What Type of Democracy is This?

How should 7.5 billion people – the current global population - make decisions to do with their collective existence and life on this planet? Are current governance methods effective and acceptable or do we need to consider alternative approaches?

Evolving from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 the legal and political frameworks we have customarily used to regulate relationships, both within and between each other, evolved rapidly over the course of the past 360 years. Designed in and for a different era they are now facing three systemic problems that are combining to erode their earlier potency:

1.    The nature of the human condition – including the sheer complexity of the environment in which we currently live - and our interactions with each other.

2.    The problem of knowledge – including how it is created, used, and why we tend to substitute opinionated prejudices for facts and genuine insights.

3.    A pervasive worldview that entrenches a belief in scarcity and the subsequent need to compete against each other for resources.

Even the power of sovereign states is flagging as they are grudgingly compelled to share their former unrivalled authority with an unholy alliance of global corporations, international government organisations, and non-governmental bodies.

The state has always been a temporary compromise between individual and collective needs. Today the very concept of the state, as the most effective means of organising our affairs, is in doubt. Citizens everywhere are awakening to an unpalatable truth: power and reason, intended for the common good, are routinely undermined for the benefit of a few.

Conventionally, government institutions have assumed the authority to make decisions on behalf of society – particularly policies affecting identity, law and order, and the realisation of certain objectives. Psychologically the state was never the best instrument for anything other than preserving law and order. Time and time again it has proven to be inadequate for nurturing any deeper sense of kinship - other than by provoking patriotism or inciting nationalistic fervour.

Modern states actually stand in the way of collective wisdom and conscious co-evolution by habitually constructing external impediments to human unity. This is most clearly visible in the ways economic and military clout are used within foreign policy frameworks to influence divisive outcomes, in addition to efforts aimed purely at satisfying parochial, short-term interests. How often do we hear the assertion from governments that tackling a potentially existential issue, like climate change for example, should only be done if it also serves the national interest?

The power structures inherent within modern governments are essentially versions of three forms originally identified by Aristotle, where governance is vested in an individual, a select group, or society as a whole. The abuse of power can cause each form to become corrupt:

·      Vesting authority in a single, typically hereditary, ruler allows monarchy to slide into tyranny.

·      Governments based on lineage and privilege, tend to become oligarchies - as a consequence of restricting political power to a certain social and economic group.

·      A society can deteriorate into ochlocracy, or mob rule, if citizens choose to pursue only their own selfish interests.

In each of these fields the condition of the state is fluid and will morph, sometimes quite markedly, in alignment with external conditions. For example, we have seen monarchies shift from the exercise of absolute authority, rulers often proclaiming a divine right to rule, through an interim stage in which the nobility placed limits on the power of the monarch to govern, to the purely symbolic role played by modern kings and queens.

Similarly, authoritarian leaders like Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein either concentrated political power in their own hands, and a small circle of trusted courtiers or, like Indira Ghandi in India and Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, lessened their control sufficiently to allow token opposition, and even open elections.

These three fields, together with their location on a scale from the moral to the corrupt, define the governance dilemma facing humanity today. And while the nature of the ruling class, the economic system, the specific institutions and principles of authority, and the acquisition and exercise of power, are all factors in the way we came to understand and appreciate government in the past, new factors and as-yet-untried precepts may be of considerably more significance as we grapple with the challenges facing us in the future.

Is that future going to be a democratic one? Who can say. We do know that democracy is going through a difficult time, while one party states like China, and unicameral republics like Singapore, are forging ahead in leaps and bounds – in terms of economic progress with individual freedoms very much circumscribed, as those who have been persecuted by these regimes would appreciate. In states where petty tyrants and autocrats have been toppled, their successors have mostly failed to create viable democratic regimes.

Even in time-honoured democracies, ingrained cracks in the polished surface of normality have become ominously visible. Ideas and opinions are routinely touted as facts across all media, while personal convictions are used as evidence that we know better than others. Trust has evaporated like the morning dew.

Meanwhile, isolated and sad, susceptible to anxiety and depression, we cheerfully carry in our pockets the darkest instrument of totalitarian surveillance – the smart phone. Instead of connecting us convivially these gadgets also feed our vanities, amplify our discontent, corrode reality, and track our preferences for the convenience of state officialdom.

We have all become complicit in this contemporary cabaret of lies masquerading as truth, although the unintended social consequences are only now becoming apparent. Civic and psychological disengagement from the political process are accelerating. Disillusion with the capability of the system to solve our most urgent problems is rife. How bizarre that we were once so certain democracy would dominate the new world order.

And so a few questions are in order. If we conclude that democracy is indeed broken, is it worth salvaging? What tests can we do in order to know? If those tests are positive how can we revive democracy, with the minimum amount of distraction, in order to fulfil its purest intentions? Even if we are able to imagine new forms of democracy, believe it to be worthy of resuscitation, and can get it working as perfectly as possible, how can we be sure that it will be sufficient for our needs, today and into the future? Would it be preferable to design an entirely new system, starting from first principles so as to avoid the constraints we find in the prevailing paradigm?

The basis for these questions emerged from a series of strategic conversations curated by Centre for the Future’s Adam Jacoby - Chief Steward of what at that stage we all knew as Framed Democracy, aimed at highlighting the most vexing problems within democracy as it is presently practiced.

