Friday 12 October 2007

Ideology and Experimentation


It has been suggested that there isn't a difference in the ideologies of the political parties anymore. They all seem to agree that balanced budgets, fairness, freedom of speech and parliamentary democracy are right and they all have policies on health, education and the environment. Interactive Democracy is a new ideology. Because it hasn't been tried yet, it remains unproven and involves an act of faith that the electorate can decide matters of law.

To move from faith to certainty requires experience and I would like to see experiments in Interactive Democracy. Perhaps local governments may try it first. Perhaps the regional assemblies. It can also be tested in stages rather than all at once: first the idea generation part, then parliamentary review, then referendum on key issues.

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