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.

Chinese Competency

This TED talk by Eric X. Li describes the Chinese system of government and outlines why he thinks it is meritocratic, adaptable and legitimate. In short it is because the Party develops competency by promoting those that have done well managing at the local level. In addition it uses surveys to gauge public opinion. It provides fascinating insight.
While it's hard to argue with the enormous progress that China has made, I'm not sure it can be attributed to competent political management. It seems to me that it is more likely that a reduction in political management, liberating, empowering and motivating everyone, has lead to success. That's a free market argument. I suspect that economics trumps culture and culture trumps democracy (how else do you avoid a tyranny of the majority if not by a liberal culture?). But a single party may have a singularity of purpose that rarely exists in a democracy or free market. The Party may have a national strategy in support of their goal, whatever it may be. The goal could be egalitarian and transparent, such as raising the quality of life of everyone in China, or combative and opaque, such as taking control of world resources. Transparent democracy wouldn't work for the latter as target countries would take umbrage, but Interactive Democracy could still work in a single party state.

Yet Eric's focus on competency seems virtuous. The problem is, who or how do we decide who is competent? I doubt if the electorate can easily judge: surely you have to be competent yourself to judge if someone else is competent. Liking someone is different. Maybe one answer is to measure key performance indicators - a type of technocratic government that I also have sympathy with. Accurate data is important for good debates, suggestions and innovations and crucial for Interactive Democracy, too; inaccurate data and outright lies degrade democracy.

Funding Bias

Ed Milliband is seeking to disentangle the Labour Party's financial links with the unions. He proposes that the automatic contributions from union members should become an option. Perhaps he hopes that this will allow the Labour Party to engage more directly with union members, circumventing the union leaders and diluting their power. It highlights the funding bias of political parties in Britain.

In her article on the subject, Polly Toynbee writes
"... democracy can't function with only 1.1% of the population participating. Parties need members and the clean money they bring."

Polly Toynbee, The Guardian, 8/7/13

But the Conservative Party may have just as much funding bias:
"Wilks-Heeg and Crone found that 15 of these families or "donor groups" account for almost a third of all Tory funding."

Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian, 8/7/13

I suspect that Interactive Democracy would boost political participation in many ways, including recruiting more party members. But it also encourages wealthy political donors to spend their money on persuading the electorate of the benefits of their views and is therefore far more transparent than today's shadowy world of political puppet masters.

The K Street Index

"... the 'K Street Index', after the street that American lobbying firms tend to call home. In the period measured, they spent $1.2trn on lobbying (including campaign contributions).
"Readers will note that lobbying is not productive behaviour, at least not in the ordinary sense. It does not lead to higher output. It does not fund innovation or new inventions. It does not pay workers, nor stimulate additional sales."

Bill Bonner, MoneyWeek [17/5/13]

Contrary to what Bill says, perhaps lobbyists would argue that their activities open up new markets, rid markets of oppressive and dysfunctional legislation or promote political innovation. I don't know. Neither do I know over what period the $1.2trn was spent. But it's a vast sum that shows the power of money in the US politics. Power that subverts the egalitarian ethos of democracy.

Interactive Democracy redresses the balance, facilitating everyone to vote on almost every motion or bill. If you don't vote, your vote is devolved to your Member of Parliament. And you can propose and debate issues, too. All at minimal cost when run on the Internet.

The Key to Growth? Race with the Machines

Could Interactive Democracy be a super team that solves societies problems?

In this TED Talk, Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT Director of Digital Business, closes by saying

"The new machine age can be dated to a day 15 years ago when Gary Kasparov, the world chess champion, played Deep Blue, a supercomputer. The machine won that day, and today, a chess program running on a cell phone can beat a human grandmaster. It got so bad that, when he was asked what strategy he would use against a computer, Jan Donner, the Dutch grandmaster, replied, "I'd bring a hammer."
But today a computer is no longer the world chess champion. Neither is a human, because Kasparov organized a freestyle tournament where teams of humans and computers could work together, and the winning team had no grandmaster, and it had no supercomputer. What they had was better teamwork, and they showed that a team of humans and computers, working together, could beat any computer or any human working alone."

