Last week, Dunfermline took another confident stride toward becoming a beacon of democratic innovation in Scotland. On Tuesday, Public Finance Minister Ivan McKee visited the Abbeyview Community Hub to meet with local councillors, Fife Council officers, and our team at ERS Scotland to hear firsthand how this is happening. At the heart of this progress is the Dunfermline New City Assembly, a pilot Citizens’ Assembly designed to give residents a real say in shaping the future of their city.

The Minister’s visit was more than symbolic—it was a recognition of the growing momentum behind community-led decision-making. As he put it:

“Empowering local communities to play a greater role in key decisions in their area is vital to increasing democratic engagement.”

We couldn’t agree more.

A new model for local power

Citizens’ Assemblies are not just talking shops. When done right, they offer a structured, inclusive space for people to deliberate on the issues that matter most—housing, transport, climate, local services—and to propose real solutions. The Dunfermline pilot is part of a broader Scottish Government commitment to community empowerment and democratic renewal, and we hope will provide loads of learning on how to upgrade local democracy so that peoples hopes and fears are heard and responded to.  This could be a crucial technique in helping people to run their own place and so rebuild trust in democracy.

At ERS Scotland, we’ve been working closely with Fife Council and local partners to ensure the Assembly reflects the diversity and lived experience of Dunfermline’s residents. That means outreach, listening, and co-designing the process with the community as well as using the tried and tested method of ‘Sortition’ to ensure those on the assembly are a good representative sample of Dunfermline as a whole and includes voices that are too often unheard.

As I said during the Minister’s visit:

“The opportunity to have the people who live here address how the growth and change of their city can best serve them is a nationally important test of how to make democracy work for everyone.”

What Happens Next?

Over the last year we’ve been laying the groundwork – raising awareness that this is happening, beginning to explain to the community how the assembly will work, what might be possible and what might not be, designing the Assembly’s structure, identifying key themes, and ensuring inclusive participation.

In October, a letter will go out to tens of thousands of Dunfermline households asking them if they would like to take part, those that are interested will be put into a structured lottery designed so that we will be able to invite a representative group of residents to take part in the Assembly,  it will convene over three weekends in January and February 2026. These lucky selected citizens will all receive an honorarium payment for their public service.
It will be a chance for a representative group of Dunfermline citizens to deliberate, reflect, and propose recommendations to the City of Dunfermline Area Committee. It’s democracy in action—local, participatory, and rooted in lived experience.

Join the Movement

If you live in Dunfermline or care about the future of local democracy, we invite you to sign the Dunfermline Declaration. It’s a simple but powerful way to show your support for a more participatory and community-led approach to decision-making.

As Cllr James Calder, Chair of Dunfermline Area Committee, put it:

“Dunfermline New City Assembly will give residents a real voice in shaping the future of our city.”

This, it is becoming true and clear to see, is what will give people a renewed confidence and support for democratic local governance. We know how important this is and are determined to make it a success.

Find out more about the Dunfermline New City Assembly

Find out more

On March 7th voters in Hillhead in Glasgow will be heading to the polls for a council by-election. Among those standing are candidates from the Scottish Greens and Independent Green Voice (IGV) – plenty of choice for environmentally-minded Glaswegians, you might think. But Independent Green Voice is far from what you might expect from the name. 

Independent Green Voice has been called a ‘Fascist front’ by the Scottish Greens. While labels are sometimes thrown around excessively, in this case, IGV’s candidate in this by-election was thrown out of UKIP for questioning the use of gas chambers in the Holocaust. 

 It’s not the first time they have run candidates, in fact in the last set of Scottish Parliamentary elections they ran candidates in the regional list vote, in five Scottish regions. They didn’t release a manifesto, but their candidates won 9,756 votes across Scotland – not enough to get near to having anyone elected, but assuming these voters were confused by the party’s name, enough votes to deprive the Scottish Greens of two extra MSPs. 

We can’t say for sure what the 9,756 voters thought they were doing, or the true nature of Independent Green Voice. But it does remind us of the reason you can’t just call your political party anything you like in the UK.  

The Literal Democrat 

In 1994, the country was getting ready for the European Parliamentary Elections. Back then, elections for the European Parliament were conducted with First Past the Post. In the Devon and East Plymouth constituency, the Liberal Democrats were excited about picking up the seat, but it would be a close-run thing against the Conservatives.   

