It’s time to create models of democracy for the technological age.

We’re living in a world flooded by new innovation. There are whole sectors dedicated to creating new global digital currency infrastructures, to researching the ways we can make cities smarter, and to considering how we can restructure agriculture. Yet there is one hugely overlooked area of society, the area that affects everything — the way decisions are made, what is legal, what countries are going to invest in: our democratic systems.

Article originally published on Apolitical, and can be viewed here.

Last Saturday was International Democracy Day. And it’s a huge honour to say that, for the most part, we’re living in a world in which democracy is an essential part of the fabric of society.

Representative democracy is a model that is thousands of years old; constructed by the Ancient Romans, it is the version of democracy that a large number of countries operate on (including Canada, the UK, France, the US, Germany and the Marshall Islands). It’s based on the idea that citizens elect politicians to represent them on all political matters.

But this model isn’t made for an era of universal education and technological innovation, and it functions on legacy systems of decision making. People are far more informed about global affairs, and our politicians simply can’t keep up with the developments happening in every part of society. The frustrations citizens are feeling because of the faults of the representational system show themselves through movements like Occupy and MeToo, and in political decisions such as Brexit, Trump and the Afd: citizens need to feel heard.

I’m not saying we do away with representative democracy, quite the opposite. It’s existed for thousands of years for a reason. We can’t all be informed in all political matters at all times, and it’s great to have specially educated individuals taking high-level decisions day-to-day on our behalf — I wouldn’t want my dentist fixing my car engine for instance. But thanks to the siloing of professions and creation of technology, we all have specialist skills in different sectors, and are more connected than ever before. We should harness this incredible potential, and build the inclusion of this knowledge into our political institutions.

Yes, it can be argued that participation is already a part of our representative democracy, as we get to vote for those who we want to look after us. But just think, voting once every 5 years alienates us. In theory, you can go through life in this “representative democracy”, unrepresented in government, while not being permitted to represent yourself.

Informal citizen participation methods exist, such as protests, petitions, boycotts and digital campaigns, but they’re often ineffective or very energy consuming. We need citizen participation to be built as a pillar of our democratic systems.

The power of the crowd.

A large reason for the lack of integrated participation in representative democracy comes from the belief of a large number of elected officials that there is widespread apathy amongst their citizens — that we just don’t care about politics. This simply isn’t true. This generation is one of the most politicised, but they don’t believe they’re heard, and they lack the tools to open an effective feedback loop with their government representatives.

However, citizen participation in the standard model of representative democracy is typically limited to voting and party membership. But as citizens retreat from parties and find new ways of participating in politics, it is timely to consider how our conventional institutions of representative democracy might be reformed to (re)engage citizens in the democratic process.

At present, methods are often clunky, two dimensional and non-transparent. Town hall meetings, focus groups, surveys, and feedback via social media prove little opportunity for constructive debate or consistency of discussions. Plus we’re of a time where citizens need to see their personal impact, it drives them to become more constructive and more engaged.

Work in progress.

Around the globe, experiments in forms of public participation and democratic innovation are taking place, and a number of strong examples of participation being mixed with representation exist.

For instance, Porto Alegre in Brazil was the first city to hand over control of some of the city’s budget to its citizens. In 1990, the Workers’ Party gave participatory powers to communities: within seven years, the percentage of locals with access to sewers doubled from 46 to 95. The rate of road building, particularly in the favelas, rose five-fold. Tax evasion fell, as people saw what their money was being spent on.

“We are not selling the illusion of the direct democracy in the Greek plaza which, let us bear in mind, was not the democracy of the all but the democracy of the best.”
Olivio Dutra, first Workers Party mayor of Porto Alegre.

As a result, almost 200 municipalities in Brazil have adopted a participatory budgeting process, as have numerous other cities across the world. For example, Iceland’s Your Priorities project.

Another case of positive participatory models being built into representative systems can be seen in Australia.

Voices4Indi is a non-governmental organisation that some have claimed is reinvigorating democracy through kitchen-table conversations. It was started in 2014 with the aim of answering the frustrations of people who felt unheard. Members of the Indi community gathered at someone’s kitchen table, and selected a figurehead to run for parliament and to represent their needs. The movement managed to mobilise a voting public that is well informed and engaged, and develop political representation that is receptive and open to the broader community. It places particular emphasis on encouraging youth political participation (eg. “to build a democracy in which they want to engage”) and on ensuring that the impact of government policy on rural and regional communities are considered. Their candidate is still sat in the national parliament, directly feeding in the local community’s needs and positively affecting national policy agendas.

Of course, negative examples exist too, such as the Brexit vote. It was the worst possible model for popular decision-making. The government threw a massive question at an electorate that had almost no experience of direct democracy. Voters were rushed towards judgment day on a ridiculously short timetable, with no preparation except a series of giant lies.

This is why we must be cautious, and empower citizens with knowledge of situations and structures of decision making, and why we still have a need for specially educated officials. We need them to make high-level policy decisions on our behalf, and to arm us with knowledge about situations. But we also need them to hear our frustrations and ideas.

So here we have it.

We are stuck with a redundant version politics. It’s like driving on modern roads with a car handmade by Karl Benz in 1885, and saying we don’t need to update our transportation method because, well, it functions. Like the transformation in the automotive sector, we need a transformation in our democratic system. One that weaves new methods that serve a modern world into the strong skeleton that exists: upgrade the engine and add a new chassis. We need to fully add participation to our representative system. We have the tools to do it, it’s time to accept the challenge!