In a genuine democracy, each person of voting age is entitled to a single vote. A critical thesis in terms of universal suffrage is that the voice of every citizen is of equal value to society – irrespective of gender, background, education and status. Equally crucial is the supposition that each and every individual has sufficient knowledge to be able to make an informed decision. But how valid are these assumptions in a pluralistic world, where complication proliferates, and most people have neither the time nor the inclination to examine issues outside of their daily concerns in great detail? How can we justify a system where an individual who has never given much thought to an issue, and whose views are primarily shaped by media propaganda, is accorded the same sway as someone who has devoted perhaps months, or even years, to a deep understanding of that issue?

In these situations, would it not be easy for vested interests to manipulate public attitudes through the media to push through some ideological agenda, possibly at great cost to the society? And how would those who can clearly see the corruption, and the damage being done, feel as they are drowned out by manipulated mob rule?

On the other hand, if it is not the case that every citizen’s opinion is of equal value, then how should we redesign the system in the context of still needing it to work for everyone? Should we rely on groups of well-informed experts, for example? And if that is the case, is the evolution of a permanent professional political class the sensible way to go after all?

As it happens, questions of this nature should not concern us unduly as we already know the answers. The science of social networks has shown that the wisdom of crowds is real. Moreover, as a general principle, it is safe to say that decisions made by the crowd, even when large numbers of relatively ill-informed people are included, prove to be far more robust than those emanating from groups of the most highly-qualified experts.

No system is perfect of course. Allowing for the fact that crowds can, on occasion, be persuaded by a charismatic speaker to think and act in a certain way, the main reason for cognitive conformity is group-think. This occurs when information is dumbed-down and people become sold on the opinions of others rather than retaining independent thought. Group-think is not particularly constructive – especially when ideological poles become the default mechanism of choice and complex issues are reduced to a few prosaic options.

Failures can also occur when decision-making environments are not properly geared up to accept collective judgements – as with the current Westminster system, for example. Here the benefits of individual views, common sense, and private data are frequently lost and the crowd can only do as well as its smartest member. Incidentally this is the most compelling reason for avoiding any basic digitisation of the current system, as some hotheads would have us do. That approach would simply ingrain current flaws and open democracy to further corruption.

However, all of this is largely academic. Using the latest smartphone and web technologies, real-time systems enable groups of human participants to behave as a unified collective intelligence. This means the voting public can collectively respond to questions accurately, note their preferences from a number of alternatives, generate new policy ideas, and even make predictions as a singular emergent entity – at least when four pre-requisites are met:

·      Information provided to citizens is inclusive, accurate, unfiltered and continuously upgraded so that people can comprehend the implications and consequences of their individual preferences and decisions.

·      Policies are framed within the non-binary and non-adversarial context of a nation’s identity, direction and aspirations, rather than from within narrow ideological confines.

·      The voting system is accessible, transparent, easy to use, offers unimpeachable security and a compelling user experience.

·      Experts, when used at all, provide insights and alternative policy options that the crowd finds uncommonly difficult to envisage – including radical departures from current settings and innovative proposals outside mainstream political thinking.

Ultimately the future of governance will not be how governments currently work. They are out-of-touch, increasingly impractical, hooked on telling people what to think instead of asking them, and trapped in the present moment. All representative systems are in their death throes - particularly given new disintermediation technologies that enable real-time voting; the availability of previously privileged information which is now to be found in the public domain; the inability of elected delegates, however smart or well-intended, to deal with such a wide-ranging array of national and international issues; and the degree to which contextual complexity demands different, more sophisticated, approaches to community engagement and consultation, policy analysis, a real-time learning metabolism, and a speedy response to changing conditions.

Today’s hidebound and lethargic mechanisms made sense a long time ago when the only practical way to discuss matters of mutual concern was for each region or town to elect delegates and have them convene in a central location. Today there are other, far better alternatives, as well as a few lingering problems with the status quo which, quite frankly, are best purged from the system if we are to regain the moral integrity of the political process.

For example, two-party systems shrink politics to a choice betwixt policies framed to appear conformist or progressive. Multi-party politics is little better: it still sequesters the range of discourse to the ideological platforms of the parties. In both cases, voter choice is minimised and manipulated. Another problem relates to the role of the media in adequately informing the public about issues, often choosing instead to focus, quite irresponsibly at times, on the egocentric antics of politicians behaving badly. Ethical problems, including inherent conflicts of interest, arise from allowing petitioning for certain outcomes. Donations to individuals or parties, are effectively inducements to legislate in favour of a corporation or industry. Yet another issue is the fact that most state legislatures find it arduous dealing with both local and global issues. Their metier is sandwiched between municipal meddling and international incompetence as a consequence.

But the nub of the problem is that true representation today is unworkable. In an attempt to live with this reality, we resort to ideological simplification, making it even more difficult to capture and adequately represent the range of preferences exhibited by just one person. Multiply that by the entire population, across all issues, and we see how absurd the current model has become. In effect, the machinery of government as presently constituted makes it impossible for delegates to speak on behalf of the electorate across the complex range of issues such as nuclear power and weaponry, electronic surveillance, regulatory regimes for artificial intelligence and climate change, for example.

The world has become too big, too fast, and too complex for current systems to cope. As a result, the gap between what governments have become and what we expect them to be is now intolerable for too many people. The only solution that makes any sense is to reinvent democracy from first principles – ensuring that the next generation of governance models can reclaim the rights we the people have so meekly surrendered. Most likely these models will be equivalent to today’s social networks – able to embrace more direct forms of democracy by being fully-distributed, digitally-enabled, and inclusive.

Of course, it is always possible that a few zombie democracies will continue to loiter in the corridors of power for awhile yet – no doubt clinging to the belief that they are still alive and sentient. But with the advent of blockchain-enabled decision-making platforms, and pioneering socio-political movements like MiVote, direct democracy has become unavoidable. Long live democracy.