Icelandic Crowdsourced Constitution and Social Management: Practice and Theory in Citizens Democratic Participation

• In Event: Theory and Practice

Abstract

The Icelandic crowdsourced constitution can be labeled an original process that brings possibilities to the development of democracy. The government of Iceland has recently, from 2009 to 2013 undergone the process of creating the world’s first crowdsourced constitution. Immersed in a context of a global financial crisis triggered by the collapse of large American financial institutions, in 2008, following one of the major banks breakdown of this century, know to Icelanders as ‘The crash’, a bill was submitted to the parliament requesting that an advisory Constitutional Assembly to be instated. The assembly in order to ensure participationused social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Flicker and YouTube to conduct the discussions between the people of Iceland and the Council (Valtysson, 2014). Historically, a constitution writing process never included people’s participation directly. In Iceland that was largely attempted in various phases (Landemore, 2015). Even though, the process ended not being ratified as Iceland’s new constitution, it provided a model that spread worldwide, as in Mexico’s constitutional-reform process (Bergmann, 2016). Social Management is an original concept under development in Brazil that, among other aspirations, aims to increase people’s participation and engagement on the decisions that influences their lives. The studies about Social Management in Brazil has been expanding since 1990, in 2007 the Brazilian Network of Social Management Researchers (RGS) organized the first National Meeting of Researchers in Social Management (ENAPEGS). This field of studies seeks to build a new Public Sphere aiming to bring together people and politics in a way they can debate and come up with collective decisions regarding the needs of the community and its future (Cançado et al, 2015). Following a similar idea is the Icelandic Crowdsourced Constitution, this process itself is going to be studied on the perspective of Social Management, as thus to also determine which aspects are considered as part of this perspective and which are not. Further on, this work aims to strengthen this Brazilian perspective on substantive participation, Social Management, from the practical experience of the Icelandic Crowdsourced constitution process. This contribution can be of interest to international debate and to the scientific community of ISTR as the analysis of Iceland process under the perspective of Social Management can help to explain this process for other perspectives and present Social Management as an alternative possible way to ensure participation and emancipation worldwide.
Keywords: Democracy, Participation and Social Management
Short list of references:
Bergmann, E. (2016). Participatory Constitutional Deliberation in the Wake of Crisis: The Case of Iceland in SUITER, J. (2016). Constitutional Deliberative Democracy in Europe. ECPR press.
CANÇADO, A. C., Pereira, J. R. & Tenório, F. G. (2015). Fundamentos Teóricos da Gestão Social. Revista eletrônica do Programa de Mestrado em desenvolvimento Regional da Universidade do Contestado.
LANDEMORE, H. (2015). Inclusive Constitution‐Making: The Icelandic Experiment. Journal of Political Philosophy, 23(2), 166-191.
VALTYSSON, B. (2014). Democracy in disguise: the use of social media in reviewing the Icelandic Constitution. Media, Culture & Society, 36(1), 52-68.

Authors

• Flavio Ayres Marinho, Federal University of Tocantins

• Airton Cançado, Federal University of Tocantins