Blog moved!

It seems that a re-direct I set up ages ago has lapsed and some of you that have been using the old http://localdemocracy.wordpress.com link are seeing the old design again?

Well we’ve moved! (About six months ago!). We’re here now: http://blog.localdemocracy.org.uk

Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds accordingly?

Reputaton management

e-bay: a peer-to-peer reputation management system

Conall McDevitt has an interesting post up about CEO reputations:

“Communicating frequently with their employees. Certainly with their customers too, but not to forget their employees. At a time of uncertainty employees are hungry for information. CEOs need to take responsibility. Apologize if they are wrong. If they don’t know the answer, say they don’t know. We are just starting to see CEOs really being the face of the company.”

The CEOs of the Big 3 Auto Companies get a mention:

The politics of interactivity

I’m currently convening a number of sessions at a Nesta conference on the 6th July called ‘Reboot Britain’, running a strand called ‘PICamp’ – Political Innovation Camp.

I’m looking for local government communications staff that have had any experience or thoughts about the changing relationships with the local media – and particularly issues around the politics of this.

I don’t mean the left/right/Lib/Lab/Con politics, I mean questions like….

• the politics of neutrality and incumbency – if local government communications staff aren’t going through the filter of professional journalists, will this cause problems from a democratic point of view?
• are local on-line communities – often very effective ways of communicating – suitable mediums to use to interact with people? Are such groups an effective substitute for traditional communications through the local press? Are they, perhaps, simply havens for unrepresentative sub-groups of local society?
• is there a way for councils to use social media to improve the quality of local democracy – or is it a minefield that is best avoided? And would an unwillingness to engage create a vacuum of any kind?
• how far are the local government rules on political communications being applied in an inflexible way? Does the uncertainly around this result in local government – particularly councillors – being unusually inactive in this space? And how can local authorities provide a leadership role in on-line communications without becoming de facto political press-officers?
• the politics of decentralisation: The changing relationship between local government and the mass media may provide scope for councils to change the way they communicate and reassert the primacy of local government in addressing local problems. Is there a political opportunity to promote the ‘decentralisation’ that all of the political parties claim to want?
• getting the obstacles out of the way. How can we remove the barriers that stop institutions from interacting?

These sessions have already attracted some great participants – the interest has gone well beyond my expectations with some real innovators putting their hands up to participate as well as a smattering of interest from prominent local and national politicians as well as mainstream-media journalists.

The schedule is still being finalised at the moment, but I’d be really interested in hearing from anyone with practical experience, or with considered views on any of these subjects – particularly from councillors or people working in local government communications / democratic services / electoral services?

If you have any ideas for sessions at this strand of Reboot Britain, please visit the PICamp site, register and let’s hear them?

Twitter and conversational politics

Here’s Jonathan Fryer, a Lib-Dem blogger on the way that Twitter can change conversational dynamics and add something new to politics:

I’ve been finding it hugely useful in recent weeks and have noted how one can enter into dialogue with politicians of other parties as well as with journalists and bloggers of all persuasions, who are quite happy to ‘follow’ one on Twitter, but who might not wish to ask or accept to be one’s Facebook ‘friend’, in case that were seen to be some kind of endorsement. And the same is true in the other direction! Moreover, the 140-character limit, while being constraining, is actually a very useful discipline…

Elections double councils website traffic

According to SOCITM….. (the Society of IT Managers).

Getting the politics right for reform

Matthew Taylor, former No 10 policy wonk, has an interesting article on his blog about public service reform. He rightly says that finances over the next few years are both a huge challenge to public services, but also an opportunity to make real change happen. That won’t come about, he says, without a change in the national political culture, starting from the top:

There are far too many ministers, all of whom think it is their job to generate initiatives; ideas are allowed to be developed and launched without any reference to those at the front line; change management and the time it takes is not treated seriously; there is complete lack of realism about how far the centre’s intended messages actually reach; civil servants fail to see or warn (or be allowed to warn) their masters that every new target or piece of guidance had an adverse impact on all these existing targets and instructions (not to mention local morale).

No disrespect to Matthew, but this is a very technocratic argument. The idea that there should be fewer ministers is perhaps not a bad one – though it needs to happen alongside a more powerful and independent Commons and a reformed Lords. No matter how many Ministers there are, however, they will still be put on a spot on the Today programme and asked to make a commitment that “[bad thing] will never be allowed to happen again.”

