It’s a really brilliant project – where local authorities have any interest in being creative about the way councillors engage with young people (a learning experience – and not just a one-way one as well!), I’ve heard nothing but good things about it.
I first became aware of it around 2003 (I think) and each year, dozens of councils have tried it, finding the obstacles and tweaking the offering.
At the start of May, there’s a forum on the future of democracy taking place in Grenoble. Sounds like a fascinating event, although on the academic rather than practical end of the conference spectrum.
Pierre Rosanvallon, Professor at the College de France, has written an explanatory article for (of course) Le Monde, which is well worth reading. He sets out the themes and issues of the conference – here’s the money quote:
Un nouveau cycle doit de la sorte s’ouvrir dans la vie des démocraties, aussi décisif qu’avaient été ceux de la conquête du suffrage universel au XIXe siècle, puis de la mise en place des Etats-providence au XXe siècle. Il faut maintenant donner à nos démocraties une assise élargie, il s’agit de les comprendre autrement et d’enrichir leur signification. Elles sont à réinventer.
Trois dimensions apparaissent à cet égard essentielles : l’extension des procédures et des institutions au-delà du système électoral majoritaire ; l’appréhension de la démocratie comme une forme sociale ; le développement d’une théorie de la démocratie-monde.
Or, in quick summary:
After the triumph of universal suffrage in the 19th century, and the creation of the Welfare States in the 20th, a new cycle of democracy needs to begin. We need to give our democracies a bigger space for action, to think about them in different ways, to enrich their image and reinvent them.
There are three essential parts: extending institutions and procedures beyond the majoritarian electoral system; appreciating that democracy is a social form; and developing a new theoretical basis for transnational democracy.
“With the internet demanding ever-improving performance skills from its principal actors, Westminster can only become less hospitable to people who look more like Menzies Campbell than Ant and Dec. Unless, that is, they can produce an official ugliness pardon from Simon Cowell and his authentic, travelling freakshow.”
But, if this is the case, what kind of elected representitives are we going to be prepared to tolerate in the future?
Over on the Personal Democracy Forum (which proudly declares that ‘technology is changing politics’), we see Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill explaining how Twitter helps her to keep it real:
“That’s really why I do it. I think it keeps me in the discipline of not being afraid to say things that may not be perfect, that may actually offend, that may actually truly reflect what I’m thinking and why.”
Senator McCaskill’s example strikes me as being very close to being a priestly ambition – someone who is constantly begging the civil variation on the question ‘What would Jesus do?’ Continue reading →
Any clues welcome about that table.... (pic: Flickr - click for attribution).
One of the nice things about the dynamic way that the internet arranges things is that you sometimes stumble upon artifacts that you don’t understand, but that look fascinating.
This Icelandic blog, for instance, is a complete mystery to me. I found it years ago and visit it once every few months. I’ve no idea what the blogger is saying, but the slightly freaky love of photoshopping is always a laugh.
Call me a democracy-geek, but I find the whole process of balloting is fascinating, and different ballot forms from different countries repay hours of study. On the right hand side of this blog, I aggregate democracy-related images, where this image (left) came from.
Look closely. The ‘Left Front’ have a party symbol that looks like a fairly ornate 18th Century table. What’s that all about? Wikipedia is silent on the matter at the moment.
Are there any Sri Lankan experts out there that know why this is?
This bit may seem like a triumph of hope over expectations, but it’s interesting to ask ourselves why that would be:
“Engage local councillors in a redefinition of politics and social change, moving from a government-centric to a citizen-centric model. Support and incentivise councillors to be capacity builders (if this sounds crazy, there are places it is happening).”
Prior to this, he argues that….
To create the future most of us aspire to we need citizens who are… more actively engaged in collective decision making at every level.
Matthew is to be congratulated for this term ‘pro-social’ I’ve started to hear it being dropped into conversations all over the place, but I’m fairly certain that Matthew first mentioned it on his blog about a year ago. (I await correction on this if I’m wrong). So, I’d like to get an idea going in my own puny way. I’m sure that it won’t go a fraction as far as his but here goes:
Don’t aspire to involve people in collective decision making. You will be lying if you tell them that you are going to do it, and no-one will like the outcome. Instead, involve people in describing the problem and drafting proposed solutions.
Apologies for the light posting this week. I’ve been in Northern Ireland where I met someone who was studying criminology. Her key concern was the question of local control of policing and populism: Would devolved policing result in a deterioration into populism.