I suspect that internet technology facilitating a vast web of human experience could outperform any political expert or supercomputer. "Technology is not destiny. We shape our destiny."

Character Assassination

UKIP candidate Alex Wood claims character assassination by hackers of his FaceBook page. He was subsequently suspended from the party. He has reported the incident to the police and still intends to stand in the imminent council elections. (More here from the BBC.)
Worshipping or vilifying people has long been part of British politics and democracy but it does little to illuminate the issues and policies. Perhaps it's built into our base instincts but Interactive Democracy provides an opportunity to limit its corrosive effects by concentrating on issues, offering people the opportunity to write counter arguments and counter proposals and deploying sanctions against those that abuse others or present lies as evidence supporting their view. This can be achieved on the ID web site because individual voters are identified through the electoral roll yet can remain anonymous to other users. ID would also employ more stringent defences than FaceBook, based on those developed for Internet banking.
It is my view that sanctions against lies in public life would be a clarifying system for any form of democracy and I propose a format similar to the Advertising Standards Authority, where complaints trigger an investigation.

Finland's Internet Democracy

"The Open Ministry [Avoin Ministerio] is an official partner and has been involved in planning and preparing the initiative and campaign for the Equal Marriage Law initiative (in English read http://www.tahdon2013.fi/in-english/briefly/).
The initiative rewrote the history of internet democracy as almost 3% of the whole voting population signed the initiative electronically on the very first day. The threshold of 50 000 supporters needed to pass the initiative to Parliament was met within 9 hours of launching the campaign and by midnight some 120 000 people had signed the initiative with their online bank codes or mobile phone."

You can read more about Finland's system here:  http://openministry.info/

Thanks to Stephen for highlighting this: http://worldleaderproposal.com/forum/index.php?topic=192.msg1959#msg1959

Electorate Votes Itself Endless Privileges

"Perhaps we have reached the limit of what is economically possible within a democracy. Now that the electorate has twigged that it can vote itself endless privileges, our leaders seem determined to feed the beast, even when the larder is bare. The younger generation is going to hate us."
This quote from Tim Price in MoneyWeek (15/03/13) neatly sums up a concern voiced by others. And, so the thought goes, giving more power to the economically illiterate electorate via direct democracy will result in financial armegedon.
Swiss direct democracy succinctly proves that is not necessarily so. In fact their economy is in far better shape than those of most western representative democracies. While the reasons for this may be multifactorial, perhaps one cause of Switzerland's success is that direct democracy educates the masses through debate, resulting in more mature politics and better decisions.
But another perspective is that politicians in a representative democracy actively persuade us that the "bribes" they offer in return for our support are affordable, against the better judgement of the majority of voters who successfully manage the complexities of their household budget and carefully consider the inheritence they would like to bequeath to their offspring. From this perspective politicans are dangerous stewards of the economy, driven to error by the competitive nature of representative democracy.
Or perhaps political ideologies are to blame: those notions counted self evident and held firmly by the party faithful. On the contrary, voters less immersed in political doctrine and informed by wide debate, may take a more realistic and less idealistic view.

Domination of Minorities

Dan Snow's "A History of Syria" (available here on iPlayer) provides some perspective on the domination of minorities and their reactions. According to this programme the Alawites were persecuted for many years by the majority Sunni Muslims until Hafez al-Assad seized government in 1970. His son is fighting to stay in power today. The fears of the Alawite minority in allowing democracy to empower a democratic Sunni majority, who may want to take revenge, may be a significant factor in the ongoing conflict.
So, can democracy protect the freedoms and rights of minorities?
I suspect that a countries culture is the most important factor in protecting minority rights, which may also be enshrined in law through acts or constitution.
But empathy surely has a role to play: if we can relate to the emotions of the abused there is a greater chance that we will want to protect them. Thus, hearing their stories is important. And Interactive Democracy can facilitate this through its web site.
Leadership is also important, as it is today in representative democracy. The type of leadership shown by Nelson Mandela, who fought for fairness across races, not domination by a democratic majority.
On the other hand, intolerant religions or ideologies may use democracy to crush small dissenting groups, as was seen in Hitler's rise to power.

