Coding a Better Government

"Coding a Better Government" is a TED talk by Jennifer Pahlka in which she describes how the development of simple apps helped government link citizens together to help each other and the community. This is entirely different to Interactive Democarcy. But ID could point app developers in the right direction, by offering a forum that highlights problems and offers suggestions.
Perhaps, instead of employing government programmers to write the code, volunteer experts or students may develop the apps to solve problems. I'd like to see the government recognise such people, perhaps with some sort of award or certificate.

"7 million offline voters could miss out"

"Millions of people, including the elderly and those living in rural areas, could be at a disadvantage during the November police commissioner elections, if information about candidates is only posted online, the Electoral Commission has warned... it [has] concerns about the government's proposals for a central website to host candidate information, intended to replace candidate mailings and booklets sent to households."
"as many as seven million adults in England (outside London) and Wales are estimated not to have used the Internet at all in the last 12 months."

From publicservice.co.uk

While it could be argued that Internet access (and training) is available at most local libraries, access to technology remains an issue for Interactive Democracy which is likely to resolve itself in the coming years with the proliferation of Internet devices.

European Social Values

This report on European Social Values encompasses a wide range of metrics.
According to page 19, 81% of Europeans believe that "people like them" have too little influence in government and only 34% know how to get their voice heard. The figures for the UK are 77% and 31%. Switzerland, reknown for its direct democracy, scored 65% and 46%. Surprisingly a whopping 67% of the Dutch know how to get their voice heard in politics.
This is particularly relevant to Interactive Democracy as a central tennant is empowerment.
From the same page, 75% of Europeans thought "People should involve themselves in politics and current affairs". 73% of Brits and 79% of Swiss agreed. On this metric Sweden came out top with 91%!
Overall the figures suggest the majority want more political power but don't know how to get it. Another observation is that political access is higher in the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and Denmark than in the direct democracy of Switzerland, but I don't know why. Perhaps public meetings disempower while secret ballots free the individual from social pressure? In Interactive Democracy, voting from your PC may help to solve this problem.

Thanks to Amanda for identifying this report.

The Wisdom of Crowds

This BBC Horizons programme, "Out of Control?", explores the role of the sub-conscious mind and concludes that it forms a bigger part of our mental activity than many may think. Interestingly it shows an experiment with a colony of ants finding a new home, introducing the phrase The Wisdom of Crowds (also a book by James Surowiecki). The ants found two suitable new nesting sites and together decided which was best. Perhaps this is a valid analogy for direct democracy, especially if our intuitions are more powerful than our rational minds would ever suppose.
In his book Surowiecki describes another experiment in which people are asked to guess the weight of something (I forget what). It was found that the average guess was far more accurate than any one guess. Perhaps this is also group intuition at work.... food for thought!


"In this endlessly fascinating book, New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future."

Random House

The Navigator to Direct Democracy

The Navigator to Direct Democracy is a work in progress but already describes how direct democracy or referenda work in many countries. It usefully identifies and classifies the different instruments of direct democracy that are used around the world, based on work done by Rolf Buchi of IRI Europe.

How The Internet Enables Direct Democracy

This short video presentation by Craig's List founder, Craig Newark, explains how the internet enables direct democracy.

Common Wisdom

One of the arguments against direct democracy is that common people are likely to vote based on their own selfish desires, without considering their long term needs or the benefits to others. Though this may be true of a handful of people I don't accept it of the vast majority:

• Most people go to the dentists: they accept pain for future benefits.
• Most people save money, though they would rather spend it today.
• Most people will offer a helping hand to their neighbours.
• Many people give to charities and will go out of their way to help others in need.

In a representative democracy we attempt to appoint a wise person. In direct democracy we listen to a wise person and decide if we agree with them. The two aren't very different.

The above graph is taken from here.

Cheap and Getting Cheaper

One of the basic truths of information technology is that it's cheap and getting cheaper.
A web based democracy has the potential of being by far the cheapest way of operating any ballot, any general election and as secure as your online bank account. This leads to the thought that it's inevitable that it will be adopted if only to save money.
But web voting also opens up all sorts of opportunities: More frequent voting at negligible extra cost; the facility for involving everyone in policy; and the opportunity to rent out the system to other organisations, perhaps businesses, perhaps unions, maybe other organisations, may mean that it actually covers its costs. Interactive Democracy explores how this technology can be harnessed to enhance democracy.

