IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 5 ENGLISH | Page 73

Graphically, this can be represented in the following way:

Muestra
Participantes
Discusión en Preguntas a Continúa
poblacional leen informa- grupo
panel
de discusión
ción de refeexpertos
rencia
The MCI’s that took place last year were
informal group meetings similar to deliberative loops that Everyday democracy uses
and in the hundreds they can represent a
serious grassroots national conversation on
the new Cuban constitution. The closer
these informal sessions approximate the
protocols outlined above, the more they
become deliberative forums that gain some
degree of statistical force. To be sure, even
robust convenience samples do not approach the representativeness of a robust
random sample. But for the practical purpose of achieving some sense of what the
people feel about an issue once they have
become informed about it, discussed it
among themselves and with experts, the
MCI’s are extremely useful as they begin to
locate the issues that could become part of a
larger, more formal nation-wide deliberation.

la Encuesta al
final

ful. Foremost among the suggestions that
arose was the need to go beyond the historical and ideological frameworks of the 1940
and 1976 Constitutions.
As we often see, the results of informed and
respectful citizen deliberation can be more
moderate and nuanced than the heated public debates that make up so much of our
political theater. People saw the need for a
classic separation of power, a kind of federalism and the importance o b