Quantitavely Easing Elections

John Stepek in MoneyWeek wrote this about QE3:
"this move by the Fed raises some interesting questions about democracy and central banking in general. Bernanke insists the move isn’t political. That’s probably true.

"At the same time, it was quite stupid of the Republicans to tell the one man who has more short-term power over US consumer confidence than anyone else in the country, that they were going to fire him if they won the election. If Barack Obama was ever looking for a poll boost from the Fed, this is the best he could have hoped for."

And so we see another example of the rise in power of the unelected technocrats of the central banks. What of democracy?

Prolokratie

"In his book Prolokratie [Democratically into Bankruptcy], Christian Ortner proposes a politically incorrect thesis: a large proportion of the [typical western] population are borderline cretins. They have particular trouble understanding... that one cannot just go on spending more money than one takes in. So they are incapable of making sensible decisions at elections. I fear that the result of the latest Italian election provides support for this idea."

Peter Michael Lingens in Austrian news magazine Profil

This principle flies in the face of democracy. According to this summary the electorate aren't qualified to elect representatives, much less do direct democracy. Yet the Swiss have run direct democracy quite successfully for 150plus years. Maybe there is something about the intelligence of the Swiss or the quality of their culture that allows this? But I doubt it. I suspect that involving people in democracy is a process of educating each other through debate, utilising the leadership and expertise of those with more knowledge. However, representative democracy doesn't do this to the same extent as the debate is delegated to the professional politicians, leaving the majority of the electorate none the wiser. Furthermore, the politicians must pander to the whims of the uneducated to retain their position, compounding errors.

(Taking the economic arguments in the above quote: it is clear that personal debt should be repaid but is the same true for countries? There is an argument that national debt can be continuously rolled over into new debt for the simple reason that countries don't die but people do: it's hard to be repaid what you lend if your debtor is dead. Not so if they keep on living.)

Swiss Referendum on Executive Pay

"Switzerland is to hold a referendum on executive pay in early March, with measures to be voted on including a ban on golden hellos and a binding shareholder vote on pay", reports MoneyWeek. Emma Thompson on Reuters.com regards it a "stunning turn of events for the land of secret bank accounts."
The uproar that precipitated the vote has also created sufficient social and political pressure to persuade Novartis to ditch a proposed $78m payoff to departing chairman Daniel Vasella.

Lesson's from China?

In "Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century" Nicholas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels suggest that both the American system of democracy and the Chinese system of governance are unstable and could learn from each other. In particular the authors recommend more direct democracy with a technocratic elite taking a long term view, beyond the electoral cycle. You can read an article about their book here, at The FT.
I find it difficult to imagine how elites sit comfortably with direct democracy. Perhaps we could learn more from Switzerland which sports a high standard of living but has seldom sought strategic advantage over "rival" nations. However, I think there is a strong need for institutions that seek and protect the evidential truth which is a necessary foundation for constructive debate and Interactive Democracy.

Reflective not Reflexive

Students who were shown fleeting glimpses of candidates and were asked to judge which looked the most competent were shown to correlate with election results 2/3rds of the time, according to studies by Toderov et al (2005) and Benjamin & Shapiro (2007). This was presented in "Nudge" as evidence that voters make automatic and instinctive decisions about politicians and, generally speaking, don't reflect or deliberate much. I suggest that those instinctive reactions have evolved to be particularly important in judging people, their moods, likely behaviours or social connection. It's an animal response.
Interactive Democracy asks people to judge policies separately from candidates. I hope it would have some success at encouraging people to be reflective rather than reflexive.