On a turnout of 236,335, the Conservative candidate won by 700 votes. Glancing down the results though, 10,203 people had voted for Richard Huggett, described as the Literal Democrat.  

The result was the eventual passing of the Registration of Political Parties Act 1998, banning party names designed to cause confusion with voters. The Electoral Commission evidently decided that Independent Green Voice was a sufficiently different name. 

It’s a trick that’s still used around the world though. In 2021, Russian opposition candidate Boris Vishnevsky found that he was standing against two other Boris Vishnevskys, both that looked suspiciously similar to him. 

To split the vote, you need some votes to not matter 

In Devon and East Plymouth, and in the Scottish regions, these small parties with similar names drew sufficient votes away from established parties to cost them seats. 

With First Past the Post, this is because you don’t need to win a majority to get elected, just be the party with the most votes. To get the most votes you can try and win more votes yourself, or try and reduce the amount of votes of your main competitor. But you don’t need to win these votes yourself – as long as your main competitor loses them, it doesn’t matter where they go. 

In Scotland’s regional list election, significantly more votes matter for the end result, as they use proportional representation. But it’s still possible to split the vote, as long as the votes go to very small parties. In any election, even with proportional representation, there are going to be parties that get so few votes that they can’t win representation. 

Are voters set for a repeat in Hillhead? 

So, will voters in Hillhead have to study their ballot papers with more care than usual? Thankfully elections to Scottish councils are conducted via the Single Transferable Vote. The Single Transferable Vote is a system of proportional representation, but with an added benefit. Voters directly elect candidates (rather than voting for a party) by numbering the candidates in order with their favourite at number one, and second favourite and so on. 

If a candidate has so few votes, they will never win election, the candidate is excluded and votes that are sitting with them are transferred to the voter’s second favourite candidate. So rather than the voter wasting their vote, it can come back into play and still make a difference to the result.  

Voters shouldn’t have to spend their time trying to avoid electoral tricks and traps. We need electoral systems that work for voters, not systems voters have to work around.

Do you think we should have a fair and proportional electoral system in Westminster?

Add your name to our call to scrap First Past the Post

At ERS Scotland we are constantly monitoring the political seas and updating our course to make sure we have the proper heading. Following this year’s local elections, the elections to the Scottish Parliament in 2021, and Westminster in 2019, we wanted to give an idea of what we are looking to achieve in the coming years.

The constitutional question continues to shape the nature of Scottish politics. But, Scotland is also distinct from other parts of the United Kingdom in terms of how its democracy functions. While Westminster is elected through First Past the Post, the Scottish Parliament uses proportional representation and local elections have used the Single Transferrable Vote (STV) system since 2007.

In relative terms, Scotland is making progress when it comes to electoral reform. Indeed, we are working with our Welsh colleagues to use Scotland’s experience of STV as an example to aid their campaigning, including with a series of films to be released soon.

Yet much more can, and must, be achieved when it comes to building a Scottish democracy fit for the challenges of the 21^st Century.

Reforming Local Democracy

ERS Scotland has been working hard to put the reform of local democracy at the heart of this discussion. Our research team, alongside Sir John Curtice, are bringing together an analysis of the 2022 council elections to look at turnout, the geographical distribution of votes and more. We have organised both locally and nationally to bring communities and stakeholders together to help design what a revamped Scottish local government might look like. With the Local Democracy Bill due to make its way through Holyrood in this parliamentary session, there is a chance to make bold, and radical, changes.

Such an approach not only has the potential to empower localities, but can play a role in rebuilding communities across Scotland. Our recent pamphlet, By Us and For Us, explores this in more detail.

Those communities have, of course, endured a pandemic since the start of 2021. Despite the great difficulties, it has also been a time when people have come together to support one another. Mutual aid teams, the delivery of meals to the most vulnerable and the sense of solidarity that emerged has generated new advocates for a truly local democracy that can be responsive to national, or even global, crises.

Part of our focus going forward is to bring these people together with groups and organisations, including political parties, into a strong network who are supportive of local democratic reform. That work has been developing over a period of years, and as we move forward the aim is to re-energise and broaden this coalition.