There are certainly real opportunities for reform in the fiscal squeeze that’s ahead. The barrier to transformation, though, is not hyperactive Ministers who don’t let technocrats manage, it’s an immature political dialogue in which the media and the public create and feed off outrage and disgust, while politicians sit on top of the bureaucracy and try to placate the beast.

This is a local government problem as much as a national government one. Anyone who has seen parents protesting about school places or attended a controversial meeting of the planning committee will understand that.

If the spending cuts to come are not to create more disaffection and anger, they can’t be done behind closed doors. They need to be discussed openly, in public, and real choices have to be set out clearly, not decided and then ‘consulted upon’.

People should have the chance to see the books, and have intermediaries more trusted than journalists to explain to them what the choices are. They then need to be able to express an opinion more nuanced than ‘I want everything for free’.

Creating the circumstances in which this can happen is part of a widening and deepening of active citizenship that is essential if the political world is to catch up with what today’s citizens expect.

I’m not so naive as to think that this level of openness will appear in the twelve months before a general election, although it would be nice to think that it could. Afterwards, though, if Labour or the Conservatives are really serious about localism and democratic reform, a big conversation, not a Big Conversation, needs to be created.

The disenfranchisement of the willingly unwired

Reading this post – as good a round-up of the progress and the opportunities I’ve seen made me think about the OfCOM research, published earlier this week that indicated that 43% of ‘unwired adults’ are happy to stay that way.

There’s a parallel, I believe, with the push to create new participatory spaces. Like broadband, the assumption that we all want it, will all invest in working out how to use it, to game it, to let it become another one of the weapons in the armoury that we use to take on the world – is an unexamined assumption.

And then think where that leaves those people? Many of the ‘wired adults’ are using online tools without ever taking an interest in politics, democracy, or the participative options that exist to tackle the issues around them.

Shopping, chatting, watching missed TV programmes, gambling and other activities all trump ‘engagement’. Others (such as Kevin, for instance) can quantify just how little most people want to be oppressed by demands to engage, to participate, and to have your say, but the one conclusion that can safely be reached is this: Those who lionise the notion of active citizenship, and promote a more participatory politics massively over-estimate the appetite for it.

Have those ‘unwired’ adults ever told you that they’re happy to let the wired-up interfering busy-body do-gooders have a disproportionatly strong voice in the big decisions that effect their lives? I ask because I’ve never seen any evidence that such consent has been given.

And if it hasn’t, why is so much energy being put into encouraging people to participate in decision-making processes that effect us all?

Let Simon Decide

Because it’s probably wrong to write a post everyday about how marvellous Debategraph or Mixed Ink are as concepts, for a change, have a look at ‘Let Simon Decide‘.

‘Simon’ is an avatar for good decision-making processes and the collective wisdom of the site’s users. It’s designed to ensure that users go through all of the processes in addressing difficult decisions (ones that often get put off because it’s easier to postpone something when you don’t know how to do it). It aims to offer a 360-degree view of problems and to remove the emotional biases wherever possible.

Another example of how we can play a constructive role contributing to decision-making processes at any level.

(Via Read Write Web)

PICamp will be part of Reboot Britain

Over the next few weeks, this site will carry a number of posts outlining some of the themes that will come up in the Political Innovation Camp (PICamp) strand of NESTA’s Reboot Britain event, taking place on the 6th July 2009 in central London.

I’m hoping that the event will cover a wide range of themes, ranging from 

• how we can take Tim Davies ‘50 hurdles’ idea and look at ways that public organisations of all kinds can be encouraged to address them
• what will policymaking look like in the future?
• how ‘hyperlocal’ communities work – how local government can interface with them and whether they are always a good thing in the first place
• defending inactive citizens from the activists
• reinstating the claim of local government to be the main agent in solving local problems

Nothing is final yet, and all of these (and more) will be fleshed out in the coming weeks over on the PICamp site.

In the meantime, make sure you don’t miss out. Tickets are here.

Optimal identities, tastes and fashions -v- projecting ‘conviction’

Further to the post about the way that we have high expectations about the civic virtues of politicians, here’s Will Davies comparing the way that we portray ourselves on social media platforms like Facebook as cultural beings, and – by contrast – the way that politicians have to present themselves:

“Gordon Brown’s central problem is that he conveys endless moralism, duty and calling, while failing entirely to communicate who he is. The civic deficit, on the other hand, is that people aspire to optimal identities, tastes and fashions, but only rarely gauge themselves in terms of ‘the good life’. The politician measures worth in ethical terms while the citizen does so in aesthetic terms.”

