Crisis in representation is increasingly evident in established democracies, as for example is felt in escalating public protest and increased volatility between elections.
Few initiatives have been initiated and tried to build citizens participation into public decision-making in order to increase democratic legitimacy. Australia (1988) convened a citizen forum to discuss its link with the British Monarch; British Colombia (2004) and Ontario (2007) in Canada held citizens panels on electoral reform; as well as Holland (2006) in its BurgerForum; Ireland (2013) held a Constitutional Convention to tackle pressing constitutional issues. None of these Citizens Assemblies have however yet been successful in pushing through real change.
The Icelandic Constitutional Council initiated in 2010 is perhaps the most far reaching. Crisis in capitalism can open up imagination to alternative ‘economic imaginaries’ (Jessop, 2004). Similarly, constitutional revisions are usually only embarked upon in the aftermath of severe political or economic crisis (Elster, 1995). This is what can be called a constitutional moment. A constitutional moment emerges when a catastrophe mobilizes societal forces for fundamental change (Teubner, 2011). In the wake of this crisis, Iceland came closer than most countries ever get to a clean slate situation. The constitutional revision process embarked on after The Crash was an integral part of the ‘imagined recovery’ of Iceland from a profound financial crisis. Pressured by the angry public, Parliament hesitantly agreed to call for a special external nationally elected Constitutional Assembly, which delivered a bill for a completely revised constitution.
Initially this was seen as a healing process but gradually this too was being politicized, falling into traditional trenches of Icelandic party politics.
In this chapter the Icelandic case is applied to study strives for building citizens participation into traditional representative democratic practises and perhaps more importantly some of the tensions felt in such processes.