We hope this will lead to higher levels of engagement in future local elections. New democratic innovations, such as the Citizens’ Assembly, should become an accepted part of local government structures. In doing so, this might rebuild trust in institutions and increase engagement between citizens and their local democracy. In that spirit we are working to create models to experiment with new forms of local democracy. By piloting our ideas in practice, we can bring our ideas to life, and through this process inspire real change.

At a national level, we were on the Institutionalising Participatory Democracy Working Group which recommends how change can be delivered to make Scotland’s democracy more participative and inclusive. It’s proposed next steps incorporate processes for participatory and deliberative democracy into the democratic system. We will work to ensure these recommendations are listened to and implemented.

Scottish Lobbying Transparency

In addition to this, ERS Scotland looks forward to continuing work with our partners in the Scottish Alliance on Lobbying Transparency. Here we will provide supporting research and information on questions arising around lobbying and the Scottish Parliament. This includes working with the Chair and members of the Scrutiny Committee to make recommendations to parliament for strengthening lobbying regulation and legislation.

As our recent poll showed, lobbying through party donors has been one factor in eroding confidence in our institutions. Regulations that make the lobbying system more transparent are one way to ensure all organisations and individuals behave in a way that has public trust at the centre. ERS Scotland are committed to working with others across the political spectrum to ensure that political decision making is transparent, and that citizens are as educated as possible on these matters.

Inaugural ERS Scotland Lecture

We are also looking forward to some new initiatives that will, we hope, become part of the political furniture in Scotland. One of these will be to launch our inaugural “State of Scottish Democracy” lecture later this year. This annual event will be addressed by academics, policymakers and experts to provide interesting and thoughtful analysis of the contemporary challenges facing Scottish democracy. We hope this will be a valuable contribution to Scottish public life and become recognised as an important event in the political calendar.

In short, there is much to do. Having a clear strategy about how we can best meet our objectives is, of course, vital. We hope this short blog will give you a flavour of our thinking, and our ambitions, for the remainder of 2022 and beyond.

You can support the work of ERS Scotland by joining the Electoral Reform Society

Join the ERS today

Democracy is the right for people to decide how the place where they live is run. But too few people now believe that this right is being honoured, too few believe that they decide and too many believe they are powerless.

That Scotland’s local democracy needs to be renewed is a fact agreed upon by parties and campaigners from right across the political spectrum. ERS Scotland, often as part of the Our Democracy coalition, has long been working toward a local democracy for Scotland worthy of the name ‘local’. For the next stage of this work, in advance of this year’s Scottish council elections, ERS Scotland director Willie Sullivan and James Mitchell, professor of public policy at the University of Edinburgh, co-authored a pamphlet By us and for us: How Scottish local democracy can build and strengthen community.

This pamphlet sets out a vision of how we can revive local democracy in Scotland. Informed by what people have told ERS Scotland about how they want to participate in their local democracy, the authors re-imagine what a truly local, participatory and powerful democracy could look like. The pamphlet builds on deep research and work with voters in Scotland about ways to meaningfully involve them in the vital decisions that affect them and their communities. There is also concerning new polling that suggests people feel less and less that they have meaningful influence over the decisions that affect them – 1 in 5 people in Scotland think party donors are the most influential force when it comes to shaping public policy.

Given we are living in a time when people are becoming more divided politically and socially, Sullivan and Mitchell identify that continuing with the current status quo carries many more risks for democracy than even big changes. The systems of governance we have in place are not good enough for enough of us, and are not up to the challenges and complexity of the 21^st century. In line with the Declaration on Local Democracy as agreed at the Democracy21 conference, any upgrading of these systems must involve citizens and communities themselves.

The onus is now on communities and political leaders to change the momentum and nurture democratic initiatives and institutions that connect people and give them a sense of empowerment. This can take a number of forms, such as selecting people by sortition to sit on citizens assemblies where they debate local policy in depth and feed into local councils’ decision-making. These short roles would be paid and people selected in a way that represented all sections of the community. In time, these and other democratic bodies and initiatives could create a ‘honeycomb’ of democratic layers that give communities a continued and meaningful say over the decisions that affect them.

We have learned the lesson of our last hundred years; it is not enough that the future is built, it must be built for us. We must now learn a lesson for our next hundred years; it is not enough that the future is built for us, it must be built by us. We call for a new democracy which is ready to help us build for a hundred years to come.

