Issue Statement

To: The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

Date: June 29, 2012

Subject: Issue Statement regarding the “Project for Promoting National Dialogue toward the Formulation of Innovative Strategy for Energy and the Environment.”

Purpose of this statement:

　　 This statement aims to express our concerns about serious problems in the “Project for Promoting National Dialogue toward the Formulation of Innovative Strategy for Energy and the Environment.” This statement is prepared by the experts who have experience and theoretical expertise in the “participatory deliberative (analysis) approaches” to scientific issues.

Background and the “project”

　　 The Energy and Environment Council that has been exploring our new energy policy (Innovative Strategy for Energy and the Environment) has issued its “Basic Principles*1”, and stated the following principles as its “Basic philosophy #3: three principles for building national consensus*2” :

Principle 1: “Stimulate national discussion overcoming the simple dichotomy between nuclear proponents and opponents”;

Principle 2: “Discuss the desirable strategy through verification of objective data”; and

Principle 3: “Formulate Innovative Strategy for Energy and the Environment while maintaining dialogue with a broad range of national people.”

The council has expressed its intent to present an overall strategy by this summer, through “open and fruitful national discussions overcoming the simple dichotomy between nuclear power generation proponents and opponents*3” .

　　 It has come to our attention that, along the Basic Principles, the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy (ANRE) has been planning a new kind of discussion forum as one of the measures to facilitate “national dialogue” for making a decision about its new energy policy.

　　 The Request for Proposal (RFP), which was publicized on 22 June, 2012 and titled as “FY 2012 Electricity Generation Siting Promotion Coordination Project (Project for Promoting National Dialogue toward the Formulation of Innovative Strategy for Energy and the Environment (re: Dialogue Forum Project))” and its outline is as follows:

(1) Conduct a prior questionnaire survey among 3,000 individuals randomly sampled from the national population. Among its respondents, invite 300 individuals who wish to participate in the Dialogue Forum;

(2) In the Dialogue Forum, organize deliberative sessions in which participants discuss as a group of 15 individuals as well as a plenary meeting in which participants can direct questions to experts; and

(3) Conduct questionnaire surveys before and after the Dialogue Forum and analyze the shift in their opinions and other issues.

These items can be summarizes as the diagram below:

This Dialogue Forum is apparently following the format of “Deliberative Polling®” while the RFP does not mention it such.

　　 Deliberative Polling® is first promoted by Professor James Fishkin, a political scientist at Stanford University in the United States, and is a new kind of polling that combines deliberative forum and survey, which is similar to the one planned by the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. Deliberative polling® has drawn attention as a method for collecting citizen’s ideas after sufficient information provision and dialogue, instead of instinctive response to polling questions, and been used in more than ten states around the world including the United States and European countries. We, as researchers who have been exploring a better form of citizen participation in policy making and democracy, have focused on this approach and similar ones, and have exploited the possibilities of their application in Japan.

　　 The plan for the Dialogue Forum, however, lacks the requirements for organizing a fair and effective deliberation, as far as we find in the publicized part of the RFP. If this project is implemented as the plan shown in the RFP, the dialogue shall be totally different from the authentic deliberative polling® and be faced with harsh public criticism for conducting a mere manipulation or tokenism.

　　 The major problems with the plan are as follows:

Problem #1: No apparent measure was taken to circumvent manipulation

　　 The following two conditions must be met in order to circumvent manipulation through deliberative polling® and make the most of the process. In the proposed project, no arrangement was made to assure these conditions.

Condition 1: The deliberation must be conducted in a free atmosphere without predetermined conclusion, avoiding a management that leads to such an outcome. The panel of experts who responds to the participants must be set up as a balanced one that all participants can agree on.

Condition 2: The reference documents to be provided to the participants in advance of the dialogue must be sufficient for them to explore the full range of issues and not be biased. The topics and question statements of the survey should not be phrased to lead the respondents to a predetermined response.

　　 In order to meet Condition 1, the planning and management of the Dialogue Forum must be independent from the convenor (the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, in this case) who receive the outcome of the dialogue, because the convenor’s interest must not influence the way the dialogue proceeds.

　　 In the past cases of similar dialogues organized in other nations and Japanese prefectures and municipalities, government agencies have tried not to influence their management. For instance, the management of such forums was delegated to independent organizations (e.g. ad-hoc project management committee). In such cases, the experts, who respond to the participants, were selected by such management organizations so that selections were not affected by the interests of convening agencies.

　　 The RFP publicized by the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy states that the management of the Dialogue Forum shall seek assistance by experts and professional organizations and be carried out by soliciting their advice. According to the statement, however, the commissioned company needs only to complete the commissioned tasks after seeking expert advice and assistance at its own discretion, and independence of the management is not guaranteed at all. The project is completely different from the authentic deliberative polling® efforts in the past in which conveners (e.g., government agencies) created independent management organizations and delegated most of procedural decisions to it.

　　 Considering that the Dialogue is themed around our energy policy after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, the management organization must consist of experts with a diverse range of ideas. However, the RFP does not ensure this requirement is met.

　　 Moderators, who facilitate group discussions, play a vital role in deliberative polling®. In order to prevent a moderator in each group from manipulating the discussion, it is necessary for them to be trained by professional trainers. The RFP, however, does not stipulate such a requirement.

　　 Regarding Condition 2, most deliberative polling® exercises in the past have organized an advisory board, consisting of a wide variety of experts in relevant fields and positions, in order to prevent the reference documents and survey questions being biased. Such advisory system is not required in the RFP.

　　 If the Dialogue Forum is organized without such a requirement, we worry that the forum would lead to public skepticism that the Forum is “a kind of survey for manipulating the public opinion.”

