Category: Democracy

Bill Thompson lays into Live8 and Bob Geldof over the eBay selling controversy.

Brief recap: people were selling their legally-obtained Live8 tickets on eBay. Geldof was upset, threatened boycotts, etc. eBay caved, ticket sales withdrawn.

Bill rightly points out that this is a pretty illiberal thing to do. eBay’s just a marketplace. Threatening them with boycotts for what their sellers do is the worst sort of collective punishment – not that far removed from Nicht vom Juden kaufen.

eBay is a Big Bad Corporation, of course, so it’s easy to knock it – even though it was hardly encouraging the sales. But shouldn’t freedom of speech extend to freedom of commerce?

I’ve just been watching an interview with U2 on BBC2’s the Culture Show. When I was a callow yoof, I used to get rather tired of musicians getting all political (this was under Thatcher, so there was quite a lot of it about). Just concentrate on the music, I thought.

But listening to Bono and the others talking about the moral necessity of debt relief just now, I realised how wrong I had been. U2 are the voice of the people, or as near as damn it. We have outsourced our political sensibilities to pop musicians. At least they wear cool shades.

OnTheCommons.org has a write-up of a recent session at the Berkman Centre, discussing the lessons that evolutionary and behavioural research can teach about buillding trust and relationships online.

David, at A Fistful of Euros, comments on referendums:

“I’m quite fond of representative democracy, and don’t think replicating the Swiss or Californian system would be a particularly good idea. I do however think that referendums are an occasionally vital and necessary part of democracy[…].”

While I agree with David that one of the problems with referendums is the desire of the people to give the Government a bloody nose, I don’t agree that referendums should therefore be infrequent. Quite the reverse – the key benefit of the Swiss, and to a lesser extent the Californian, systems is that they have referendums so frequently that no vote can be considered to be giving the Government a bloody nose, or retaliating for decisions taken 5 years ago.

Take Britain. If a referendum were held on the EU constitution were held tomorrow, it would probably be lost. Would that be because the British didn’t like Maastricht, or Amsterdam, or Nice? Or being members of the EU at all? Or Tony Blair? Or the Iraq War? Who could tell?

Now, in a country where at least most of the EU treaties had been put to a vote – say, Ireland – if the EU constitution were rejected, we would know it was the constitutional treaty that was being rejected, not some treaty from ten years back.

There is a good article in this week’s New York Review of Books, by Alan Ryan. He’s reviewing Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The Ethics of Identity, and in the review, he writes:

No doubt there are some beliefs we ought not to subscribe to without the fiercest testing, but they are few in number. What is true of beliefs is true of our other commitments; most of what we want, hope for and think right or wrong we have to take on trust. […] We move from babyhood to adulthood by acquiring habitual allegiances to people., places and values, and that only when that process is accomplished do we have the ability to pause and reflect on which of these allegiances to retain or reject. If moral autonomy meant that all of our allegiances were adopted in the first place only after rational scrutiny, none of us would be morally autonomous.

Well, absolutely. At the moment, when every day is opinion polling day, it’s worth remembering that one of the greatest virtues of democracy is not the voting at the end of the process, but the discussion in the middle.

The BBC and other TV broadcasters come into their own in an election period. Detailed discussions of the issues, proper coverage of the different political parties, debates and public meetings. A lot of the best stuff flows from statutory requirements of impartiality, but let’s not be churlish.

All of this enables people to take part in the political process, and find out about the issues if they want to. It makes choices more rational at the end of the process, and makes the results of those choices better even for the losing side. Now can we have it more than once every four years?

The Power Inquiry also has a blog.

The Fabian Society have been thinking about democracy. Meg Russell, from UCL’s Constitution Unit, has written a well-received pamphlet called Must Politics Always Disappoint? (review to follow). They have also devoted six pages of their Spring Review to a series of ‘postcards from the future’ (ack!) – really a series of 150-word articles by thinkers on democratic topics.

The result is a pretty mixed bag. Starting with the worst, Ed Balls (formerly Gordon Brown’s chief economic adviser) covers two columns with an entirely irrelevant article about how good economic stability is, suggesting that he wasn’t very well-briefed on the topic in hand. Hazel Blears does mention democracy, and makes an interesting suggestion that Parliamentary debates should be held around the country (like the old Scottish Grand Committee), but she reinforces her reputation for radicalism with this magnificent opening passage:

There are two responses to the ‘no’ vote in the north-east [in a referendum on a regional parliament]. One: we can throw up our hands and decide the game’s up. Or two: we can push forward with further devolution, whilst recognising that we have to take people with us.

Even with the most generous reading, it has to be said that pushing ahead with devolution, against the result of a referendum that was lost badly – very badly – is only slightly democratic.

In other contributions, Fraser Kemp says that people are less cynical about politicians when they meet them, which is undoubtedly true. Amy Jenkins proposes making voting compulsory, not a bad idea but a bit process-y. Ross Martin makes a good case for greater consultation and public engagement in public services. John Dunn believes that our democracy is not very like the Athenians’. Mark Leonard thinks that the European Constitution is good for democracy which is – shall we say – contentious. Matthew McGregor, of the Centre for Social Europe, thinks the European constitution is bad for democracy.

The two most interesting contributions come from Helena Kennedy and Paul Hilder. Helena Kennedy writes about a project called the Power Inquiry, which she chairs, and sounds interesting. Report back follows, but the web site is http://www.powerinquiry.org.

Paul Hilder writes about moveon.org, and other related gatherings like the World Social Forum and Jubilee 2000. All the pieces in this feature read like hasty synopses of interesting articles, but Mr Hilder’s article suggests the most potential. I think that much of this talk about emergence is overblown (and even anti-democratic, as Andrew Orlowski has pointed out), but if it is wrong, it is wrong in interesting ways. As is all too common, Mr Hilder talks about self-organisation as if it is the sole purview of the left (or rather ‘global civic society’ – which is a euphemism for the bien-pensant). He points people in the direction of http://gathering.typepad.com – which I look forward to reading soon. More later.

An interview on OhMyNews International with Dan Gillmor, who recently quit regular journalism to start a citizen journalism venture. (via Power of Many)