Read the new pamphlet, By Us and For Us

It is now 15 years since Scotland abandoned First Past the Post for local government elections and adopted the Single Transferable Vote form of proportional representation. What many will have seen as a small shift in process has led to a sea-change in local politics, an end to ‘one party states’, and more power for voters. Within that decade and a half we have grown to understand what other countries like Ireland knew already: with fair votes comes better democracy.

I have worked for ERS Scotland since 2016, but back in 2007 I was a volunteer for the Society, spending six months talking to voters about the new system, and attending an election count as an observer. From what I saw on the ground, it took parties slightly longer than the electorate to realise that this change to the voting system also meant a whole new way of doing politics. Now every vote would count – and parties would have to act differently.

Since then, competitive local elections have helped to refresh local democracy across Scotland. I would still like to see more cooperation between parties at a council level, but within our multi-member wards, councillors generally have very good relations regardless of affiliation. Councils across Scotland have experienced power-sharing, with a wider range of parties working together in local government.

STV allows voters to not only express their preferences between parties but also within them, this means that councillors no longer have the option to be distant and unaccountable without consequences.

There are still a few who miss the old way of doing things though – I’ve occasionally heard councillors complain that they have to work harder under the new system. But I have never once heard a voter make the same complaint!

Solely changing the voting system has not been a cure-all: Scotland’s local government is still too centralised and top-down. There are too few councillors, and Scotland has one of the lowest rates of local representation in Europe. That’s why ERS Scotland has been playing a leadership role in the Our Democracy coalition; the campaign for a truly powerful and participatory local democracy.

Because of our increasingly long experience of proportional systems as a nation (15 years for local government and 23 years for Holyrood), when we now come to use Westminster’s one-person-takes-all system, it seems perverse and unwieldly. Westminster-style voting systems are shown up as the blunt instrument they are – unable to turn a multitude of your hopes into a binary choice.

That’s why the people of Scotland are well placed to say to their English and Welsh neighbours that there is a better way of doing democracy, and we have the proof.

STV means an end to wasted votes. For those looking for advice on using the full power of that vote, read Phil’s blog on it. You can read more about PR in Scotland.

Sign our petition to upgrade local elections in England and Wales

On Thursday 5 May, 2022, voters will go to the polls to elect councillors for each of Scotland’s 32 local authorities. This will be the fourth time that Scottish councils will be elected using a proportional system, the Single Transferable Vote (STV). As STV is a ‘preferential’ voting system, voters have the option of showing a preference between all the candidates by ranking as many of the candidates as they wish: 1 for their favourite, 2 for their second, 3 for third and so on. But how many should you rank?

Should I just rank the candidates from my favourite party?

There can be inaccurate information spread around elections, and the purpose of this blog is to debunk the myth that there is any advantage at all in not ranking a candidate in an STV election.

As the name suggests, you have a single vote that is transferable. The power of that vote starts at the candidate you put first, and only moves down to the second preference candidate if the candidate you ranked first has either been elected, or is in last place and stands no hope of being elected. This applies to the rest of your preferences too.

So there is no risk that your vote will help a lower-ranked candidate get elected over one of your higher ranked candidates. And who wouldn’t want to have a say in exactly which councillors will be elected? That’s the beauty of STV – unlike the winner-takes-all FPTP voting system that is used for elections to Westminster, you don’t have to consider using your one vote tactically for the candidate that you think might have a chance of winning. There is no need to hold your nose while voting for someone you dislike but who is not quite as bad as the alternative. With the STV system used for Scottish local government elections, you can never hurt your favourite candidates by numbering further candidates.

What does ‘vote till you boak’ mean?

At the last Scottish local elections, in 2017, the slogan ‘vote til you boak’ gained some traction, implying that you should rank the candidates until you end up at one that is so unappealing you can go no further. While this is a useful way to snappily get the main message across, it doesn’t quite tell the full story, because it implies only voting for all those you like or feel relatively neutral about. Whereas, with STV you can influence the election of all the candidates you put a number next to.

Should I rank candidates from parties I don’t like?

If there is a candidate from a party you disagree with, but who is polite to their opponents, you might want to give them a higher preference than someone with who you both disagree and consider incredibly rude. That low number you give them might be the thing that ensures the worse candidate is defeated.

