Baby P: The Untold Story

5 years ago I wrote about the Baby P scandal and how it related to Interactive Democracy. Now there's a new TV programme from the BBC, "Baby P: The Untold Story". I found it a depressing insight into British politics, media and culture.
Perhaps the wisest comment in the broadcast was that a series of small mistakes across multiple organisations caused a failure to protect Baby P from his mother and her boyfriend. Yet it also points out that David Cameron misinformed parliament about the age of Baby P's mother. A small mistake. The Sun newspaper misinformed the public about the number of social service's visits. A small mistake. The media reported that a doctor had failed to diagnose a broken back. Probably a small mistake (his back was unlikely to have been broken at the time of the examination according to a pathologist). Ed Balls expected an emergency inspection and report to take just two weeks when normally it would take months. A small mistake. A significant part of a Great Ormond Street report didn't reach inspectors. A deceitful mistake. Ofsted rated Social Services as good and then changed their minds, possibly after political manipulation (the report was edited numerous times by senior management not directly involved in the inspection and in consultation with Ed Ball's office). A worrying mistake. They then destroyed the evidence supporting their own study, as they do as a matter of course. An admin policy mistake. Sharon Shoesmith was unfairly dismissed and was subsequently awarded damages of nearly £680 000. A costly mistake.
According to the programme, since Baby P's death 260 other children have died. 26 of them were known to social services. These aren't mistakes, they are murder or manslaughter.
All mistakes should be corrected if we are to improve and I believe we should have laws against lying in public life. Incorrect statements should be corrected with as much 'volume' as the original error. I wrote about how this could work, here.
(You can read my original Baby P post here.)

Culture - The Ultimate Group Think

In "Cultures and Organisations: Software of the Mind" Professor Geert Hofstede published his research into the differences and similarities between more than 70 countries. The research has been updated since the original publication in 1990 and you can compare countries using Hofstede's website, click here.
For example Russia is significantly different to Britain in its acceptance of Power differences between people, suggesting tall hierarchies; and uncertainty avoidance, suggesting a need for politicians to do what they say they are going to do. This may provide some perspective on the Crimean situation. While our own parliament does its own groupthinking in terms of policy, as I described in my last post, it may also be automatically blind to cultural differences (as we all tend to be).
As Switzerland is probably the preeminent example of direct democracy it is also interesting to compare their culture with our own. Click here for Switzerland's cultural fingerprint. You will see that the UK culture values individualism much more than the Swiss who have a noticeably stronger preference for uncertainty avoidance. Otherwise they are similar. Perhaps it is the Power Distance measure that has the most impact on the acceptability of direct democracy (click here for the PD definition). On this measure Switzerland and the UK are almost identical (1% difference).

Papandreou Wants More International and Direct Democracy

In this TED Talk George Papandreou argues that global markets are too powerful for national democracies to control. He argues for more European democracy, including more referendums and citizens' juries:
"Where our common identity is democracy, where our education is through participation, and where participation builds trust and solidarity rather than exclusion and xenophobia. Europe of and by the people, a Europe, an experiment in deepening and widening democracy beyond borders."
Interactive Democracy could be scaled to the European level. And exactly the same infrastructure would work in your local village. It facilitates more participation than a randomly selected citizens' jury, but could also work alongside it if that were preferred.

The Swedish Theory of Love

This episode of the BBC Radio4's Analysis, Cameron's Swede Dreams, describes comparisons between various economic systems and political cultures and provides an analysis of the successful Swedish Model. Apart from covering individualism, society, capitalism, unionism, homogeneity, immigration and eugenics, it also mentions the Swedish theory of Love: that you can only be sure that personal relationships are loving when the individuals are economically independent and free. The programme also briefly delves into history to explain the idea that the Swedish state is seen as a protector of individuals, not a tyrant: in ancient times the King supported the land owning peasants against the demands of the Lords. It provides an interesting view of political culture and change.

Cultural Diversity

Cultural diversity may be an important aspect in improving the decision making of direct models of democracy. The corollary is that conformist societies may not benefit from direct democracy to the same degree.
According to Surowiecki the four key criteria for wise crowds are:

1. Diversity of opinion based on private information
2. Independence from the opinions of others
3. Decentralised knowledge
4. Aggregation - a mechanism for turning individual judgements into collective decisions

Interactive Democracy does some of this, but the degree of private information, independence and decentralised knowledge is effected by the extent of the public debate. If the debate is broken into separate discussions, perhaps fostered within diverse communities, informed from separate sources, whether by personal experience or diverse media, ID is more likely to be a success. Nevertheless, it will always be more diverse than a Parliamentary, representative system.

