Characteristics
Since the purpose of Resilience Councils is to democratize and decentralize decision-making, three characteristics seem essential:
- Independence: The Council operates autonomously and formulates its decisions independently of existing decision-making bodies.
- Broad representation: The Council represents a broader constituency rather than only the views and interests of its own members. Ideally, the Council represents societal groups that were previously not included in decision-making.
- Enlarging social democratic resilience: The Council preserves the autonomy of the perspectives entering it, makes perspectives that would otherwise remain inaccessible available to others, and connects those perspectives to consequential collective reflection and action.
Criteria
This means that SAUFEX Resilience Councils could be evaluated according to the following criteria:
- Are the members of the Council independent of the current decision-makers, and do they formulate their decisions autonomously?
- Does the Council represent societal groups that are not otherwise included in decision-making?
- Does the Council enable its members to constitute and articulate their own perspectives rather than merely reproduce the categories, expectations, or interests of existing decision-makers?
- Does the Council actually expose collective decision-making to autonomous perspectives that would otherwise remain inaccessible?
- Are the recommendations by the Council consequential for collective decision-making?