If you see any encouragement to only vote for a certain party, or candidates with a particular viewpoint, that is equivalent to saying you should give up control of who else might get elected. Certainly, if you want one party to get as many councillors as possible, make sure you give their candidates your top preferences, but feel free to carry on numbering the rest of the candidates – it can help to determine who will (and won’t!) sit alongside your most favoured party, in the local council chamber.

So, what about the question ‘should I rank all the candidates?’ It is of course up to each voter to decide how to use the power of their transferable vote. However, if you want to maximise your impact on the election outcome, it makes sense to keep voting until you genuinely have no preferences between the candidates left on the ballot paper.

The last twelve months have changed the way many of us think about our everyday lives. The lockdowns necessitated by the pandemic have made the world feel smaller and turned many people’s minds to a more local view of the world.

The crisis has given many of us time and space to ask ourselves why things are the way they are, why we place value on the things we do and if there is another way. More people than ever are asking themselves, directly or in a roundabout way – what is a good life, lived in a good society?

That’s why, despite the tragedy the pandemic has inflicted across the country, in many ways the response we’ve seen should give us hope. We’ve seen just what people are willing to do for their local communities; from mutual-aid groups to volunteer foodbanks, we’ve seen people go above and beyond to support their neighbours and work together for their local area.

People want local control – new Savanta ComRes polling commissioned for the Our Democracy campaign found that over three quarters (76 per cent) of people think local communities should have at least some say in the decision about how Scotland re-builds from the Covid-19 pandemic.

And as we’ve seen, we know people are willing to get stuck in with the issues that matter to them and their local area. The same poll found over four in ten respondents (44 per cent) said they would be willing to give up their free time to help their local council make decisions on issues that affect their community.

But all too often, the ability for ordinary people to shape their local communities isn’t there – especially in Scotland, where even local government can feel distant and remote from our communities.

Scotland has some of the largest, most distant councils in Europe – and people feel that distance, geographically and politically.

The average local authority in Scotland has to cover an area of 2,435 square kilometres, making it 50 times bigger than the EU average.

We have just one councillor per every 4,453 residents in Scotland. Denmark, which is quite similar to Scotland in size and population, is half that at 2,216. Norway is streets ahead at 572. Even citizens in England are far better represented at one local representative per 2,814 people.

That’s why Our Democracy are calling for ‘genuine local democracy’ to be on the agenda at this election and calling on parties to back a new way of doing local democracy, ending the centralisation of power and enshrining a principle of community power as the foundation stone for Scotland’s post-pandemic future.

If Scotland is to be a place to live a good life in a good society, we should take the lessons of mutual support groups and the new fluidity of governance offered by the pandemic upheaval. We’ve seen the power when people come together – when communities are shaped by us and for us, all done at a local level.

The Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland – made up of ordinary people across the country – recently called for a new way of doing democracy. For ordinary citizens to have a say, not just at election time, but throughout.

The Scottish Government has at its fingertips the tools to hyper-boost them by transforming local governance in Scotland and that’s why we’re calling for new powers for to help us remake our local communities.

Every community should be allowed to have an elected representative body that has the time, space and resources to really focus on the needs and future plans for that place.

This is why we are also for communities to have regular local citizens’ assemblies to develop the plans and to hold the politicians accountable for delivering them.

And the public agree that deliberative forms of democracy can play a key role in moving our communities forward. Polling found 81 per cent of people think that citizens’’ assemblies could be effective in deciding on local community priorities with a majority (54 per cent) believing they would be ‘somewhat’ or ‘much more’ effective than local councils. Such an innovation could return a new legitimacy to elected local politics.

Democracy is the right for people to decide how the place where they live is run. For a hundred years this right has built our communities, our society and our sense of justice. But too few people now believe that this right is being honoured; too few believe that they decide and too many believe they are powerless and voiceless.

That’s why we need a new democracy which is ready to help us build for a hundred years to come.

This is our simple vision for our future – a truly local democracy, a truly participatory democracy and a truly powerful democracy.

We have learned the lesson of our last hundred years; it is not enough that the future is built, it must be built for us. We must now learn a lesson for our next hundred years; it is not enough that the future is built for us, it must be built by us.