The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy

MP Douglas Carswell's book "The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy" highlights the problem of how to pay for the welfare state "on the back of a diminishing wealth-creating base" as one of the forces that will promote iDemocracy.

Disagreement's Good

This short TED talk by Margaret Hefferanan points to the virtue of constructive disagreement and engaging thinking partners who aren't echo chambers, something that Interactive Democracy is designed to foster. Her book Willful Blindness was shortlisted for the Financial Times/GoldmanSachs Best Business Book award in 2011

Parliament's Powers to Prosecute Liars

This article in The Independent looks at Parliaments ancient powers to prosecute liars and those in contempt, last used in the 1880s. There have been new calls to employ such powers after witnesses provided contrary evidence to Parliamentary Inquiries.
"In the US anyone found in contempt of a Senate or House Committee can be reported to the US Attorney..."
For Interactive Democracy I propose much wider sanctions against lying in public life to keep public debate clean. This could be operated in a similar way to the Advertising Standards Authority, which responds to public complaints. It could have legal powers to investigate deceit and use a variety of powers, everything from a public warning to jail.

Blood Serotonin and Power Seeking

Douglas Madsen from The University of Iowa reports that whole blood serotonin seems to be linked with power seeking personalities of the type common among politicians. You can read the whole report here.
It seems to me that, though biochemistry may drive people to seek power, it does not necessarily correlate with intelligence, morality, empathy, creativity or communication skills; all things we may prefer in a politician. It reminds me of the old jokes:

"... it is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it."

Douglas Adams.

 “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.”

Napoleon Bonaparte.

"Devil's Bargain? Energy Risks and the Public"

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published a report on risk communication, "Devil's Bargain? Energy Risks and the Public".
"Independent regulators should take a more prominent role in communicating the risks associated with energy generation and distribution because the government is not seen as an impartial source of information, MPs... have concluded." Reported in Nuclear Engineering International.
It seems to me that our distrust of politicians comes from many sources. We may suspect the political class of spin, manipulation, partial truths, hidden agendas, dogmatism, hubris and power seeking. I suggest that, although politics may attract a certain type of person, the adversarial nature of the political arena creates a political culture that is detrimental to public trust.
Interactive Democracy would change the political culture, with every chance of creating the respect enjoyed by Swiss politicians (described by Fossedal in Direct Democracy in Switzerland) and, at the same time, facilitates the limitless contribution of experts relevant to the field of discussion - experts identified by their qualifications in the subject.

Lobbying by the Finance Industry

"An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has revealed the firepower of the City's lobbying machine, prompting concern that its scale and influence puts the interests of the wider economy in the shade", according to The Guardian.
"The British financial services industry spent £92m last year lobbying politicians and regulators...
"...129 organisations engaging in some form of lobbying for the finance sector...
"... the recently departed leader of the City corporation, Stuart Fraser, had contact with the chancellor, George Osborne, and other senior Treasury ministers and officials 22 times in the 14 months up to March this year.
"Beyond the corporation, there are 26 industry bodies lobbying government... with a war chest of at least £34m.
"A total of 124 peers, equivalent to 16% of the House of Lords, have direct financial links with financial services firms.
"Political donations by firms aand individuals connected to the City contributed £6.11m in 2011 to the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties."

I expect that, in my proposed system of Interactive Democracy, lobbyists would spend some of the money spent today on influencing politicians, instead on the public. That's probably a good thing for promoting debate and understanding, transparency and the common good.

"A Tsunami of money hits US politics"

According to Richard McGregor in the Financial Times there are three ways of funding US Presidential candidates. Both donations, capped to $40000, and uncapped super-political action committees, must be disclosed. But "non-profit social welfare bodies... can take as much money as they want, anonymously. These are supposed to operate exclusively for social welfare reasons, but everyone knows their sole purpose is to win elections" (quoted from MoneyWeek 6/7/12).
The problem of hidden vested interests buying political support has the potential of corrupting democracy. If individuals vote on each issue, as I propose in Interactive Democracy, the problem becomes far less.