Northern Ireland is an interesting case in point, given the historic divides. Unionists, with some spectacular exceptions, have often been close to the model of the deferential working class found elsewhere in the UK. Republicans, on the other hand, have a … er … history … of scepticism about the authority of state justice.<<< understatement of the year!
How far would Northern Ireland provide a good model for looking at the general question of devolved policing?
The latter link has some interesting implications: How far is the current centralised model of policing (lots of form filling, procedures and risk aversion) predicated on the need to keep highly paid managers apprised of the information that they need to make the right decisions, and to ensure that when the wrong ones are made, that the same managers aren’t blamed?.
Go on! Tell your boss to install Open Office and that you're not going to help.
If you read this blog, you must know a few influential people? Maybe they’ve been elected, or have some official role that is, in reality, more powerful than someone who has been elected?
Would they be the sort of person who would get someone else to do anything vaguely complicated with a PC? Do they regard their desktop computer as a necessary tool – but not something that they really should understand?
The BBC’s ever-perceptive Bill Thompson thinks that they need to find their inner geek:
It’s almost 50 years since the writer CP Snow gave his famous lecture about the ‘two cultures’ at Cambridge University, where he outlined the dangers that come from the lack of understanding between literary intellectuals and the scientific community.
Today things don’t seem as bad, and there is clearly a much greater awareness of and interest in popular science. Unfortunately a new divide has opened up, that between those of us who know enough about our computers to look under the bonnet from time to time and those who use them without any real curiosity or awareness.
The results could be far worse than being ripped off by unscrupulous engineers who offer them unnecessary upgrades, because these digital tools will increasingly shape society.
Some 74% of internet users-representing 55% of the entire adult population–went online in 2008 to get involved in the political process or to get news and information about the election. This marks the first time that a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey has found that more than half of the voting-age population used the internet to get involved in the political process during an election year.
So what does this mean for local democracy? Here are my two hasty conclusions on what are, I think, the key opportunities that this presents:
Because the costs (both financial, and in terms of expertise) of web publishing and interaction have fallen dramatically, this could lead to a weaker political centre and the emergence of a new more personalised local politics
Because more people can publish and interact, the signal to noise ratio has changed – there appears to be a noiser-than-ever focus upon the activities of the political centre, and a marked frigidity at a local level in using new media tools
I have my own explanations for this frigidity, but I’d be interested to hear yours…..
We believe that the causes of political disengagement, while complex, can be distilled to a dominant factor: a sense of powerlessness on the part of most citizens that their voices are not being heard, their views not listened to, their participation unwelcomed or their activity unrewarded.
Will comments:
Ah, a sense of powerlessness. Not a fact of powerlessness, perhaps induced by the fact that only a small minority of voters actually count – and are courted politically – under the British voting system.
That’s not the strongest argument either in a very hard-hitting piece that finds the weaknesses in New Labour’s approach to empowerment – both a reluctance to address the actual problem, and a hubristic faith in the power of management. Continue reading →
Caplan probably doesn’t tell us anything that would surprise us much, but the way that he addresses the conflict between the notion of rationality that underpins the idea of homo economicus and the evidence from the way that people actually vote is interesting.
He identifies a number of types of irrationality – the willingness to sentimentalise and allow loyalty to get in the way, for instance – ‘rallying around the flag’ in a time of war, even if the war may not be in the national interest.
He looks at the way that voters simply get the facts spectacularly wrong before they vote on a subject (Americans, Caplan points out, believe that the US spends a huge amount more on foreign aid than it actually does – yet it votes accordingly).
Elsewhere, he echoes Matthew Parris’ views on the public perception of immigration – not understanding the more obscure economic benefits, and among his conclusions, he urgently entreats the political elites not to flatter the majority but instead to stand up to them.
I’m not sure that it’s a message that the public are very keen on at the moment.
Ink on the finger = an X on a ballot (Pic: Tracy Hunter on Flickr)
Over the next month or so, the worlds biggest democracy will go to the polls. That’s over 700 million voters.
Here are some photos over on Flickr: Promoting positivity about democracy in Hyderabad. I love the pride with which some of the photographers annotate their pictures – a satisfaction in participation.
Note the marks on the photographer’s finger showing that he had voted.
Scottish left-wing political blogger Shuggy had a good post up about the G20 demonstrations that took place in London a couple of weeks ago. I think that he’s right about the ‘they are all just Trustafarians’ question (they aren’t), though I think that some of the critics of the demonstrators are onto something with this line of attack.