This Holyrood election, the Our Democracy campaign is calling for parties to:

1. Back a new way of doing local democracy – by letting communities set up local Citizens’ Assemblies to plan their areas’ futures.
2. Introduce an ambitious Local Democracy Bill, that makes it easy for people to take power back to where they are.
3. Sign up to the Declaration on Local Democracy, enshrining a principle of local community power.

This article originally appeared on sourcenews.scot

Sign our Declaration on Local Democracy

The pandemic has given us a fresh insight into what we already knew about Scotland’s communities; people will sacrifice their time and resources to aid their neighbours. But that sense of community cannot be taken for granted. That is why now, more than ever, we need to revitalise and remake our local democracy.

If democracy is about anything it is about us running our own affairs. That’s why this Holyrood election, as part of the Our Democracy coalition, we are calling for parties to enshrine a principle of local community power. By signing up to the Declaration on Local Democracy you can send a message that we must move power from distant cities and dusty chambers and into our neighbourhoods.

Scotland has some of the largest, most distant councils in Europe and we want genuine local democracy to be on the agenda this election. Following recent calls from the Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland to let people decide how they are governed locally, Our Democracy are calling for new powers for local communities to set up Citizens’ Assemblies, to regularly hold their councils to account – not just at election time.

ERS Scotland recently commissioned polling and it confirms that while our communities have the confidence and commitment to be fully involved in rebuilding coming out of the pandemic, they are currently being denied that ability by structures that get in the way of local initiative. Over two thirds of people surveyed feel they have little or no influence over decisions that affect their local community. But 80% of respondents think that citizens’ assemblies could be effective in deciding on local community priorities, and half that number would be willing to give up sizable amounts of time for free to help make decisions on issues that affect their local area.

This polling shows why we need to make sure communities are at the heart of a people-powered recovery. Communities coming together to make decisions for themselves not only makes for better decisions but these very acts strengthen the bonds of care and support. This is ‘strength training’ for Scotland’s democratic muscle. Strong, supportive, democratic communities are the only foundation on which to rebuild Scotland – A Future Built By Us And For Us.

Sign the Declaration on Local Democracy

The experience of the covid-19 crisis has served to underline and strengthen the case ERS Scotland has long been making for a revamped local democracy. The work undertaken in recent years – alongside a range of democracy organisations, community groups, academics and citizens – means we are in a strong position, and despite the challenges, we are looking forward to the coming year with a great deal of ambition and optimism about what can be achieved.

And that is because our views on the need for reform of the structures of local government, and for a flourishing local democracy, are not held in a vacuum. Global events and those in our neighbourhoods have shown like never before the need for community. And now we need to turn local government into a tool for rebuilding local areas and places after the economic and social devastation left by the pandemic.

The on-going pandemic saw citizens across Scotland mobilise in solidarity with their neighbours. They organised food for the vulnerable, support for the elderly and company for those living alone. The response generated an atmosphere of positivity at a time of crisis and uncertainty.

This provided the basis for hope, and strengthened the belief that as a society, faced with the biggest challenge in generations, we would pull together and look out for one another. That sense of community cannot be taken for granted. Indeed, the notion of ‘community’ has been in retreat in recent decades. But it is clear, that people will sacrifice their time and resources to aid their neighbours.

That is why now, more than ever, we need to revitalise and remake our local democracy. To build structures that can embed localised resilience to challenges, like the pandemic, and that can build on the participation of citizens. Structures that can encourage, rather than get in the way of local initiative.

As we undertake the great challenge of rebuilding from the worst economic crisis this side of World War 2, a burgeoning local democracy is not an optional extra. It is necessary – not just to reflect the many examples of mutual aid during the pandemic – but to rebuild thriving, empowered communities that can develop the foundations for long-term security and prosperity.

At our concluding event of 2020: Local Power in an Era of Pandemic, ERS Scotland joined with democracy organisations to discuss how we could coordinate our action as the Local Democracy Bill makes its way through Holyrood. And to maximise our impact, we are working with community volunteers who have emerged during the pandemic, and who have come to be powerful advocates for a new local democracy as a result of their experiences.

Looking ahead to the next year it is this kind of coalition that can drive the situation forward. Not just in the meetings of government ministers, and among experienced local democracy campaigners, but with communities themselves, and alongside the local champions who have acted to build the mutual aid groups, organise the food deliveries, develop the projects for young people and worked tirelessly on the many initiatives that have helped to get us through an immensely difficult period.

