By Sir Mark Boleat
Jersey’s current political system does not result in good quality government, reflected in the low level of trust in which the Government of Jersey and the States Assembly are held. Why is this the case and what can be done about it?
Alternative forms of democracy
Democratic political systems can usefully be divided into three broad categories:
- Representative democracy, under which the people elect representatives and the government who are then left to get on with the task of governing.
- Direct democracy, by which the people vote directly on specific issues.
- Deliberative democracy, under which a wide range of mechanisms are used to engage the public in policy-making.
The dividing lines between these three categories are blurred. Many democracies have elements of the first and third categories and some also have elements of direct democracy. But the relative importance of each of the categories varies widely.
Jersey’s unique system
Jersey’s political system is basically a representative democracy with some limited elements of direct and deliberative democracy. However, representative democracy implies that people elect the government. In Jersey they do not. Rather, people elect individuals to be members of the Island’s parliament, and those people elect the government.
This is a common characteristic of small jurisdictions. It has advantages in that voters are electing people who they want to represent them. But it also means that the electorate has little say in the composition of the government or of its policies. Indeed, it is a requirement on a new Council of Ministers in Jersey to publish a “Common Strategic Policy”, which can be regarded as its manifesto. In most democracies the manifestos are published by political parties before the election and the governing party can be held to account. In Jersey, individual ministers and the Council of Ministers collectively cannot easily be held to account because there is nothing that they have presented to the electorate for which they are accountable.
Jersey is therefore difficult to govern because the Council of Ministers has no mandate. Also, individual members of the Assembly have significant power to propose and get support for measures and there is no collective responsibility in the Council of Ministers. The result is disjointed and ineffective policy-making.
Jersey makes limited use of direct democracy. The last substantive referendum was held in 2013, which is notable because the States Assembly ignored the results and retained the system which had the least public support. There is also direct democracy in parish assemblies, although these deal with relatively minor issues.
Jersey also has a specific system for the public to petition the Assembly. If 1,000 people sign a petition then the government must respond to it and if 5,000 people sign the issue must be discussed by the Assembly.
Jersey also has elements of deliberative democracy, for example:
- Citizens’ assemblies – as was done for the Carbon Neutral Roadmap and assisted dying.
- Ad hoc polling and focus groups commissioned by the government on specific issues.
- Polling – the annual Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Surveys and surveys on issues that concern people.
- Consultation on specific policy measures.
- Participation by interest groups, particularly trade associations and charities, in the policy-making process.
The system does not work
However, there is no overall framework within which these various activities take place and many of them are done badly. The result is poor policy-making and disillusionment by interest groups, who consider that their views and experience are not taken adequately into account.
Some examples:
- Climate change lends itself to a citizens’ assembly in which the various issues can be discussed in detail with, most importantly, trade-offs being properly considered. However, the citizens’ assembly on climate change in Jersey did not do this but rather produced a wish list, which in turn has led to a Carbon Neutral Roadmap with targets that cannot be achieved. It was an expensive exercise that produced a poor result.
- The framework for petitions is a good example of the dumbing down of policy-making. The number of signatories to a petition reflects campaigning in support of it as much as the merits of the issue. However, the system gives the impression that because people have signed a petition their views will be taken seriously. Most petitions are rejected, which then leads to disillusionment from people who thought they were being asked to participate in policy-making.
- The Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey is essential to good policy-making, giving both hard data on various aspects of Jersey and measures of opinion. However, too little use is made of it in policy-making.
- In the UK, IPSOS Mori does a regular survey of the issues that most concern the public. This is widely used within government and by think tanks and is extensively quoted in the media. The Jersey government did one such survey in January 2024, but it did not publish the results until it had to respond to a Freedom of Information request. The Policy Centre followed up by conducting a similar survey in January 2025. Both surveys showed that the major concerns were the cost of living, trust in government and healthcare/the hospital.
- Consultations are often poorly designed with people expected to respond to simplistic online questionnaires, often with questions that are badly drafted and which therefore lead to misleading results. There seems to be no quality control on the construction of such surveys, how they are conducted and how the results are presented. For example, few surveys ask for even basic information about respondents.
- Representative groups feel that they are not given adequate recognition, but equally many are not well equipped to contribute effectively to policy-making. There is a doom loop here. Some in the government feel that representative groups are not effective in contributing to policy-making and are therefore ignored, while some representative groups feel that there is little point is devoting resources to representative work if it has no effect.
So, what should be done?
Jersey people will continue to vote for people not parties or policies, which needs to be recognised.
Jersey has no culture of direct democracy through referenda and while parish assemblies have their good points some reform is needed to prevent unrepresentative groups dominating proceedings.
Petitions serve little useful purpose and should be downgraded, but before doing so the other elements of deliberative democracy need to be put in place so people genuinely can have their say in the policy-making process. An evidence-based representation by a small charity which provides services to a particular group of people deserves far more consideration from government than a petition signed with the click of a button by 1,000 people.
A good starting point for improvement would be to revisit the excellent 2022 “Engagement and Information Improvement Report”, written by two officers – Ian Cope, chief statistician, and Dirk Danino-Forsyth, then director of communications. This included a section headed “Sufficiency and Presentation of Government Policy Engagement”. This explained the then current practice and pointed to some areas of good practice. It identified a number of areas for improvement. Sadly, most of its recommendations have been ignored. A second useful report is the “Government Engagement Framework”, published in March 2023. This set out ten good practice principles for engagement and consultation and made a series of recommendations. These are also widely ignored.
The second building block for improvement is the need for regular surveys of the people of Jersey, and for the results to be better publicised and used more comprehensively in policy-making. The annual Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey and regular surveys on the issues that most concern the people, now conducted by the Policy Centre, largely meet this need.
The consultation process needs to be significantly improved, initially by compliance with the existing policies. It has to be accepted that consulting the public is not done by a simplistic questionnaire publicised on Facebook but rather requires a more sophisticated approach involving direct surveys of public opinion and the use of focus groups. This is more expensive than doing an online poll, but the value of an online poll is limited and indeed is damaging when it is taken to be representative of public opinion.
There is a need to build on existing structures to enable participatory democracy to work. The starting point has to be in identifying which groups, in addition to Assembly members, are well placed to understand policy issues and therefore contribute to policy making.
They include:
- The parishes.
- Trade associations in respect of their particular industries.
- Charities that provide services, in respect of the groups that they serve.
- School leaders, as they have an excellent understanding of current issues.
- Interest groups that can provide specialist knowledge of particular areas.
Jersey’s political system currently does not deliver good results for the people of Jersey. But it is capable of doing so. It is unreasonable to expect significant change this side of the election, but those who want to be part of the policymaking process post-election need to think about how to produce good government as opposed to simply being in government.
Sir Mark Boleat has held a number of leadership positions in companies, public bodies and charities in Jersey and in the UK. He is senior adviser to the Policy Centre Jersey.