Like Shuggy, I’d suggest that, in an affluent society, protest is increasingly becoming a means by which people dissociate themselves from the decisions of a democracy, rather than a means of changing policies. Interestingly, the slogan that brought the protesters against the Iraq War in 2003 together was ‘Not In My Name.’
This raises the wider question: Should democratic policy-making simply be a means by which a process is applied mechanistically in order to produce a product? Is it simply the model whereby….
MPs are elected,
they listen to evidence and speak to the voters between times in order to make sure that their policymaking is being done properly,
make their decisions and frame legilation accordingly
face the music at the end of their term of office
Surely there is more to democracy than that? Or is this the least-worst model open to us? Continue reading →
When it comes to technology start-ups there’s a nine out of ten chance that the idea will fail. Far from being considered a problem it’s recognised that doing something different is a risky strategy. But it is also one that can lead to enormous rewards if you get it right.
True failure only happens when the lessons learned aren’t carried forward into future projects.
Although itself notoriously risk averse, central government is starting to heed the message. Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell told the civil service to become innovators because, “we have no choice but to innovate.”
So what of local government? The barriers are high; accountability and the use of public money stifle an innovation culture but, countering this, innovating online with new social media tools is fast and, above all, cheap. Working with the tools that citizens are already comfortable with makes sense too.
The Long Tail: See the yellow bit? That's you and me, that is...
The other day, I posted on how the ‘level playing field’ demanded (partly) by marketeers was a significant contributor to the centralising tendencies of the previous half-century. As a short follow-up, Seth Godin picks up on the widespread and increasing distrust in big marketing. I don’t know if you would reach the same conclusion that he has though?
“…even if you have a really good reason, no, you can’t call me on the phone. Which means that even if it’s really important, no, I’m not going to read the instructions. Which means that god forbid you try to email me something I didn’t ask for… you’re trashed. It’s so fashionable to be skeptical now that no one believes you if you attempt to do something for the right reasons.
Selfish short-sighted marketers ruined it for all of us. The only way out, I think, is for a few marketers to so overwhelm the market with long-term, generous marketing that we have no choice but to start paying attention again.”
Is it really the case that marketeers need to come up with an even longer con based on ever more leveraged offers that are too good to be true?
Surely Godin’s observations should be a cause of some consolation to those of us that would like to promote a more decentralised economy? Reputation management may be a concept that has been mined most effectively by e-bay, but it’s a need that is increasingly met by the long tail – and not just the online long tail, but the offline one of personal networks.
They way Coppers were: fewer forms to fill in. (Photo: Robin Hutton)
Following on from the moan about the ‘level playing field’, here’s the next in the ’causes of centralisation’ theme: The minor crisis in the legitimacy of professionals.
Crudely speaking, where civil servants, teachers, police, and judges used to be expect their judgements to be respected, and used to exercise more perogative powers than they do now, we’ve seen huge new layers of accountability applied – stifling (some would argue) professionalism and creativity. It’s a process described by Colin Hay in his book ‘Why Do We Hate Politics?‘ Continue reading →
Erwin James, writing in The Guardian, thinks so, and it doing so, makes an important wider argument about why democracy matters – and how important inclusivity is.
“The lives of the people we imprison are usually unstable and dysfunctional, so much so that that few have ever experienced being involved in the democratic process. The consequent sense of being detached from society is often a cause of much offending. Prison is meant to be physically detaching, the loss of liberty is the penalty perpetrators pay – the loss of freedom, of movement, of choice. But psychological detachment, the sense that prisoners do not belong, do not count and have no value in society – is dangerous when exacerbated by the prison experience. While people are in prison they need to be encouraged to feel that they are still a part of society.”
Voting as an element of personal orderliness. When politics is a battle for a narrow section of the electorate – either the most active citizens, or a particular demographic (in 1997, Labour pinned all of their hopes on winning over Gloucester Woman), the consequences for wider society are potentially damaging.
I saw this clip (below) a while ago, and for me, the most striking thing about it (and admittedly, I’m drawing conclusions from implications, so I’d be happy to be corrected on this) was that only a minority of prisoners were prepared to attend a meeting on voter registration in one of the two US states that allow inmates to vote – and only a minority of those attending decided to actually register. The demand for voting among prisoners appears not to be huge though….
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A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. It aims to explore the impact that social media will have upon local democracy, and to look at the ways that the meaning of the word representation may be changing.
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