I met Peter Dawe, who is standing as an independent to be Mayor of Cambridge and Peterborough next year, for a drink last night. Read nothing into that. Peter and I have known each other for a long time and it' a friendship based on mutual respect and the ability to disagree. And so we did.
Peter is keen on participatory democracy. As he rightly points out, polling is now very cheap and can be done on anyone's phone. Twitter polls can be organised in minutes, although I have not tried to do so. His logic is that if this is the case then a Mayor should use that opprtunity to help shape policy.
We agreed that something is required to replace the dire pretence of current consultations. These always take place too late, are usual confirmatory in nature, and questions are invariably rigged to secure the outcome the administration asking the questions want.
What we disagreed upon is what should go in their place. Do we really want regular mini-referenda, done on line? That is Peter's idea at present. His argument is that as people begin to realise that they really do shape policy, unlike consultations, they will want to participate.
My concern is threefold. First, I am not sure most issues can be reduced to a simple question. Take the EU as an example.
Second, I fear about self selecting audiences taking control from a majority and am not persuaded by the democratic element in that.
Third, I still think people vote for representatives and not delegates and that is precisely because they are busy, otherwise engaged and do not want to have to make decisions on anything from cycle paths, to social care and new housing. They really do want others to, within reason, do that. They want better choice on who that other person is - and it is notable that single transferable vote will be used in this election (so why not in others?) - but do not want to be the decision maker. This is not patronising: I simply think that those who are passionate about politics (small p) think others must be and they genuinely aren't.
I do as a result see it worth consulting in this way on occasion. But I really can't see it as a basis for decision making and binding politicians into action.
Thoughts?
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What about Switzerland? Maybe it is a matter of democratic culture. My conocerns are: that it is easy to rule against political decissions to protect minorities but it is dificult to do it against poll decissions; and the complexity of some matters require a public aknowledge difficult to achive. A general policy based only on selfish individual positions (or sentiments) could be the beginning of the end for modern democracies except if you have a homogeneous population.
Experience from the planning system suggests that it is important to ensure that participatory mechanisms don’t simply further empower already advantaged articulate and organised middle-class property owners.
Agreed
Completely agree, the problem (in national politics) is that in many places there is no opportunity to change the type of person who will represent you due to the FPTP system. People need to feel that their vote matters, while this will mean greater representation for the UKIPs etc in parliament, it greatly reduces the percption that our representatives are some kind of untouchable elite who need an EU referendum style (‘to hell with the consequences’) punch in the nose from time to time.
And how on earth do you have any policy cohesion, or plan anything long term, or make the tough lose/lose choices – if decision making is just a collection of mini referendums? This idea feels like asking the kids what they want for dinner every night (“chips!”). I know Jeremy Corbyn loves the idea, so it is definitely one to avoid.
Can you please give a link to where Corbyn shows he is in favour of mini-referendums.
As I’ve said on this blog many times before I am a believer in representative democracy. The big change I would like to see is the introduction of PR, preferably with multi-seat constituencies ans with a single transferable vote.
Referenda may have their place. I’m reminded of Parkinson’s law of triviality. He gives the example of a company board spending 2 1/2 minutes on the approval of a nuclear power station (too complex and technical so no one wants to speak for fear of looking like a fool) but takes 90 minutes on a bike shed design and location.
Referenda may be of more use for issues of low to medium complexity; high complexity issues should be left to representatives.
The risk of online hijacking is high and the quantity of misinformation growing. There is increased need for gate-keepers. I have been appalled by the quality of debate and coverage of both Brexit and the US presidential election and the barefaced lies from the leave camp in the UK and the Republicans in the US. This is not the time to move towards more referenda
Mark Twain: “never argue with an idiot, onlookers won’t be able to tell the difference”.
George Carlin (disputed): “Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
Never argue with a pig: you’ll get covered in mud and they’ll enjoy it
As an ex practitioner of tenant participation in social housing I fully agree with the comments above.
The ‘after the fact’ consultation is next to useless and not only that people are now very wise to it and feel let down by it and no longer trust it either. So as a result interest in taking part wanes.
The best work I ever did with tenants was where we sat down with actual end users and designed a service from scratch and THEN made decisions.
Another issue for me was how politicians expected local people to behave well…like politicians by insisting the tenant representatives had to be voted in. What you tend to get as a result is more architecture of democracy – committees, meetings about meetings, more process, more position and less actual output and fewer people who actually use the service and less opportunity at using their experiences to improve services.
The politicians totally misunderstand the sovereignty that one can have as an end user of the service mainly because increasingly the politicians don’t use those services. We say that people who use public services are customers implying that they have some sort of sovereignty but we seem to use too much empowerment rhetoric and not enough actual listening and responding.
Participatory democracy is simply that of being listened to if things are not up to standard or where the needs of real people are voiced and have to be responded to.
On the flip side, those in the community have to know that in terms of budgets, officers and politicians have their role and that activists cannot expect people with budgetary responsibilities to spend money they have not got. Is it fair for service users to compel budget holders to over spend when the budget holder pays the price? Much explaining of roles is needed here but this will also temper expectations from those taking part.
There is also from my experience a limit to how much people can volunteer before they burn out. Democracy is time consuming and needs full time paid people to make it work.