Science

Nobel Laureate Sir Paul Nurse advocates that science should be at the centre of the economy, government and culture in his 2012 Richard Dimbleby Lecture. It has crystalised thoughts I've had for a while. At first I considered Interactive Democracy to be about individual empowerment; then I thought that the best democracies should have the best quality of debate; now, I wonder if objective facts are the essential ingredients.
That's not to say that empowerment, creativity and debates about values aren't important aspects of ID. They are. And it's not to dismiss the problems of feedback loops in social sciences, where participants adjust there behaviour to make the most of the rules and otherwise game the system; or of predicting the future; problems that confound a strictly scientific approach to some issues (admittedly, not what Sir Paul was alluding to). But it does lead to the conclusion that the pursuit of objective truth, not mass opinion, is essential.
In his wide ranging lecture, in which he entertainingly compares the turmoil of enlightenment Italy with the concurrent unproductive peace of democratic Switzerland, Sir Paul highlights the problem of scientists becoming ensconced in their own narrow subjects, unable to integrate creatively with the wider community, or even other scientists. Here, Interactive Democracy can help. It sets them free to profoundly influence government and culture by directly initiating or contributing to debates. Here's to a new enlightenment!

Development, Freedom and Rising Happiness

"Development, Freedom and Rising Happiness" is an academic paper by Inglehart, Foa, Peterson and Welzel, which identifies economic development, democratization and social liberalisation as three factors that produce an increase in sense of freedom, which is strongly correlated with a rise in subjective well-being, otherwise known as happiness. Previous reports about happiness in Switzerland also identified their system of direct democracy as contributing to well being. But what if an enhanced democracy lead to a tyranny of the majority, thereby reducing social liberalisation to the detriment of happiness?
I consider that social liberalisation is a predominantly cultural factor, the opposite of traditional conservatism (with a small 'c'). The previous post identifies Britain as being more traditional than Switzerland, causing me to worry that if direct democracy is applied here, we run the risk of the majority forcing their mores on minority groups. A number of factors may counter this:-

1. Interactive Democracy presents the debating points prior to the voting part of the web site, boosting awareness of the issues and reducing dogmatic thinking.
2. The media increases awareness of the complexity of issues, encouraging people to doubt and change their intuitive views, enhancing liberalism.
3. When celebrities have diverse backgrounds and views, the population is likely to become more tolerant.
4. Education, multi-culturalism and foreign travel could help.
5. Enhanced awareness of human rights, already entrenched in law, and therefore becoming accepted as traditional, provide a stop-loss.
6. When traditional conservative leaders argue for the protection of minority interests that they don't themselves believe in, then it is unlikely that a tyranny of the majority will emerge.
7. Wide advocacy of equal opportunities and freedom of speech provide good foundations for direct democracy.

Culture and Economics

Deirdre McCloskey argues that a revolution in living standards ultimately stemmed from a change in attitude towards commerce and the pursuit of wealth. “By the new pro-bourgeois talk, the positive-sum game was freed partly from zero-sum politics.”
Cultural barriers had kept innovation hemmed in. When these dissolved, ideas were finally free to proliferate. So the new culture made all the difference between ideas forming slowly and in isolation; or quickly, and together. In return, the merchants made Britain stunningly rich. The newly respectable middle class bought and sold and invented a new type of economy. They built machines and cities and they made Britain the centre of the world.
I advocate that, in a similar way, a change from representative to Interactive Democracy would free-up innovation in the political sphere.

(Quotes taken from this article on the MoneyWeek site).

The Iron Lady

I've been wondering for a while now, what aspects of culture foster direct democracy? If the Swiss can do it, why do some people think Brits can't?

One argument is that the Swiss are better educated. But they've been doing direct democracy for 150 years: back then no one was as well educated as the average person today, so we should be more than capable.

Perhaps it's their national service that binds them into a cohesive society? Or their multilingualism that breeds flexibility of thought?