Voting systems compared

If the rumours are correct, Gordon Brown is about to announce his intention to promote a new voting system for Parliamentary elections in the UK. His choice is said to be the Alternative Vote (AV) system. It looks like the Vote For A Change campaign will get their way and there will be a referendum on the matter.

The Electoral Reform society offers a summary or this voting system that offers its’ strengths and shortcomings (indeed, you can see all of the alternatives on their site). 

And while the ERS as an organisation have doubts about AV (their CEO Ken Ritchie has already been quoted saying that it’s a ‘weak’ option), I recall that a report that they published on their site last year (PDF) made two very upbeat points:

1. AV is better than it initially appears as an option in the UK, and it offers a significant improvement on current First Past the Post (FPTP) system
2. It’s also the most likely ‘do-able’ reform in the UK, and a good stepping stone to a more deeper proportional system

Otherwise known as ‘instant runoff,‘ AV can make for quite an exciting election night. 

Personally, I’ve never come to firm view on which voting system I prefer. One advantage of AV, I think, is that it reduces the number of ’safe seats’ – the origin of a good deal of the perceived arrogance of some MPs who have come to regard their seat as a sinecure.

It is also a system that – while not proportional – will be welcomed in the short term by the Liberal Democrats as it’s likely to increase their representation. 

Voting reformer anorak section

The best summary of electoral options in the UK that I’ve found is David Beetham’s offering (MS Word Doc) on Stuart Weir’s Democratic Audit site (that has a good page with some good links including Peter Hain’s arguments in favour of AV.

Here’s the Wikipedia entry on voting systems and here’s the electoral commission’s outline of the different voting systems that are currently in place in the UK. As ever, Keele University’s politics department has had a serious crack at providing a definitive index of voting systems from around the world.

What we need now, though, is a debategraph on the subject….

A few signposts off

Reboot Britain

We can learn things from the way they elect Popes – and the way they used to.

Chris Dillow reprises his ‘extremist not a fanatic’ theme – that it is rational not to care too much about politics – and that politics benefits from our indifference.

And finally ‘Reboot Britain’ will be worth keeping an eye on – it will have a significant strand covering democratic renewal.

I’m hoping that it will provide another run-out for the PICamp project that started very successfully in Belfast last month.

“…a symbol of how we see ourselves”

This is a really good post about a perceived restructuring of the UK cabinet to reflect three key themes. I won’t spoil the wider article for you except to say that one of the issues that (according to the author) is a priority is that of constitutional and democratic reform.

This is very perceptive:

“….the task is partly about representation, equity and justice, and partly about public perception of politics.

For politicians to take the bold steps that are demanded by a fast-evolving society, they must have legitimacy. The public delegate their authority to representatives in a temporary compact which notionally reads like this: act in our interests and we’ll trust you to hold power for a while. But an underlying, perhaps more fundamental, message is: be a symbol of how we see ourselves, and we will ask you to make us better people.

This is the nature of the insult that many people feel they’ve received from MPs recently: they have betrayed us by acting like normal people instead of the idealised figures we wish they – and we – could be. And so the moral authority to help the rest of us be better than ourselves has been diminished. I don’t personally think this attitude is particularly fair to MPs, but perception is more than reality in this area.

So the constitutional council has a mission to restore faith in the character of politicians. And one way it can do this – although perhaps too radical for a first step – is through self-sacrifice. If a Labour government were to create a political system not structured around its own political objectives but those of democracy and of a fair representation of our diverse population, it would win huge credibility from the many people who are disillusioned with politics and with the government, but who are not impressed by the alternatives on offer.”

The public wanted hanging restored. But did they want to be represented by hangers? (click image for attribution).

This is a really good post about a perceived restructuring of the UK cabinet to reflect three key themes. I won’t spoil the wider article for you except to say that one of the issues that (according to the author) is a priority is that of constitutional and democratic reform.

This is very perceptive:

“….the task is partly about representation, equity and justice, and partly about public perception of politics.

For politicians to take the bold steps that are demanded by a fast-evolving society, they must have legitimacy. The public delegate their authority to representatives in a temporary compact which notionally reads like this: act in our interests and we’ll trust you to hold power for a while. But an underlying, perhaps more fundamental, message is: be a symbol of how we see ourselves, and we will ask you to make us better people.

