Thwarting the Thwarters of Deliberation
-- Paul McClintock, PRP
Parliamentary law pertains to deliberative assemblies, bodies of people who gather to make group decisions in a setting in which members can seek to persuade others in debate. It is the debate that makes these bodies deliberative; indeed, deliberative is defined as “a discussion and consideration by a group of persons of the reasons for and against a measure” [http://www.m-w.com/dictionary].
There is, however, a common practice in many “deliberative assemblies” that is anything but deliberative. Consider Candidate A for some office of an organization in a contested race who telephones all the members he considers a swing vote or likely supporter and asks if he can count on their support. Candidate A obtains what amounts to a pledge of support before the member may even know that others are or will be contending for the position. When the meeting is held, and a member realizes too late that he made a pledge prematurely for a candidate who is not now his first choice, he has the moral dilemma of either breaking his pledge to support his first choice, or keeping his pledge but violating his conscience in voting against his first choice, or abstaining (which is only a milder form of breaking his pledge to support Candidate A).
A similar situation can occur with any item of business where opportunity exists to lobby for support prior to debate.
The fundamental problem is that the member is asked to make a commitment to vote a certain way after hearing only one side of the argument. “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him” (Proverbs 18:13).
This problem may be solved in part over time by experience; that is, the member “burned” by being put in this awkward position may be wise enough the second time to politely listen to the caller’s pitch but decline to make any preliminary commitments. But experience does not solve the problem for the newer members who have not yet encountered this situation. A more thorough solution may be to adopt a special rule of order that prohibits solicitation of pledges of support concerning any election or motion.
A second all-too-common, but similar, skirting of the normal deliberations of an assembly is to lobby outside of the meeting for a candidate or position on a motion, not necessarily even calling for a commitment, but employing persuasive techniques not allowed in debate. In debate, speakers “must never attack or make any allusion to the motives of members” [RONR-10 p.41], but this is too often done outside of meetings in the hallway, parking lot, or over the telephone. This type of lobbying is also too often done without any penalty.
Although RONR does provide a mechanism for dealing with breaches of order that occur outside a meeting [p.629ff], there may be a question as to whether the rule against attacking another’s motives applies outside of meetings. Thus, it may be prudent to adopt a special rule of order to explicitly prohibit attacking the motives and character of another member outside of meetings as well as inside.
Finally, there is some reduction in the full debate when any lobbying is done to a select audience outside of the meeting. The nature of debate is that each side has an opportunity to rebut arguments given by the opposing side. It is probably for this very reason that RONR allows a member to speak a second time in debate on a motion. And often a person speaks even his first time in debate only in response to something said by the opposing side. When, privately and selectively outside the meeting, arguments are given that do not come up at the meeting and the opposing side has no knowledge of these arguments, then they cannot respond to them. This too thwarts the deliberative process. However, any special rule of order seeking to curtail this type of activity must be very carefully crafted, to avoid over-constraint. A rule need not prohibit lobbying outside meetings altogether, nor prohibit targeted lobbying; it needs only to require that any arguments given selectively outside the meeting be given in writing to all members at the meeting and that such statement of arguments not be anonymous.
Such additional rules can aid significantly in keeping the "deliberative" meaningful in our “deliberative assemblies.”
National Parliamentarian, 3rd Qtr 2004