Problem #2: No fair measure is promised for the legitimate selection of participants

　　 In order to assure the fairness of the Dialogue Forum, the selection of participants must not be biased in favor of certain interests. According to the RFP, approximately 300 individuals would be selected in proportion to the population of each prefecture and other factors from the respondents to the prior questionnaire survey who were randomly sampled from the national population and expressed their intent to participate in the Dialogue Forum.

　　 The selection of participants must be conducted without any prejudice. The RFP, however, does not stipulate any method for avoiding such bias.

　　 In addition, if the 300 participants were selected according to the proportion of population in each prefecture, the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, the most populated area in Japan, will send 31 individuals. Meanwhile, Tottori Prefecture, with the least population, and Fukui Prefecture*4 will send 1.4 and 1.9 individuals respectively. This proportion might be justified on the ground the deliberative polling® is in principle designed to produce a miniature of Japanese population. On the other hand, some might object to the representation in proportion to the prefectural population because there is a major gap in the population of the prefectures that hosts power plants and those that consume electric power.

　　 The point is that the convenor must explain the reason for choosing a certain method of selecting participants and the total number of participants, as well as why that the method assures a representation of a wide range of individuals in Japan. The convenor must be held accountable to the Japanese citizens for these matters.

　　 Regarding the specifics of selecting the participants, it is usually sensible for the convenor to delegate the task to the independent organizer which has already been mentioned in Problem #1. In any event, transparent procedure and management are indispensable in order to minimize the room for suspicion that selection of participants is biased so as to manipulate the public opinion toward a certain direction.

Problem #3: Too tight schedule

　　 The government of Japan has promised that a new energy policy will be proposed “sometime in the summer.” If the executives will move forward with this pledge, we anticipate that they will make the decision by the end of August 2012. On the other hand, the Dialogue Forum is scheduled for August 2012 as well, according to the RFP. Based on a practical calculation of the time necessary for wrapping up the outcomes of the Forum, the Forum would be held before the early period of August.

　　 If our calculation turns out to be true, the pre-survey of 3,000 individuals cannot be conducted by mail-in surveys due to this time constraint. The RFP might have been issued with an assumption that the pre-survey would be conducted by the Random Digit Dialing method.

　　 However, the policy options subjected to the survey are not simply a matter of the profile of electricity generation. They are entangled with a number of factors including economy, industry, welfare, and global warming. It would be extremely difficult to gain candid response to such a complex matter through phone-in survey

　　 The RFP asks bidders to “propose an organization and a method that can produce a random sample for survey, implement the survey, and collect responses in a limited timeframe.” It is very questionable, however, that anyone can conduct surveys and a Dialogue Forum in this very limited timeframe. The agency should be, in the first place, responsible for securing a realistic timeframe before starting such a project.

Endnote:

　　 Before organizing this sort of public dialogue, the organizer is required to elucidate in advance how the outcome will be used in policy making. This is extremely important in minimizing public suspicion such as “they didn’t keep the promise regarding how our voice is heard.” By providing a candid explanation regarding how the outcomes will be used, the convenor can be held accountable to the participants of the Dialogue Forum as well as the respondents to the survey. This sort of prior explanation of intent will also encourage the public to participate and improve the quality of dialogue and survey responses.

　　 The government of Japan is calling for a national dialogue. We argue that the authentic “national dialogue” is the process in which people find their own interests in the national energy policy, deliberate about it, and report and share the outcomes of such dialogues in various forms. The Dialogue Forum proposed by the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy alone is insufficient to qualify as an authentic national dialogue on energy policy of the future, even if the problems pointed out above are addressed and the forum is convened in fair and meaningful manners. The Dialogue Forum is just the beginning of the “national dialogue.” The proposal for the Dialogue Forum, publicized at this moment, has many problems as our statement points to. We are afraid that, if the Forum is implemented according to present plan, public distrust of government’s initiatives grows and, consequently, further national dialogues will be less plausible. That is why we have struck a note of caution about the plan.

　　 We believe that the “National Dialogue toward the Formulation of Innovative Strategy for Energy and the Environment” can be the first step for developing a new contract between the convenor (national government) and the participants (citizens). Finally, we submit this statement NOT for opposing to the promotion of national dialogue using deliberative polling® and other methods, BUT for demanding that the national dialogue should be carried out on more elaborate planning and design.

The statement is endorsed by the following individuals:

Schuko Ohtsu (Hokkaido University), Tatsuhiro Kamisato (Osaka University), Nobuo Kurata (Hokkaido University), Ken Saito (Hokkaido University), Ryuma Shineha (The Graduate University for Advanced Studies), Masashi Shirabe (Tokyo Institute of Technology), Shigeo Sugiyama (Hokkaido University), Hiroaki Takemoto (Hokkaido University), Mikihito Tanaka (Waseda University), Keiichiro Tahara (Institute for Future Engineering), Kiyotaka Naoe (Tohoku University), Hideto Nakajima (Tokyo Institute of Technology), Masaki Nakamura (Osaka University), Keiichi Noe (Tohoku University), Eisuke Hayaoka (Hokkaido University), Saku Hara (Tohoku University), Hideyuki Hirakawa (Osaka University), Koji Hirata (The Graduate University for Advanced Studies), Masahiro Matsuura (The University of Tokyo), Naoyuki Mikami (Hokkaido University), Ekou Yagi (Osaka University), Yasunori Yamanouchi (Osaka University), Go Yoshizawa (Osaka University), Seiko Yoshida (Hokkaido University), Yukio Wakamatsu (Tokyo Denki University), and one other

(translation: Masahiro Matsuura and Hideyuki Hirakawa)