Australian Democracy

In contrast to Britain's democracy, and the Interactive Democracy I advocate, here is a great description of the Australian system, from the World Leader Proposal site:-

"Our system of voting is relatively exclusive to the Australian political system. Most democratic political systems employ the Simple Majority (First-Past-The-Post) system. Our system employs direct democratic representation, preferential representation and proportional representations.

Australia's electoral system is in many respects a shining example of the fulfilment of democratic values. We have been world leaders in many innovations in the provision of democracy. The employment of secret ballots to reduce intimidation has long been referred to as the Australian Ballot and is now seen as ubiquitous with democracy. Not only does it reduce intimidation but negates the practice of people deciding their vote because of a need to be seen as going along with the crowd or a desire to be on the winning side. This was identified as one of the dangers of direct democracy.

Australia led the way with the enfranchisement of all citizens (men and women) over the age of 21 enjoying the privilege (at that time) to cast a vote from 1908. In 1911 after much investigation and debate it was decided that that every single person who is eligible to vote should be heard and that every persons vote has value. This was in response to perceived short comings of the US and British systems whereby the most popular or the wealthiest were dominating politics and that it was possible for a minority of citizens to dictate the electoral outcomes. Hence from 1911 onwards voting became compulsory.

But still there was concern that the will/choice of the greatest majority of the electorate was not truly represented in the outcomes. The solution to ensure that the outcomes were policy based rather than the outcome of the ‘wealth, slick styles and appeal of simple solution to complex questions’, in 1919 preferential voting was introduced to federal politics. This was not just an experiment but as a result of its success and application at a state level and by-elections. All data collected on it showed conclusively that it reflected the desires of the greatest number of the electorate and therefore gave the most detailed indication of majority desire.

As an offset to the possibility of an overwhelming majority giving the incumbent government carte blanche to institute whatever policy they desired the senate was established as a watchdog and arbiter of policy implementation and ensure that the needs (as distinct from their desires) of the electorate were met. We give the legislative assembly a mandate to govern not a mandate to do as they wish. Our senate is elected using a proportional voting system. Proportional voting was introduced for Senate elections in 1949, heralding a new political era where minor parties and independent voices were represented in our parliament.

Proportional voting is used in multi-member electorates. In the Senate, there are 8 electorates: the 6 States and the 2 Territories. The 6 States each return 12 members, whereas the Territories return 2 each.

Being successfully elected to the senate requires winning candidates to secure a quota of the vote. The quota is calculated by dividing the total number of formal ballot papers by one more than the number of Senators to be elected. It is not unusual for a Senate ballot paper to contain anywhere between 30 and 70 candidates. It is more representative of the wishes of the electorate, in that parties win seats in proportion to the percentage of the vote they receive.

The great strength of our political system is its employment of multiple forms of the democratic process. Whilst we in Australia take these for granted and at times show contempt (invariably based on ignorance), it is the reason our economy and lifestyle are the envy of many.

The balance of power has even in recent governments been held by independents. These changes took effect in the Senate on 1 July 2011. More than 14 million Australians were enrolled to vote at the time of the election. The result is a consequence of their choices. A mandate was denied to any one party and reflected a need for compromise between differing ideals as individual parties failed to inspire an overwhelming majority.

The modern democracy that we enjoy is not a form of government reflecting the will of the populous. Our government reflects the trust of the populous in who they believe has the necessary attributes to make informed decisions on their behalf.

Every member of society could not reasonably be expected to have a fully informed understanding of all the issues. How could we distinguish the informed from the mis-informed, ignorant or self interested? Our national policies would be subject to the whims of fashion, propaganda and subversion. We would surely all be anti the cost in money and time that continual plebiscites would demand. Our societies have evolved greatly from the days of ancient Greece. We are not one homogenous people we are a nation of diversity and our political system reflects this.

Our political system is far from perfect and is vulnerable to threats, the greatest threat being poor quality of education of society and undue influence of the media. Democracy’s success depends upon the quality of demands made on our leaders and the quality of their decision making to ensure the improvement of society. If we expect little from our politicians I’m sure they’ll deliver. "

Here's the official version.

To help promote direct democracy in Australia, click here.

Elected Aristocracy

"Elected aristocracy" was a term coined by Rousseau. Could it be applied today? After all, most of the front benchers are career politicians with little working experience outside of parliament.
(Here are details of the Lib/Con front bench, from the BBC.)
(Here's the Labour line-up.)

