorsed the document in a non-binding referendum as the basis of a new constitution. The constitution of Iceland was scrapped and is being rewritten by private citizens; using a crowd-sourcing technique via social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter. The rewriting of the constitution in Iceland between 2010 and 2013 through the use of crowdsourcing was an unprecedented event on a global scale. Iceland’s crowd sourced constitution experiment may point in that direction. They listed, among others, human rights, democracy, transparency, equal access to health care and education, a more strongly regulated financial sector, and public ownership of Icelandic natural resources. Explore, If you have a story to tell, knowledge to share, or a perspective to offer — welcome home. To find out, Iveta Kazoka, PROVIDUS policy analyst, talks with Finnur Magnusson who was the Chief Technology Officer of the Constitutional Council in Iceland. Be aware of the conditions for change. And the same is true of Iceland. But the Queen understands the limited power that right conveys — if Britain is to call itself a democracy. In the wake of a crippling economic crisis, the nation is trying new things. Similarly, when settling on a design choice like crowdsourcing, resources must be made available accordingly. That stance may have played out well just after the crisis, but on the long run it harmed their legitimacy and jeopardized their work. Although on the face of it an example of successful public crowdsourcing, the new constitution drafted through this process ultimately failed to be ratified by the parliament. In the Icelandic experiment, the popular referendum was just one of the three hurdles the Icelandic proposal had to overcome to be passed into law, and its positive result was not even binding. But how much of it is real and how much rather is wishful thinking? Iceland has had a national church for decades and very many people want a separation between the Church and the State. Western democracies are in turmoil. Composing a constitution that is more indicative of the needs of the people it is meant to govern seems at face value to be something that everyone can agree upon. Elections were held to create a Constitutional Assembly body, but given some electoral flaws, had been ruled null and void by the Supreme Court of Iceland on 25 January 2011, leading the parliament to place most of the winning candidates into a Constitutional … In the history of constitutions across the world, America has had a unique place: Ours was the first constitution ratified by the people in convention. 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