Re-democratising society

At its 10th annual conference in New York last week the world’s largest organisation of democratically elected former presidents and prime ministers from 56 countries turned their attention to how information and network technologies are influencing and changing the world, as we know it: from politics to economics to social habits. While there is a global movement in the offing on the back of these technologies the conference posed the question: What could benefit more from this phenomenon than democracy?

The independent 80-member Club de Madrid, has come together to respond to what they perceive as a growing demand for support in the key areas of democratic leadership and governance and to respond to crisis and post-crisis situations.

On its official website they say about the theme of this year’s conference: “The biggest turning point for governments, institutions, media companies, journalists, came when they realised that speaking or telling their own story was not enough, now they had to listen. And not only that, but they had to engage in a continuous dialogue where different voices who had struggled to be heard now started playing an active role that changed, not only the rules, but the game itself.”

New forms of information mediation such as social networks, mobile technology or networked journalism have had a particular incidence in and on the process of democratising information, increasing transparency and reducing the barriers for individuals to tell their stories.

“Citizens are given the power to voice their thoughts and exchange in dialogue around the world. They have become journalists, all willing to share their own ushahidi.

“All of this is having tremendous implications on the way 21^st century government is working and being implemented. The line that separates different actors, different worlds, is increasingly blurred by constant communications. This is why the Club de Madrid wants to bring major stakeholders to the table to discuss the way they are reacting to theses changes and how they think this is affecting and will affect political institutions. What kind of democracy do they envisage for the upcoming years? Will democracy as we know it survive or do we need a new model,” the website states.

Beth Noveck, the club’s conference content coordinator and former US Deputy Chief Technology Officer and leader of the White House Open Government Initiative, in an article for openDemocracy last week wrote: “There is a global movement in the offing that is transforming what we mean by government and democracy from the ground up.

“The Palestinian Prime Minister crowdsourced the popular selection of new cabinet picks using Facebook to ask for nominations. The Icelandic government is turning to a brainstorming platform to invite strategies for rebuilding after the financial crisis, including how to redraft its constitution, and then listening to those suggestions. In post-earthquake New Zealand and Japan, tech-enabled networks of civil society organisations and individuals are collaborating with public first responders to coordinate disaster relief and recovery.

“Local governments from Amsterdam to Vladivostok are implementing tools to open up the way they search for solutions to social problems, and to bring citizens more effectively into governance processes – to help with everything from policing to public works in manageable and relevant ways.”

She argues that we have arrived at a point in history when technology is making it possible for governments to get better scientific information and innovative ideas for how to solve problems faster and, at the same time, to democratise governance.

“This is not to say that the crowd is always wiser than the institution. We can’t replace government with Google or Wikipedia and arrive at the right answers. There are no right answers. In other words, direct or crowdsourced democracy is too simplistic for the complexities of modern life,” she wrote.

She say 21st-century networked institutions are neither bigger nor smaller. They just work differently. They accelerate the rate of interaction with new ideas and information. They are smarter hybrids – amalgams of bounded organisation and fluid, dynamic network – that leverage somewhat anarchic technologies within tightly controlled bureaucracies, connecting professionals and data within the institution to people with good ideas and information outside of it in order to solve problems democratically.

“Much remains to be said and done to understand the power of digital interaction, big data and networking capabilities for building what is bound to be the next stage in the history  of the common good. Public institutions, the private sector, civil society, academia and the media industry must work hand in hand in this endeavour to respond to what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. so beautifully said: Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. We have all the tools at our disposal to do so, so let us not miss this rendezvous we have with ourselves.”