European democracies lead the way – with Children’s Parliaments

As Donald Trump trashes American democracy, the democracies of Europe emerge as leading lights for the 21st century

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“Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” — George Bernard Shaw

Following the mass terror and decimation of World War II, Europe was able to harness capitalism’s extraordinary ability to create wealth in such a way as to fashion a more broadly shared prosperity that better supports families and workers. European nation’s version of “social capitalism” – especially when compared to America’s “Wall Street/Silicon Valley capitalism” – has also proven more adept at fostering ecological sustainability, and a new type of global leadership based on a regional union of individual nations. This decades-long process has been an astonishing historic achievement, like watching a new planet in formation. One can’t help but wonder with admiration: How did Europe manage to arise from the rubble and ashes of total war to accomplish all this?

There is no single answer to that important question, but the most significant part of the answer is: democracy. Today the various European nations employ the most advanced, representative democracies the modern world has ever seen. As a reaction to their blood-soaked history, those nations have forged political institutions that foster inclusiveness, participation, authentic representation, multiparty democracy, and majoritarian policy based on broad pluralism and a consensus of viewpoints, much more so than the United States or anywhere else.

While economy and culture are the twin cores of our daily lives, political democracy is the means for deciding who will sit at the table of power, making policy decisions that affect everything else. In a democracy, the political institutions must shape the economic and mediate the cultural, not the other way around, or vast inequality, authoritarianism and ethnocentrism will result. The United States can learn a lesson or two here.

In Europe, consensus is a much used word, referring to the effort to find common ground among diverse and even opposing forces. The US “winner take all” political system, still substantially rooted in our antiquated 18^th century origins, has shown itself to be unrepresentative, divisive, and disenfranchising. It is founded upon electoral methods and practices that breed an adversarial clash of opposing forces and efforts by the “winners” who “take all” from the losers. But in Europe, a thriving, pluralistic, and broadly representative democracy has been the foundation for everything else that is right and good about the European Way.

What 21^st century democracy looks like

European nation’s advanced democracies are evident in fascinating ways, large and small, incorporating macro- and micro institutions. On the little d democracy side, we see micro institutions such as Question Time in Britain, Sweden, Italy, France, and elsewhere, a weekly grilling, often televised, of the prime minister and other government officials by the opposition party. In Britain, Question Time provides great political theater, and it’s informative as well.

Once after delivering a lecture at Westminster to members of Parliament, I enjoyed an MP-led tour of the British Parliament buildings and had an opportunity to stand in the exact spot in the House of Commons where the prime minister stands during Question Time. As I grasped both sides of the prime minister’s podium—which I was told is exactly two sword lengths away from the opposition’s, so as to prevent any rash political murders in the good ol’ days—the thought struck me like a lightning bolt: What if we had Question Time in the United States? What if, once a week, the president had to stand up and explain the rationale for his or her policies, under intense grilling by the opposition, all of it televised? Wouldn’t that force more transparency in that hall of mirrors that is Washington DC? A small change like Question Time would probably change American politics forever. Or at least alter the types of people foisted upon us as candidates, since it would require witty orators of Churchillian eloquence and grandeur who can withstand regular public interrogation.

Other micro democratic methods in Europe are admirable. In France, no postage is necessary to mail a letter or postcard to the president. Most European nations vote on a weekend or a national holiday, making this seminal democratic ritual more revered, as well as more convenient, and providing a greater pool of poll workers for election day. Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park, which is a haven of free speech and is frequented by all sorts of political freaks and loudmouths, is not only an entertaining place to spend a few hours but also a quaint reminder of the importance of protecting even offensive speech in a free society (though the toxic amplified virality of Facebook and other digital media platforms is certainly testing that thesis).

In Sweden, jailed prisoners are allowed to vote; in fact, most European democracies allow prisoners to vote, because voting is considered a human right as well as an essential part of a prisoner’s rehabilitation. But in the “tough on crime” United States, only two states, Maine and Vermont, allow prisoners to vote, and most states have created byzantine procedures for restoring ex-felons’ voting rights.

European democracies also practice what is known as “universal voter registration”—all eligible voters automatically are registered to vote by the government. It is done proactively, on a rolling basis, and the goal is to have 100 percent registration. A national voter database is maintained, and when a person reaches voting age she or he is welcomed into the ranks of the enfranchised. But in the United States we still mostly have an “opt-in” system in which it is left to the individual to fill out a form and register with the appropriate authorities. Some US states offer an opportunity to register at the DMV and other social agencies, but even then the registration is not automatic and an individual can decline. Voter registration drives often are tied to specific elections, leading to various abuses by the partisans who want to register their voters but prevent the other side’s voters from participating. This has resulted not only in lawsuits and elections decided by the courts, but also in over a quarter of eligible U.S. voters—about 62 million people—being unregistered to vote, a situation unheard of in Europe.