There is then a powerful coalition, the context and – we hope – an emerging political will to transform local democracy in Scotland. ERS Scotland will use the body of work we have built up in recent years on this issue and bring all we can to bear to ensure that part of the legacy of 2020 is a local democracy worthy of the name.

Democracy isn’t static, it is a process. It isn’t always simple or easy, and today it is being tested under the strain of a crisis of trust, one which affects political institutions, the public square and politicians themselves. That means we have to be innovative and bold in our response.

That’s why, for several years now, ERS Scotland has been trying to develop a new approach: of genuinely deepening democracy, not just tinkering around the edges. Local government in Scotland is the most remote and centralised in the whole of Europe, with incredibly low levels of local representation.

What makes a good democracy?

Our work to change this has its roots in Democracy Max, an independent inquiry initiated by ERS Scotland into ‘What makes a good Scottish democracy’ in 2012. ERS Scotland organised a ‘deliberative’ discussion event which brought together as representative a sample as possible of Scottish society. The People’s Gathering saw over 80 delegates come together in Edinburgh to engage in radical thinking about Scotland’s democracy.

Building on this, we helped form Our Democracy - a loose and open coalition of organisations, campaigners, and politicians who are dedicated to improving local democracy in Scotland. The campaign organised ’Act As If Councils’ which brought together local communities to discuss collectively the problems and solutions that could make their locality a better place to live – founded on the principle that people should ‘act as if they own the place’.

The campaign also gave a platform to the many examples of citizens organising locally to make a positive impact (projects we sought to ‘Amplify’). The aim has been to bring together these fantastic examples of community organising with a new framework for local government structures. People want to have a say in their communities: they should have that right enshrined.

That brought us to 2018, where we assembled activists and local democracy campaigners to work up a strategy around the forthcoming Local Democracy Bill, at our Impact event.

All these networks evolved into a partnership with the  Coalfields Regeneration Trust, with whom we partnered to focus on three deprived communities. That led to real funding being invested into the communities, disbursed not from top down but through what the communities wanted: deliberation using a range of discussion and decision making tools developed through our Act As If councils. We have just released a publication to look in depth at this collaborative experiment in local democracy.

This local work fed into the national level, with the ERS organising Democracy 21. With over 500 participants, this landmark event in June 2018 was the largest gathering on local democracy Scotland has ever had.

Our aim was to translate the big themes of democratic crisis into what that means for the local level. It included community representatives, voices from across the political spectrum, international guests who talked about local democracy in their country, as well as innovators and keynote speakers on deliberation and democratic structures.

Here we launched some founding principles: ‘The Declaration On Local Democracy’ – principles that formed the basis for our contribution to the government’s Democracy Matters Local Governance Review. This has now  published the results of its first phase of consultation, citing clear evidence “that people do want to have more control of decisions on issues that matter to them”.

We took this vision for the future of Scottish democracy to councils across Scotland, where councillors were invited to discuss with us their ideas for change. And we took it to sympathetic MSPs, as well as presenting evidence to the parliamentary committee responsible for local democracy. These messages had a highly positive reaction, as this official committee report shows.

This is eight years of really fruitful work linking the grassroots with formal political structures and representatives.

Where next?

Now, as the world becomes even more uncertain and as our institutions grapple with massive challenges, we want to re-energise and rebuild the coalition we have developed on local democracy over recent years.

Our proposals have provoked real discussions inside the institutions that need to evolve, building a movement to make the Scottish Government’s Local Democracy Bill as transformational as possible. That has meant working with the Democracy Matters team, as well as partners in the Scottish Parliament and local councils, all the while bringing it back to local communities and what powers and roles they want and need.

There are huge questions being asked of our democratic institutions, at a time when many feel alienated from the political process. The answer to this instability and crisis of trust we’ve seen is more, not less, democracy.

That is why we believe that the final Local Democracy Bill must stem from more than just traditional forms of consultation, but with real and thoughtful engagement, which will directly shape the eventual next step local democracy in Scotland takes.

We will play our part, bringing together all the networks, experience and feedback we have received in recent years, as we work together to build a democracy fit for the challenges of the 21st Century.