This is the nature of the insult that many people feel they’ve received from MPs recently: they have betrayed us by acting like normal people instead of the idealised figures we wish they – and we – could be. And so the moral authority to help the rest of us be better than ourselves has been diminished. I don’t personally think this attitude is particularly fair to MPs, but perception is more than reality in this area.

So the constitutional council has a mission to restore faith in the character of politicians. And one way it can do this – although perhaps too radical for a first step – is through self-sacrifice. If a Labour government were to create a political system not structured around its own political objectives but those of democracy and of a fair representation of our diverse population, it would win huge credibility from the many people who are disillusioned with politics and with the government, but who are not impressed by the alternatives on offer.”

It adds another bit of shorthand to the list of ‘what kind of representation do we want’? We want people to represent us who have the values that we aspire to.

There is one illustration that I’ve never been able to stand up, but I’d still use it. Until very recently, opinion polls showed a clear majority of the population in favour of hanging – yet Parliament has consistantly rejected capital punishment and even sympathetic politicians with a feel for the popular never pressed the case. Mrs Thatcher was a ‘hanger’, after all.

Perhaps she knew that people may be hangers themselves, but don’t want to be represented by other hangers?

(Via Stumbling & Mumbling).

More cognitive polyphasia

Responding to the Guardian’s reader-survey about reshaping our democratic settlement, David Blunkett offers a good illustration of the cognitive polyphasia that colours so much public debate of these issues:

With one breath we say we want less legislation and more active politics based on a participative political activism and decentralisation; and in the next breath we call for more legislation, for parliament to sit throughout the summer, and by dint a further disconnect of those who, in the hothouse of Westminster, become more detached from the communities they represent.

We want electoral reform, but then we want to ensure that MPs are properly connected to a constituency somewhere outside London – which, of course, means a defined, single-member community that they can represent and who can hold them to account.

In other words, we are full of contradictions. We want someone else to be responsible. We want to give power to the members of the Westminster parties. Or do we? Is it not the “people” we want to empower?

We want it every which way. We want someone else to blame, someone else to shoulder the contradictions and, of course, when we get a new leader (and therefore a new prime minister), what do we want? We want them out.

“With one breath we say we want less legislation and more active politics based on a participative political activism and decentralisation; and in the next breath we call for more legislation, for parliament to sit throughout the summer, and by dint a further disconnect of those who, in the hothouse of Westminster, become more detached from the communities they represent.

We want electoral reform, but then we want to ensure that MPs are properly connected to a constituency somewhere outside London – which, of course, means a defined, single-member community that they can represent and who can hold them to account.

In other words, we are full of contradictions. We want someone else to be responsible. We want to give power to the members of the Westminster parties. Or do we? Is it not the “people” we want to empower?

We want it every which way. We want someone else to blame, someone else to shoulder the contradictions and, of course, when we get a new leader (and therefore a new prime minister), what do we want? We want them out.”

If there is one good thing that could come out of the current crisis in confidence surrounding politics, it would be a greater understanding of the causes of political centralisation.

Sadly, I can’t see it being the major theme myself….

(other polyphasia-related posts here)

Maybe now is the time

Here’s New Start’s Clare Goff on the demise of the community empowerment bill (via Julian Dobson):

‘Maybe now is the time for fresh ideas to revive the collective voice and rebuild politics from the grassroots up.’

Absolutely right. Quick thoughts on the democratic turmoil, starting with three angles on those expenses:

Some people (including one who really should know better) have suggested that the issue of MPs’ expenses is ‘not that important’. These are the ones telling us that we’ve all fiddled our expenses haven’t we?

Well no, we haven’t. For a start several million of us have never had expenses to fiddle, and I suggest a high proportion of the rest of us haven’t done so. Especially where public money is concerned. So if you have a conscience problem, don’t dribble it on the rest of us.

Then we have those telling us that continued exposure of this systematised greed risks ‘making it impossible for people to regain their confidence in the democratic system.’ The archbeak’s piece in the Times is in my view not as bad a piece of thinking as you might suppose from the broadcast headlines - but still, it’s a bit feeble to tell us to stop pointing out where the cracks are in democracy just because we might make them worse. The cracks are the problem, not the publicising of them.

There’s a third angle which claims that our political system is less corrupt than many others around the world, so stop making such a fuss. Duh.