What becomes obvious in observing these many practices is that Europe greatly values enfranchisement and participation, much more than does the United States. Europeans have decided to make it easy to vote, whereas we in the United States have erected unnecessary barriers.

Children’s Parliaments

Europe democracies’ staunch belief in a pluralistic democracy is evident in other ways. I recall interviewing the deputy mayor of Bonn, Germany, who told me about a remarkable institution known as Children’s Parliaments. Several hundred cities in Germany allow schoolchildren to elect representatives four times a year. The Children’s Parliaments convene and debate issues and actually are permitted to propose legislation to the local city council.

This was astonishing to me, because I remember when the city of Los Angeles was establishing neighborhood councils, but the powers-that-be did not want to allow even the adults to propose legislation to their city council. It occurred to me that this was emblematic of a key difference between Europe and the United States in the practice of democracy and pluralism. In the US, two hundred years after the founders created a political system with certain undemocratic tendencies, we still really don’t trust “we, the people” that much. Yet in Germany, as well as in the Netherlands, Scotland, Italy, Estonia, Ireland, Spain and other European democracies, children are involved in policy making, including in some cases to propose legislation to their city councils. I was fascinated by this.

I asked the deputy mayor, who was a leader in the local Green Party, “What do the children propose, do they propose silly things like chewing gum in schools or three sodas a day?”

“Oh no,” she said. “They take it very seriously. They have proposed things like more garbage cans in the schoolyards and the transit stations, since children were throwing their wrappers and litter around. Once small pebbles were placed in the schoolyard in the play area. ‘You try kneeling on that, it hurts,’ said the children, so they proposed sand. They proposed moving the buttons down on the trains, which many schoolchildren use to get to school, so that small children could reach them. Very practical things. Ones that the adults would never think of. And sometimes impractical things like ‘save the rain forest,’ and of course the conservatives said, ‘See, the children don’t understand anything.’ But if you think about it, there are things you can do on the local level with the rain forest, having sister city partnerships with cities there. So it’s a question of how to deal with it.”

“So does that mean when these Children’s Parliaments meet, you know that afterward you are going to receive a stack of legislation sitting on your desk?” I asked her.

The deputy mayor nodded and groaned. “Yes, absolutely. We receive many proposals, and they are very detailed. It can be a lot of work, because they do take it seriously. And if they take it seriously, then so must we, or the children will become even more tired of politicians, having had the experience of not being taken seriously.”

Deliberative democracy on display

Children’s Parliaments are just one of many impressive examples of what is known as “deliberative democracy,” which is practiced all across Europe in various ways. In Rome, a jury of randomly selected citizens was asked to weigh in on their city government’s budget priorities during a time of deficits: Should the government cut spending on hospital beds or city parks? Or increase taxes? In a town near Athens, Greece, citizens were allowed to nominate candidates to run for mayor, instead of the usual insider nomination process. At another event, four hundred average Europeans from the twenty-seven EU-member states, who were randomly selected to form a scientifically representative sample of the European Union’s half a billion residents, were brought together at the European Parliament in Brussels to deliberate about key questions related to the future of Europe. Similar exercises have occurred in Britain, Denmark, Bulgaria, Northern Ireland, even China.

These deliberative democracy exercises are not some nostalgic throwback to ancient Greece’s direct democracy. This is a completely new and modern approach designed to create a political dialogue, a kind of “democratic agora” in search of consensus. Some of them employ technologies such as keypad polling devices, handheld computers, closed-circuit TV, and video links to convene representative assemblies of average citizens who meet for one to three days of deliberation. Part of the event is broadcast on television, and sometimes participants in several different physical locations participate simultaneously via the internet or closed-circuit TV.

This is more than just a mere focus group or a fancy poll; participants suddenly are sitting face to face across the table or across the video link from their own worst stereotypes and political opponents, trying to find consensus. The ensuing dialogue inevitably results in a letting go of their partisan defenses and an emergence of their more pragmatic selves looking to problem-solve. Watching them work to find common ground is transformative.

Europe has led the way in developing these new techniques of citizen consultation. A European-wide discussion at the mass level has never existed before, but these “citizen assemblies” have become an increasingly important instrument in the democracy tool kit.

Prelude to pluralism and multi-party democracy

But the various deliberative democracy exercises, Children’s Parliaments and the like, while groundbreaking in their way, are merely the musical flourishes to the grand symphony of European representative democracy. From nation to nation, the real substance of Europe’s consensus-seeking democracies results from multiparty representative governments founded on the bedrock of proportional representation electoral systems (some nations using proportional ranked choice voting, others using a variety of proportional party list), public financing of campaigns and universal/ automatic voter registration. This holy trinity of democratic innovations, when combined with the new tools and innovations of deliberative democracy, make the various European nations the most advanced representative democracies the modern world has ever seen.

Steven Hill @StevenHill1776 bsky.social @StevenHill1776