Citizens’ juries and their role in improved alcohol policy: damp squib, or useful tool?

Abstract

Background

Increasing public participation has the potential to inform better alcohol policy. One method for increasing participation is the citizens’ jury – a strategy that has been both touted as a panacea for issues of democratic representation and dismissed as ineffective in impacting policy. Seeking to look past both hype and cynicism, we reflect on two Australian juries with an aim to identify both the potentials and pitfalls of the use of citizens’ juries in alcohol policy.

Methods

Using public documentation, we analyse two alcohol-related citizens’ jury processes – one in Adelaide, SA, and one in Sydney, NSW – with respect to their implications for alcohol policy development. We reflect on matters of participation, deliberation, authority, remit, and impact of recommendations.

Findings

The case studies indicate the importance of clear aims; whether these are instrumental and focussed on developing specific alcohol policy recommendations or focussed on broader epistemic democratic effects. Jury composition, the notion of vested interests, and the extent of juries’ authorising power are key considerations for juries deliberating on alcohol policy.

Conclusions

Due to the nature of policy-making, no single strategy can be a democratic panacea. However, we find that carefully considered and situationally aware elements of citizens’ juries may be useful in alcohol policy development.

Keywords:

• Alcohol policy
• citizens’ juries
• deliberative democracy

Acknowledgements

This paper builds on a presentation by AR at the 11th International Conference on Nightlife, Substance use and Related Health Issues, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2019, May), titled ‘Nightlife policy and citizen engagement in a “post truth” world’.

Disclosure statement

All authors declare they have no conflicts of interest to declare and have not received funding from alcohol, tobacco, gambling or the pharmaceutical industries.

Notes

1 It is specifically the term ‘Citizens Jury’ – capitalised and without a possessive apostrophe – that is under trademark. According to the Center for New Democratic Processes’ literature, anyone may use the process of the jury without permission by the Center; however, they cannot use the name without the Center’s approval. The Center notes that this is to maintain the ‘integrity of the process’ rather than to ‘discourage others who wish to conduct a trustworthy citizens’ jury project’ (The Jefferson Center, 2004, p. 10).

2 We were also able to access a small number of reports from citizens’ juries that did not focus on alcohol-related matters but in which questions of alcohol emerged during the course of the juries as an important topic. These included six short (7–8 h) health-focused citizens’ juries held in prisons in Queensland and New South Wales in 2019 in which alcohol emerged as a focus area (Simpson et al., 2021); a 2019 New Zealand-based jury on nutrition and pregnancy (Coppell et al., 2020) and a Melbourne-based jury on urban infrastructure needs (Infrastructure Victoria, 2019).

3 The juries were held in Barrow in Furness, Blackburn, Blackpool, Ellesmere Port, Fleetwood, Halton, Morecambe, Wirral and Hastings (Beddow & Bryant, 2016; Bryant & Hall, 2017; Shared Future, 2022).

4 There are no details of who these experts were or what domains they covered.

5 This is not always the case. For example, in 2019, the City of Sydney engaged a citizens’ jury with an entirely open remit to feed into the Sydney 5050 vision. Consultations following this process are ongoing (City of Sydney, 2021).

Additional information

Funding

Alison Ritter is supported by an National Health and Medical Research Council (10.13039/501100000925) Senior Research Fellowship (GNT1136944). This work was also supported by a grant from the Australian Research Council (10.13039/501100000923) Discovery Project DP200100909.

Notes on contributors

Alison Ritter

Alison Ritter is an alcohol and other drugs policy scholar and Director of the Drug Policy Modelling Program at UNSW, Sydney. She conducts research on drug laws, drug treatment, models and methods of democratic participation in drug policy, and research focussed on policy process. Her work is supported by grants from competitive research funding bodies (NHMRC, ARC) as well as commissioned research from governments across Australia. She is past President of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy, and Editor in Chief for the International Journal of Drug Policy. Professor Ritter has an extensive research grant track record and has published widely in the field.

Laura McLauchlan

Laura McLauchlan is a multispecies ethnographer and anthropologist with the Drug Policy Modelling Program at UNSW. Her research explores the biological and social intersections of policy worlds and how it is that relationality between living entities (human and more-than-human), ideas, and physical environments matter in everyday decision-making and care. She also teaches into the Master of Environmental Management at UNSW.