Forums aim to enlarge capacity for citizen interest, say scholars

This article was written by Dennis Engbarth and published by the Macroview Weekly on June 29, 2005. It features the "Workshop for Deliberative Democracy in Taiwan", which was held in Taipei recently. The workshop was sponsored by the Taiwan Thinktank and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy.

Over 60 scholars, community activists and social movement leaders participated in the workshop. They expressed a wide range of views and concerns about the recent adoption of the concept and practices of "deliberate democracy", including the convention of several "citizen forums" by government agencies. For example, the National Youth Commission hosted a Youth National Affairs Conference in 2004, while the Department of Health held two "citizen forums" to discuss issues related to public health. Community groups around Taiwan in recent years have also convened more than 10 "citizen conferences" to discuss a wide range of public issues.

These "citizen forums" offer opportunities for non-specialist citizens to discuss controversial public policies and even to participate in public policy formation. This is one step beyond the current systems of representative democracy as well as social and civic organizations or interest groups. More importantly, in these "citizen forms", citizens can consult related experts and discuss and debate the issues of their concern in the hope that some kind of consensus can be reached and used as reference material in policy making. This allows the emergence of different views and the expression of views by those who do not normally have access to national policy making.

For more information about Taiwan's "citizen forums" in recent years, please check out this article.