MacroeconomicsUK
5 May 2023
The problem
The financial sector wields huge influence not just over our economy, but our democracy too, meaning the interests of Big Finance and profit, are put ahead of people and planet. Positive Money’s core values are democracy, sustainability, justice and equity ando ne of our two core missions is to shift power from big corporations and banks to people, so the financial sector can serve society, not the other way around.
What we need now
Positive Money believes that citizens’ assemblies, and deliberative/participatory democracy methods, are useful tools that, if adopted more by decision making bodies and governments, could help dramatically improve and upgrade our political and economic systems. This work is also valued by our supporters - in our 2023 supporter survey 80% of respondents said they want Positive Money to support more participatory democracy decision making.
Citizens’ assemblies bring representative groups of people together to make decisions for how we live together on important issues such as climate change, health and the economy. So, unlike in our current political and economic decision-making bodies, in citizens’ assemblies, half the decision makers are women and it guarantees fair representation to young people, people of colour, disabled people and those living the length and breadth of the country in proportion to their share of the UK population.
Citizens’ assemblies are being used more and more by local and national governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and organisations around the UK and world. They are showing that when we bring representative groups of citizens together to make informed decisions, we can make fairer and better decisions than our current unrepresentative and outdated system allows.
Since 2022, Positive Money has been exploring and experimenting with bringing more deliberative and participatory democracy approaches to economic policy making
In 2022-23, we organised the People’s Panel on the Cost of Living, in partnership with Cheshire East Council, that brought together a broadly representative group of citizens to deliberate together and make policy recommendations to the Council. 10 of the 12 recommendations were unanimously approved by the Council, and they also committed to doing more participatory decision making in future. Read more about this project here.
In 2024, we organised a networking, learning and strategy day, in partnership with King’s College London, which brought together 30 practitioners and organisations invested in using more deliberative approaches to decision making on economic issues.
We are exploring with funders and other partners more opportunities to run citizens’ assemblies or juries, and to apply deliberative approaches to topics such as climate finance (how to rewire our financial system to protect our planet), the money system and democracy and privacy, and building a fair international financial system.