"British democracy in terminal decline"

British democracy in terminal decline, warns a report by the Democratic Audit. Juliette Jowit writes about it in The Guardian and there's a data report here, where you can access the image above.
"A study into the state of democracy in Britain warns that it is in 'long-term terminal decline' as the power of corporations keeps growing, politicians become less representative of their constituencies and disillusioned citizens stop voting or even discussing current affairs."
Interactive Democracy allows citizens to vote on policies and politicians in a simple, easy access and cost effective manner. As many TV reality shows have shown, easy access to voting fosters involvement. ID also forces politicians and corporations to engage with the electorate, who hold the real power in the land. Apart from the ID web site that fosters questions, ideas, debate and voting, there are ancillary policies that enhance democracy: laws against lying in public life, rules against media monopolies, mandatory reporting by the state media on the issues raised by the public, sanctions against uncivil contributions to debates and votes automatically devolved to your representative if you don't want to participate. Together such policies enhance the democratic ideal, quash mob mentality and demagoguery, facilitate better decisions by tapping into the immense experience and knowledge of the electorate, and educate us all through debate. Politicians, the media and the electorate can all benefit from the interaction.

Democratic Reform: Silly Games

"Tory opponents of House of Lords reforms are playing 'silly games' that could threaten the coalition [minister warns]" writes Nicholas Watt in The Guardian.
Some Conservative Party MPs are opposed to Coalition plans to reform the House of Lords, making it 80% elected. They are worried that elected Lords will challenge the primacy of The Commons, potentially lose the vast experience of today's appointed Lords and reinforce Lib-Dem power, but their views may be quashed by a three-line-whip and their coalition agreement.
"Nick Clegg's outgoing strategy director warned that the Liberal Democrats would block Tory plans to reduce the size of the House of Commons if David Cameron fails to persuade his MPs to support the measure." (Redefining the electoral boundaries was mooted as equalising the number of voters in each constituency as well as reducing the number of MPs, making each vote more equal to each other.)
So here we have the workings of democracy: coalition horse trading, whipping party members into line against their judgement and reinforcing party power by manipulating the way that elections work. Where are the electorate in this process? Were these things wanted by the majority? Do politicians represent their constituents or their party? Do they vote in line with their convictions or their career prospects? All problems famously defined by Edmund Burke in 1774.
Interactive Democracy is very different. It would allow us all to propose, debate and vote on each issue as we see fit. And, by dint of web based voting, it would facilitate other voting options such as automatically morphing electoral boundaries to make each vote equal or approval voting for "Lords" from different electoral regions, each presenting their CV on the voting site.

Sock Puppets: Government Charities

MoneyWeek comments on Christopher Snowden's "Sock Puppets" report for the Institute of Economic Affairs:
"For example, anti-smoking group ASH is entirely funded by various government bodies. In turn it uses this money to influence public policy. Regardless of your views on smoking, it does seem odd that the government spends our money to lobby itself. More sinisterly, it also means that such charities can potentially be used as a smokescreen for unpopular government policy objectives, concludes Snowdon, by making it seem as though the government is simply yielding to pressure from well-meaning charities, which are in fact acting as "sock puppets" campaigning for greater state power."
Is this yet another corruption of democracy? Death by a thousand cuts!

(Extract from Money Week article "The trouble with charities".)

Turning Debate into Data

One of the difficulties of any debate is how to extract the pertinent points. Interactive Democracy provides a system that can turn debate into data for analysis in many different ways. It does this by allowing people to vote point by point, question by question and on what type of evidence is being presented, from Heresay to Good Quality Empirical. Furthermore, the identity of voters, though hidden from public view, can include their age, location and qualifications.
These classifications allow users, including journalists and politicians, to analyse the debate in all sorts of different ways. It will enable better questions and summaries from journalists, new points from commentators, more focused campaigns from politicians and better law formulation from the legislature.