And those holding any of the above viewpoints are, I suggest, part of the problem.

Three significant themes seem to be missing or understated in the debate so far. First, clarifying the connection with the unregulated greed of financiers which led to the recession; and understanding the extent to which all this greed was given room to grow in the fertile soil of Thatherite individualism, and has been shamelessly tended and nurtured under new Labour.

Secondly, emphasising that many claims made ‘within’ the crooked legalities of the parliamentary system reflect a decline or absence of acceptable values. Where is the discussion about values in public life, where the code of behaviour which MPs could reasonably be expected to sign up to?

And thirdly, returning to Clare Goff’s point, we need to be linking this to the crisis of democracy at local level. The current shambolic state of Westminster is an opportunity for a fresh and vigorous exploration of a new kind of democracy. It will have to be a conversational democracy with a strong local dimension, and inclusive social media have an obvious role to play in helping us shape that. I want this debate to be wide open with low expectations of particular practical conclusions – let’s have many thousands of flowers blooming so that creativity can take its chance.

But we must also take careful account of the alarming proportion of young people who betray a profound sense of detachment and have never inhabited a democratic culture. Speaking to one group last week I had the sense that their experience of influencing the decision-making processes that affect them has been so scarce that they might feel threatened by almost any form of empowerment. All their relationships are shallow, they have difficulty with conflicting ideas, and they have little experience of organising, being organised, self-organisation, or organisations. They have been failed.

I can’t be the only one to see a connection here. This is about the long-term neglect of everyday democracy, and it’s payback time.

(And to be perfectly clear, I am very definitely not categorising all or even most young people in this way. See previously eg ‘Kids these days‘).

[Cross-posted from the Neighbourhoods blog].

No longer a pipe dream

Here’s Will Davies on how what used to pass for blue skies thinking is now just down and dirty:

“When David Cameron declared the need for a new constitutional settlement recently, quite a bit of this was based on the capabilities of new technologies such as youtube and text messaging. Leaving aside the overall quality of his vision, I was struck by how credible and necessary this exploitation of digital technology suddenly appeared. Prior to this constitutional crisis, the e-democracy movement had preached e-this, e-that, cyber-parliament, the Big Conversation, a civic commons – none of which ever acquired any political plausibility. It operated in a rhetorical realm in which ‘participation’ and ‘interactivity’ could be celebrated to the heavens, without ever imperilling a decrepit parliamentary system.”

Here’s an illustration. less than a fortnight ago, my kids came home with a letter in their bags saying that the school was considering ending the school day 15 minutes earlier than the current time, and that this change would take place in September. A short consultation period would follow the letter and the governing body would be making a decision … about now.

I ran into half-a-dozen parents that evening at a school play. They were fuming. The consultation period was over the half-term, and it all looked like a done-deal.

Now, as it transpired, I”m prepared to believe that the school was acting in perfectly good faith. The plan had come up quite late in the school year, there was a lot of enthusiasm for it among the staff for good professional reasons. There were a number of reasons why they really needed to get it in place by September. The consultation time-frame was unavoidable.

The parents I met were going to organise over the half term. A few of them are fairly tech-savvy (there’s already a TXT tree), but I’m the one with the reputation on that score and after a few phone-calls, a site was established using a Ning group.

Someone from the PTA has a list of mobile numbers for parents and a text message went around within a day or so. Soon after, the number of registrants to the site had climbed past 50 to it’s current number (74 as I write – not bad for a primary school).

The ensuing discussion was heated. More than 20 people contributed lengthy responses to the consultation – lots of evidence, research, even a spreadsheet of comparisons with other schools and an attempt to cross-reference school hours against performance was loaded up to the site.

A few parents questioned the motives of the teaching staff. Others even questioned their competence. By the time the open meeting started to discuss the event, the senior teachers were struggling to hide their outrage. Some of it was justifiable – feelings were hurt, reputations had been called into question.

They were also slightly baffled. Other schools had done the same thing with their timetables over recent years without a peep from the parents. Now, thanks to the ease of networking, and the convening power that we all can wield using free applications, they were having to offer detailed powerpoint presentations to a well-prepared (and often hostile) bunch of parents.

I’d guess that more than 50 attended the meeting, and I’m waiting to hear what the governing body has decided in the end.