Bottom line: all services and policies need a feedback loop back to management about how well they are working and participative democracy has a huge role to play.
But there has to be a will to do it. Does for example this Tory administration wish to listen to convicted prisoners about the state of our jails? Do they wish to hear from people who have seen cuts in their benefits?
Answer: No.
Agreedre feedback loops
I think that is the key point
Twitter polls! what an extraordinary idea that these should be viewed as in any way representative or democracy in action – they are extremely self selecting. We already seem to have politicians far too obsessed by twitter.
I also agree that most issues are far too complex to be summarised accurately, that sufficient people would bother to read, understand and participate in any voting. It can also limit the parameters of discussion. Take the current NHS Sustainability and Transformation (STP) plans. – They are all devised on the basis of an ever reducing budget, an increasing population especially of the elderly, and a shortage of trained staff. If those parameters are accepted they may be deemed to be a reasonable response. But actually the discussion should be (broadly, I simplify), about buying out the PFI contracts, getting rid of the whole incredibly expensive marketisation and numerous useless oversight bodies and returning the focus to providing car, predominantly by the public sector. So a referendum on the STP would not address the issues that actually need to be discussed.
Surely any system that aims to extract a consensus from the majority will be influenced by the frailties of human nature. Indeed, even if Twitter and similar platforms were used to gauge public opinion, there would be self-interested groups who would seek to skew the results to meet their own agenda rather than the greater good of the society in which they live.
As clearly demonstrated by Trump and Farrage, questions can be mooted that lead the respondent to take action (vote for Trump, vote for Brexit) that works against their best interests. For example, in the North of England, where I live, immigration and the perceived incompetence of European rule was all the incentive voters needed to quit, to vote leave. The very real threat that inward investment from the rest of the world would dry up and jobs locally would be lost, seemed to gain no traction.
Participatory democracy would only work in fiction, where the influence of vested interests was somehow filtered out and the question put to voters was clear, unambiguous and backed up with reasoned debate. The why, how and outcomes would need to be communicated in detail, and truthfully, and there would be an expectation that all members entitled to vote would have the same ability to reason, critically before pressing the button.
I find it really hard to reach a sensible conclusion on any reforms to democracy. PR or first past the post, using social media, all systems are open to the same misuse by vested interests seeking to skew results for the benefit of their own agendas. Do we not need to tackle these issues in the first instance?
I agree
There are 40,000,000 citizens in the UK entitled to vote, including the silent majority who have given up on (the current mockery of) democracy. How can any process aggregate 40,000,000 opinions?
The only way democracy can work is if ‘real’ parties offer ‘manifestos’ born out of their shared convictions, and the electorate then votes for the ‘real’ party which best represents their own convictions.
Thus, many believe that proportional representation is an intuitive pre-requisite for ‘true democracy’.
However, any worthwhile discussion about the nature and consequences of proportional representation must ‘engage with’ more radical insights:
1. Without fully-proportional representation, there will always-be a spurious but overwhelming imperative for ‘natural’ Parties to coalesce into precisely-two dominant ‘covert coalition’ Parties. For example, in the UK, the ‘Labour’ Party is a ‘covert coalition’ of a ‘natural’ ‘Old Labour’ Party and a ‘natural’ ‘New Labour’ Party, and the ‘Conservative’ Party is a ‘covert coalition’ of a ‘natural’ ‘Europhobe Conservative’ Party and a ‘natural’ ‘Europhile Conservative’ Party. These two ‘covert coalition’ Parties both present themselves (rightly) as the only Parties which stand any chance of forming a Political Executive, and (deceitfully) as all (mutually-exclusive) things to all (diverse) ‘floating’ voters. Similarly, the US ‘Republican’ and ‘Democrat’ Parties are ‘covert coalition’ Parties. Those who want to vote for one of the underlying ‘natural’ Parties never have that option, and have to vote for the ‘covert coalition’ Party which has ‘enclosed’ their preferred ‘natural’ Party (with very little idea as to what they were voting for, and very little confidence that they would actually get what they were trying to vote for). That is not ‘true democracy’!
2. With fully-proportional representation, there would be no such imperative. We would expect the current ‘Labour’ ‘covert coalition’ Party to break into a ‘natural’ ‘Old Labour’ Party and a ‘natural’ ‘New Labour’ Party, and we would expect the current ‘Conservative’ ‘covert coalition’ ’Party to break into a ‘natural’ ‘Europhobe Conservative’ Party and a ‘natural’ ‘Europhile Conservative’ Party, out of the enlightened (if venal) self-interest of those aligned to the ‘currently-out-of-favour’ ‘natural’ Party. We would expect to see perhaps 10 or so substantial but non-dominant ‘natural’ Parties on offer, and those who wanted to vote for those underlying ‘natural’ Parties would have that option (with a much clearer idea as to what they were voting for, and with much greater confidence that they would actually get what they voted for). That would be ‘true democracy’!
Thus, honourable democrats of all Parties should aspire only to a fair and proportional (but non-dominant) share of power and influence over the de-facto Political Executive, and should consider the possibility of working with honourable democrats of all other Parties in a campaign for ‘Optimised Democratic Governance’ (based on fully-proportional representation in each Representative Assembly holding a de-facto Political Executive to account), as a pre-requisite for a constructive re-grouping into ‘natural’ Parties.