Or perhaps it's our welfare culture that makes us expect to be looked after rather than look after ourselves? Or our aristocratic history that makes us look to an authority for answers?

Is it the political system that creates the culture or the culture that creates the political system?

"The Iron Lady" provides some historical perspective on our culture. In the film, the retired Margaret Thatcher makes two comments about how culture has changed. To paraphrase her, she says "People used to want to do something, now they want to be something"; and "People used to want to know what you thought, now they want to know how you feel". These sentences seem to me to capture some of our changing culture.

Interactive Democracy is more about doing than being. It empowers political activism. And it is more rational than emotional for the simple reason that to advocate your perspective, it's a good idea to explain it. But, on the other hand, people can vote using instinct if they wish.

Lewd Leadership

The phone hacking scandal, a boil that has finally burst, runs the risk of missing a central point about how the media provides leadership for our country and our culture. In the case of News of the World, and several other newspapers, they realise that "sex sells" and celebrity sex sells more. So a good number of their stories "out" the private sexual exploits of the rich and famous, celebrities and politicians. They pander to base human instincts and debase our culture in the process: they provide lewd leadership.
Until now the political powers have been feeble in their response, despite the Human Rights Act, which states:

1. "the right to respect for private ... life"
2. "freedom from ... degrading treatment"
3. "the right to liberty"
4. "freedom of assembly and association"
5. "the right to peaceful enjoyment of your property" (including mobile phones?)
   
6. "the right not to be discriminated against in respect of these rights and freedoms" (celebrities v general public)
   

To increase the quality of the leadership that the media provide I think it is essential that we curtail their power to exploit and manipulate, while strengthening the sector as a whole. After all, investigative journalists do some good stuff, but enquiries are often expensive with uncertain rewards.
One way of limiting lewd leadership would be to use the Human Rights Act, perhaps as a class action. Another is to limit media monopolies.
To strengthen print news (including electronic print) perhaps we should be considering some sort of financial support from our taxes: despite not paying VAT, some papers run at a loss. Perhaps we should also curtail the BBCs involvement in web-print and focus their attentions on iPlayer services instead, so that newspapers can better compete on the Web and Kindle.
(This post from January comments on phone hacking.)

Comparing Cultures

Geert Hofstede, of Maastricht University, compared cultures across many IBM subsidiaries in different countries. The results may provide some insight into the applicability of Swiss Direct Democracy to the UK. He used 5 criteria (only 4 for Switzerland):

1. Power Distance, a measurement of inequality as perceived from lower levels in the organisation, rated 35 in the UK and 34 in Switzerland. Pretty much the same.
2. Individualism was scored higher in the UK, 89, than in Switzerland, 68.
3. Masculinity rated the UK, 66, slightly less than Switzerland, 70.
4. Switzerland (58) rated higher than the UK (35) in Uncertainty Avoidance.
5. Finally, the UK (25) had a short term outlook but Switzerland wasn't measured.

Before seeing these results I would have expected Power Distance and Uncertainty Avoidance to have been much lower in Switzerland. I imagine that Direct Democracy would flourish with a higher degree of equality and lower Power Distance score. Similarly, I would have assumed that frequent referendums would lead to greater uncertainty. However, we should be careful about using these results as they may be more associated with the local corporate culture than that exhibited in the general populace.

Changing Cultures

Direct Democracy has worked well in Switzerland over the last 150 years but some claim it to be a failure in California. Is this because of their differing cultures: consensus seeking in Switzerland; money is power in America?
Is it possible to design the details of a direct democracy system in order to fit our culture? Can the introduction of direct democracy be done in such a way as to change our culture and change our attitudes?
One way of doing this may be to create a working model without legislative clout, to see how it performs. This would give people the opportunity to learn about the system and to get involved in improving it. It would also encourage politicians to evolve their policies to accommodate the will expressed there, encouraging a more consensual approach.

Choices, Choices...

In the following lecture by Sheena Iyengar, from Colombia Business School, the cultural differences between how people deal with choices is explored. Sheena's work may be relevant to democracy and how it is applied in different cultures (Switzerland? Afghanistan?). She also touches on the relevance of choice to performance and happiness.

Within the proposed Interactive Democracy system, choices are effected by debate, leadership and data. The politicians may act as expert advisers and those that don't want to choose may devolve their vote to other people within the liquid leadership system.