Decision-Making Process

To my mind, the best decision making process would probably have elements of meritocracy, sortition, democracy, subsidiarity, and stability.  Exactly how much of each and how they can be balanced is an open question.  But for the sake of argument, here's one way of incorporating all of them.

Society is divided into many small portions, (each containing, perhaps, 15,000 people) each of which has some fairly large degree of relative autonomy, capable of deciding on a wide swath of policies for itself.  (We can call each of these a mini-society.)

Within each mini-society, there is a process for decision-making.  This process can, itself, be changed - the Constitution of each mini-society can be amended by the mini-society itself to change the process.  But the default process, as it were, would be as follows:

Step 0: The mini-society has laws, in official law books, beginning with that mini-society's constitution.  They also have at least 2 (though probably many more) elected positions of Jury Assistant, and, if they wish, they may employ Experts - perhaps through some kind of university educational system.  Ideally, these Experts are scientists, whose expertise is measured through scientific peer review.  In addition, there is some kind of Supreme Court, which is elected.

Step 1. If any citizen wishes to change some aspect of the mini-society, they can start a petition.  If the number of signatures passes a certain specified threshold, we move on to step 2. 

Step 2. Two Juries are selected, each containing randomly chosen 7 people - call them Jury A and Jury B.  Each jury is assisted by a Jury Assistant, who explains to them their task and helps them accomplish it, but does not take part in deliberation or voting within the Jury.  These Juries consult with the Experts, who will present them with testimony under oath and answer questions for them.  If necessary, the Juries allow the Experts some time to go on fact-finding missions and report back to them.  The Experts should inform the Juries:

    a) What the current law is on the issue being discussed;

    b) How these current set of policies are working, to what degree they are successful or unsuccessful;

    c) Any background information that is necessary to understand this issue; and

    d) How other mini-societies deal with this issue.  

This "case" may take months or years, but each mini-society may choose to put a time-limit on cases, which may vary, depending on type of case and the type of issue being discussed.  

During this time, a Jury may, if they wish, dismiss their Jury Assistant and have a new Jury Assistant assigned to them. 

Having heard all of this testimony, it is the job of the jury to put forward at least one policy proposal.  The jury should come to a unanimous decision, but it can be a decision to put forward more than one option for policy proposals.  In some mini-societies, they may choose to make it mandatory that at least one of the options is to keep the law the same.  If so, then there would now be at least three options: 

    a) The policy proposal put forward by Jury A,

    b) The policy proposal put forward by Jury B, and 

    c) the option not to change anything and to keep the law the same. 

In some cases, as already discussed, there many be more options than these three put forward by the Juries.  

Step 3) Now the general citizenry gets to vote: do they vote for the policy proposal of Jury A, the policy proposal of Jury B, or do they vote to keep things as they are?  

If any of these choices gets a simple majority of votes, then that policy is implemented, and the process ends there.  If there is no majority, we move on to Step 4.

Step 4) If there is no majority, then two events are scheduled: a public meeting, and a second vote.  

At the public meeting, the two Juries meet together in public, bringing any Experts who they feel would help make their case, explain their positions, debate with each other, poll the audience, and then put forward new, rewritten bundles of policy proposals.  By the end of this public negotiation, there must be only 2 policy proposals.

The weeks between the public meeting and the second vote give opposing sides a chance to promote their respective positions to the public. 

At the second vote, the public must vote again, between the two sets of policy proposals.  Whichever set of policies gets a majority of votes is implemented - but it is only implemented within that mini-society.  

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