The Sham of Democracy

"The Sham of Democracy" is an article by Bill Bonner in MoneyWeek (24/02/2012). In it he writes
"The Italian city states practised real democracy too. In 15th-century Florence, for example, citizens voted on whether or not to build a cathedral. Then, they voted on what shape it should take. A scale model was built, Citizens knew what it would look like. They understood how it was built and how much it would cost them. They cast their ballots and took responsibility for the outcome. American democracy, circa 2012, has no more in common with real democracy than American capitalism has in common with real capitalism. Both are degenerate, corrupt and geriatric."

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!

Inequality and Direct Democracy

One may assume that if we were all able to vote on every issue the vast majority, with low incomes, would claim the wealth held by the rich for themselves. They would vote for a vast redistribution.
Switzerland is the pre-eminent example of a direct democracy and this graph (data from the UN) shows that the top 20% of wealthy Swiss have 5.7 times more assets than the poorest 20%. They are in the middle of the range of countries with far more inequality than Japan (3.4) and far less than Singapore (9.7).
For more on inequality I'd recommend this TED talk by Richard Wilkinson. He highlights the multiplicity of social benefits, for the poor and rich, evident in more equal societies.

Eroding Democracy

In "The Right Side Newsletter" Bengt Saelensminde wrote:

'Much of the Greek public see this [EU policy] as economic enslavement. They’re out on the streets fighting for their freedom.

Meanwhile the Greek police union released a statement saying its members refused to “stand against our parents, our brothers, our children or any citizen who protests”. The police union knows that more and more austerity is self-defeating. They agree with the protesters, not the politicians!

The union threatened to arrest members of the [EU reform] troika - for “blackmail, covertly abolishing or eroding democracy and national sovereignty”.'

Serious stuff, indeed! Perhaps all will change after the elections in April.

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.

World Values Survey

According to the World Values Survey, 70% of values correlate with just the two dimensions shown in this chart, Traditional/Secular and Survival/Self Expression. (You can read the details here.)
The WVS may provide some insight into the cultural differences between nations with differing democratic or political systems. In particular, Switzerland, with its direct democracy, is shown to be more secular and more self expressive than Britain, but not massively so.
(According to Lars Tragardh, writing in The Guardian, Cameron has an interest in Sweden, which appears at the top right of this graph, high on self expression and secularism.)

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).

Trip Advisor

There is obviously a cost to managing any operation and perhaps one of the arts of senior management is to put in place sufficient control systems without the costs becoming exorbitant. This concept applies to government as well as business. As Merryn Somerset Webb writes in this blog post (commenting on Tim Morgan's "Reform Trilogy"), undoing layers of administration from the NHS could save billions.

Over the last 50 or so years there have been serious improvements in quality management, from Deming's Total Quality Management to 6 Sigma, and the notion that improvements in quality can reduce costs by reducing defects is well founded. So care must be taken not to destroy essential management systems. But there is a concurrent idea, that customer experience is important and customers are the best people to judge it. In business, marketing departments have a host of techniques to measure customer experience. Each with their cost.

Trip Advisor offers a different way of doing this. It gets the customer to do the work of contributing to improving the system by offering an easy way for them to express their opinion. This could be applied to government services at relatively little cost.

Such a system may benefit from integration with Interactive Democracy because ID links your identification with your right to vote in an online system. It may be extended to identify you as a patient at an NHS facility at a certain time, indicating that your online opinion isn't mendacious, and giving you the right to express your opinion on-line.

Though the results of such a system may inform patient choice the more important benefit is that it will likely motivate staff to improve in all sorts of subtle ways.

Talent?

David Bolchover, in his book "Pay Check: Are Top Earners Really Worth It?", advocates the idea that the head's of organisations often benefit from the position of their firm and the economic environment much more than anything they contribute themselves. (According to Merryn Somerset Webb, from MoneyWeek, its worth a read.)

A political comparison would be PM Brown claiming to have beaten boom and bust only to be rudely awakened from his dream into an economic nightmare.

A sporting analogy also seems appropriate here. Isn't it obvious that some football players are more talented than others? Of course. But their earnings are also proportionate to the popularity of the game and the associated TV rights (enabling them to entertain many more people than any stadium can hold). There is also a far clearer idea of what constitutes soccer talent. Not so with business. An expert in one business may lack the technical understanding of another.

So, what's this got to do with democracy?