The school now has a growing online community of parents who can ask any questions they like. I’m not convinced that it will make the school any better managed. It may make it worse. It may reward the time-rich Victors. The teachers may feel battered by this experience and think twice before making potentially controversial decisions. They often work 10-12 hour days and weekends to-boot, and they have a right to have grievances against them handled in an orderly, confidential way (web-forums are bad at this).

But of one thing I’m sure: Someone would have set up that site if I hadn’t done. I hope that I did it according to Mick’s advice (it’s now got a set of ‘play the ball not the man’ rules and a moderation policy).

This is the kind of participation that a lot of e-democracy projects would have spend £tens of thousands on a few short years ago. Now, they’re so simple, it’s easier to do them than not do them. Local public servants are starting to get a sense of what MPs and the BBC have felt in recent months.

Reductio ad absurdum

Continuing Brendan O’Neill’s theme about the reduction of politics to the question of how efficiently politicians can tick the ‘democracy’ box, Simon Jenkins picks up on the calls for fewer MPs and councillors:

“The difference is that most democracies have many tiers of ­representation on which voters can vent their rage. The Germans run almost constant election campaigns for someone to something. The French ratio of voters to elected officials is 120:1. In Britain it is more like 2,600:1. The overwhelming majority of Europeans can name their local mayor or another official whom they can hold to account for most of their public services. In Britain the only representative people can begin to name is their MP, and barely half can do that. Britain is democracy-lite.

As a result, MPs carry a hopeless burden of responsibility. They must be national, regional and local representatives, chairmen of planning, social services and education, local health ombudsmen and elected mayors in all but name.”

He continues…

“We might think that the best response to the present crisis is to have more tribunes, unleashed to operate at every tier of government from parliament to parish. Yet both Brown and Cameron want fewer, both fewer MPs and fewer councillors in the form of unitary authorities. They want to take Britain from being the least democratically answerable nation in Europe to being even less so.”

Human beings

The role-model for future politicians?

A short follow-up to yesterday’s post on politicians who are ….. er …. politicians.

Conor Ryan – a senior New Labour veteran says: “MPs Wanted: No human beings need apply.”

“What we are now likely to get as a result of the relentless assault of the last month are humourless self-righteous sorts who are, of course, incapable of making the slightest mistake. In such circumstances, the only person who would want to be an MP is someone with no hinterland or human frailties, or an egomaniac extremist who plays to the populist mood.

If people don’t think much of our current MPs, just wait until they see what comes next.”

Discussing her decision to stand down, a ’source close to’ Home Secretary Jacqui Smith commented:

“…the row had put pressure on her children and her parents and while she regretted wrongly submitting a claim for the adult movie, she felt “vindicated” in her overall approach to claims, now those of other MPs had been published.”

(Thanks to @CllrTim and @kcorrick for the Ned Flanders idea – is there a better example of a fictional dumb humourless prig?)

The consequence of a retreat from politics?

Dennis Skinner - thought to be sceptical about consensus politics. (Pic: Riana Dzasta)

It’s an interesting twist to the question I’ve been asking, on and off, over the past few weeks: What kind of representatives do we want?

So far, the options have included jurors, rogues and public paragons of virtue. But over on Spiked Online, Brendan O’Neill suggests a somewhat alarming possibility: Maybe we need people who are locked in a partisan struggle – people who will die in a ditch to defend the interests of a social class or ideological clique. Maybe we need (shock … horror) politicians to represent us?

In short, he suggests that the whole expenses scandal is the product of a regrettable retreat from politics – a move to make Parliament meet the petty demands of it’s rivals, and a refusal to prioritise and accommodate political conflict:

“New Labour has discovered that transparency begets, not trust, but further suspicion – the more politicians make their personal purity into their major selling point, and the more they imply that parliament is a potentially corrupt and sleazy place, the more they invite scrutiny of their every foible and Kit Kat purchase.”

Clive James on liberal democracy

Albert Camus

Here’s a really good broadcast by Clive James on how liberal democracy works the transcript is here (and, while I don’t know how long this will be available under the BBC’s ‘Listen Again’ terms of use, if you subscribe to the podcast, you should be able to get all of the series).

It’s worth listening to all the way through, and particularly to consider Karl Popper’s notion of “changing the government at the peoples’ whim” - he says it like it’s a good thing, and when you think about it, it is less of a bad thing than all of the other options on offer.

James also quotes Albert Camus on Democracy:

“…the form of society devised and maintained by those who know that they don’t know everything.”