Citizens' on Municipality, a place to face differences

1. Introduction
Living never stops. Politics becomes meaningful when citizens who make up a society continue to live their lives, face their own difficulties, and participate in the decision-making process with the expectation that these difficulties can be resolved at the social and institutional level. Solving social problems requires multifaceted considerations, and it is the role of parliament in a representative democracy to properly coordinate and reflect the voices of all segments of society in this process. The crisis facing institutional politics today is based on civil society's fundamental skepticism about whether parliaments are fulfilling this role. The crisis of representation, which is distinct from the crisis of democracy itself, is a broader phenomenon in which the people's elected representatives fail to adequately represent and realize the preferences of the people, leading to a decline in trust in politicians, a decline in interest, and even an aversion to politics. The 22nd National Assembly had a voter turnout of 67%, surpassing the previous record of 66.2% in the 21st National Assembly. High voter turnout indicates a high willingness of the people to express their opinions. There are many ways to interpret this unusually high turnout, but since ballots don't speak, the only thing we can know for sure is the will of the people.

2. If there is enough will to participate, what is the problem?
First, there is a lack of young lawmakers under the age of 40. According to the National Election Commission, both major parties have put forward youth and low birthrate policies as their main pledges for the 22nd general election, but there are no 2030 candidates in the nomination results, and there is a lack of political references to issues that will be relevant to 2030, such as network fees and bitcoin. According to the 2023 International Parliamentary Union report, South Korea ranks 142nd out of 155 countries in the number of young lawmakers under the age of 40, with only 3.7% (average 18.8%). There is also a lack of public debate. The main channels through which citizens can learn about the preferences of other citizens on certain policies or social issues are the media, social media, and online communities. In the case of the media, readers can express their opinions through comments, but low trust in the media as a whole has been consistently noted. In the case of SNS and online communities, it is difficult to guarantee the truthfulness of the information itself, and both are limited by the risk of confirmation bias. The lack of a place where diverse opinions can be exchanged face-to-face risks leading to an inaccurate and biased view of citizens' preferences.

3. Introducing Citizens' Assemblies
In order to open up the political process to the general public, we wanted to create a space where judgments can be made through deliberation and discussion. In this space, citizens can choose a position on a specific topic, present their arguments, and debate. The specific operating system is as follows 1. Agenda selection: Select an agenda that is expected to generate conflicting views from all walks of life. 2. Sample selection: Select a sample of up to 100 people who will participate for more than a year. 3. Talking The 'talking' process is divided into three stages: listening, grouping, and discussion. In the first step, listening, participants will hear from the parties involved in the issue, people around them, and national spokespersons regarding the current system and policies dealing with the issue. This process helps to refine the content of the agenda and define the scope of the discussion. In the second step, grouping, we organize "mini-publics" with different opinions on the agenda from step 1 into up to five groups. This allows for direct contact with different members of society. In the third stage, the debate stage, the participants enter the debate hall to discuss the agenda, and each debate hall has a period of about one year to come up with a plenary decision.

4. Exit
Happy families all look alike, but unhappy families are unhappy for their own reasons. Anna Karenina, Tolstoy. The same is true of democracy. Regardless of the system chosen, successful democracies embrace diversity, are open to dialog among "the other," and generate alternatives with enthusiasm. Under representative democracy, parliaments are the venue for such alternative formulations, but practical issues have raised doubts about their functioning. Under these circumstances, citizens' councils can be a middle ground between the representative system and civil society, a place of interaction between the two spheres. Citizens' councils can contribute to the discovery of hidden agendas that established politicians have not thought of, and their findings can indirectly influence parliaments, political parties, and the executive branch. In addition, they can provide all citizens with the experience of political education and political party activities, and in the process, the experience of debating with those who have different opinions from their own, which in the long run can be the basis for reaching consensual conclusions on the social agenda. I finished this book by imagining a democracy that embraces differences and enables richer and deeper discussions, rather than a dogmatic democracy that antagonizes differences.