While I don't doubt that some people have a political talent, I doubt that that talent warrants their power over every aspect of society, and I doubt that we, the electorate, are easily able to spot it. Therefore, society should have mechanisms for talented individuals to come to the fore, as and when their expertise is needed. Interactive Democracy provides one way of doing this. For example, it encourages policemen to contribute to legislation on crime and doctors to campaign for healthcare. Yet it allows politicians to do politics.

Crony Capitalism

"Crony capitalism abounds when government leaders, usually in exchange for political support, routinely bestow favours on private individuals or business. This is not capitalism. It is called corruption."

Alan Greenspan, the Financial Times, quoted in MoneyWeek.

It could also be called crony democracy!

Interactive, or Direct Democracy is far less biased than Representative Democracy. Why? Because when the rich pay money to influence all votes, instead of a few representatives, it is automatically transparent.

Defining "In The Public Interest"

Journalists are an essential and powerful part of democracy. Do they use their power for good or ill? How free should they be? Should politicians be holding the press to account or should journalists be holding politicians to account? Hopefully the Leveson Inquiry will help to answer those questions.

To my mind it is valid that journalists sometimes bend the laws if the outcome is good for democracy. For example, the MP's expenses information were acquired illegally. Yet allowing press barons to use their powers to blackmail politicians is wrong. As is breaking the law in pursuit of tittle tattle, bribing the police or stalking celebrities.

Perhaps a legal definition of what is in the public interest would help clarify legal proceedings. If there were such a thing, in the future, when journalists are prosecuted for breaking the law they may pull out this as a "get out of jail for free" card and demonstrate that their actions were in the public interest. It would reinforce their freedoms yet define the limits of their remit.

So how would we define "in the public interest"?

Rooting out hypocrisy and lying by politicians should be part of it. Identifying those that abuse public office fits too. And, of course, crime. However, it does not include outing the private lives of celebrities.

To prevent the press from fishing for "dirt" using dubious means, there should also be a legal requirement that they have some evidence, however circumstantial, before they initiate an investigation. Without this a court may rule that their "get out of jail" card is invalid.

Shareholder Unions

It seems to me that individual shareholders will rarely exercise their voting powers because of the difficulties in attending AGMs. As proposed in the previous post, voting via the web, utilising Interactive Democracy, could be a solution. Another idea is to allow the creation of Shareholder Unions. Such a Union may have the perennial objective of limiting super-salaries with voting power commensurate with the number of shares held by all their members.

The practical problem with such an idea is How do you register voting rights when shareholders frequently trade their shares?

One solution is to make it mandatory that pension and Individual Savings Accounts providers integrate their share accounting with a central system able to apportion votes. This sounds much more complex, and expensive, than the one-person-one-vote Interactive Democracy system proposed here.

Another solution would be for pension and ISA providers to offer their commitment against super-salaries, perhaps utilising it as a unique selling proposition in order to stand above their competitors.

http://www.fairpensions.org.uk/filing-shareholder-resolution

Shareholder Democracy

It has been proposed that shareholders should have new powers to veto excessive pay for directors. Some advocate that there should be one-person-one-vote, others one-share-one-vote. The first limits the power of institutional investors, whose own directors may be a part of the super-salary merry-go-round; the second prevents activist share holders, who may buy only one share, from ham-stringing businesses in sectors such as defence, tobacco or pharmaceuticals.

In either scenario it would be feasible for the Interactive Democracy infrastructure to be used, improving the efficiency of shareholder democracy and empowering those shareholders who can't always attend an AGM.

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.

Bertrand Russell - Plato's Utopia

In "History of Western Philosophy", Bertrand Russell, commenting on Plato's Republic, writes

"But in matters of government it is difficult to know who has the most skill, and very far from certain that a politician will use his skill in the public interest rather than in his own or in that of his class or party or creed."

This succinct appraisal is just as relevant today. Perhaps the main advantage of Parliamentary Democracy is in our ability to dismiss the government, thus exercising a power that tends to keep their interests focused on the public. Yet if the opposition are an unpalatable alternative, or form part of the same political class, much of this effect may be lost. Not so in Interactive Democracy which empowers the public to challenge each policy; and help create them.

ID runs contrary to Plato's ideal of the best politicians, and their descendants, wielding political power in perpetuity, and supplements Parliamentary Democracy's ideal of politicians wielding power until the next election. Instead it requires politicians to persuade us of the justice of their arguments, policy by policy. The best will win.