tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/democratic-reform-15065/articlesDemocratic reform – The Conversation2021-11-17T14:00:54Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1717492021-11-17T14:00:54Z2021-11-17T14:00:54ZFresh insights on how to create civic spaces in authoritarian settings: small steps matter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432199/original/file-20211116-15-25x82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Bring Back our Girls Movement in Nigeria brought to the fore the power of women in mobilising around sexual harassment.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Stringer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Across the world citizens are grappling with the pressing questions of how to defend and renew democracy in the midst of <a href="https://www.v-dem.net/files/25/DR%202021.pdf">rising authoritarianism</a> globally. They’re also battling with how to protect the civic spaces <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/CivicSpace/UN_Guidance_Note.pdf">“within which people express views, assemble, associate and engage in dialogue with one another and with authorities”</a> in the face of this challenge. </p>
<p>Efforts are underway to mobilise governments to make commitments for <a href="https://www.state.gov/summit-for-democracy/">democratic renewal</a> and reform. The world also expects greater <a href="https://ogpsummit.org/">transparency and accountability</a> from those same governments that made pledges at COP26 in Glasgow to protect the future of the planet.</p>
<p>For the last five years, the <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/programme-and-centre/action-for-empowerment-and-accountability-a4ea/">Action for Empowerment and Accountability Research Programme</a> has been exploring the question of what forms of action strengthen citizen empowerment and democratic accountability in increasingly hostile environments. The project is a collaborative international research programme based at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK.</p>
<p>The project drew on research from 22 countries. <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/programme-and-centre/action-for-empowerment-and-accountability-a4ea/">Our research</a> focused largely on Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria and Pakistan. All have legacies of conflict, military rule and authoritarianism. </p>
<p>Working with partners in each country, we used multiple qualitative and quantitative research methods to understand how relatively marginalised groups perceived authorities and mobilised to express their claims. This included making use of innovative <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/projects/governance-diaries-of-the-poor/">‘governance diaries’</a> to record when and how these groups interacted with authorities and on which issues.</p>
<p>With over 200 publications, the research programme provides a unique citizen-eye view on pressing governance issues. Five key findings are particularly important for policymakers and those working towards protecting democratic space and improving accountability.</p>
<h2>The findings</h2>
<p>First, closing civic space is a critical issue, threatening basic democratic rights. Our work on <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16602">Navigating civic space</a> shows that the trend towards closing civic space has accelerated under COVID-19.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/africans-want-consensual-democracy-why-is-that-reality-so-hard-to-accept-164010">Africans want consensual democracy – why is that reality so hard to accept?</a>
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<p>Commitments to open governance are important. But they don’t go very far if citizens don’t have the basic freedoms to speak truth to power without fear of reprisal. This means also actively protecting democratic space. That includes joining forces with those defending the rights of those speaking out against corruption and abuses of power.</p>
<p>Second, even in increasingly hostile and authoritarian settings, a rich repertoire of citizen actions are taking place. But, not through the normal, established channels which many have come to expect. Sometimes these claims are expressed in cultural forms rather than engaging directly to authorities. One example is the use of <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/publications/shaping-social-change-with-music-in-maputo-mozambique/">political rap lyrics </a> in Mozambique. </p>
<p>Other times, they are made through informal channels, through networks or intermediaries, as our work using <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/mediating-between-the-state-and-its-poor-and-marginalised-during-covid-19/">‘governance diaries’</a> with marginalised groups found. And, sometimes protests may arise from a sense of collective moral outrage of citizens who, no matter how vulnerable, have just had enough. </p>
<p>We found this for example in struggles for <a href="https://closingspaces.org/navigating-civic-space-in-a-time-of-covid-19-reflections-from-nigeria/">security and against violence</a>, or <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/15649">against sexual harassment</a>, or for access to <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16822">energy</a>. </p>
<p>Donors and governments seeking to support movements for democratic reform need to start with looking for where these sources of civic energy are actually emerging. This, instead of the more traditional channels where they are often thought they ought to be.</p>
<p>Third, women are often leading the way. Our work found women were often in the front lines of protecting civic space and demanding reforms. This is despite patriarchal social norms, threats of violence, or biases of authorities and political parties who do not recognise women as legitimate claim makers.</p>
<p>We saw, for instance, the power of women’s leadership in the <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/14559">Bring Back our Girls Movement</a> against the abduction of girls in Nigeria, or in widespread mobilising against <a href="https://bulletin.ids.ac.uk/index.php/idsbo/issue/view/244">sexual harassment</a>. We also saw this in struggles for <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/15890">women’s rights in Pakistan</a>. </p>
<p>Commitments to action for protecting or expanding democratic space must include commitments to support women as leaders and champions of reform. </p>
<p>Fourth, small steps matter. In fragile, closed and authoritarian settings, donors and other actors need to re-calibrate their definitions and measures of success.
Measuring success through examples of full-blown democratic accountability or well-established democratic institutions is perhaps an unrealistic goal when faced with limited civic space, weak institutional channels for engagement and repressive leadership. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sub-saharan-africas-liberty-deficit-can-civil-society-help-fill-the-gap-166948">Sub-Saharan Africa's liberty deficit: can civil society help fill the gap?</a>
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<p>The focus instead should be on more intermediary outcomes, which can serve as building blocks for longer term democratic renewal. In our work, these included:</p>
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<li><p>increased visibility of previously excluded issues and voices; </p></li>
<li><p>improved access to higher levels of authority by local groups;</p></li>
<li><p>a strengthened sense of rights and citizenship among the citizenry; </p></li>
<li><p>greater responsiveness from authorities on certain concrete issues;</p></li>
<li><p>changing norms, including gender norms, increased expectations and cultures of accountability; </p></li>
<li><p>greater trust between people and public authorities, as well strengthened solidarity between groups. </p></li>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ghanas-style-of-democracy-has-recently-shown-cracks-heres-how-to-fix-it-164439">Ghana's style of democracy has recently shown cracks. Here's how to fix it</a>
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<p>Outcomes such as these will go a long way to creating the conditions that are possible for larger, more institutionalised democratic reforms.</p>
<p>Finally, our <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16822">research</a> shows that citizens across the world see access to energy as more than a necessity for cooking, transport, communications and livelihoods. They also see it as a fundamental right. This has led to widespread protests to try and get their voices heard when it is denied. </p>
<h2>Linking democratic renewal and climate change</h2>
<p>Yet those who consume the least yet need the most are not being listened to. Little attention is made to how to make <a href="https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/16916">energy policy more accountable</a> or inclusive, especially in repressive and often resource-rich settings. </p>
<p>Building on our research on civic space and the politics of energy, a <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/projects/making-space-for-dialogue-on-just-transitions-in-africas-oil-and-gas-producing-regions/">new project with African partners</a> will explore the the spaces for inclusive deliberation on what a just transition would look like for the citizens of oil and gas producing regions in sub-Saharan Africa.</p>
<p>So far, our research points to the need to carry the grassroots demands for inclusion on energy policy – which we saw on the streets of Glasgow during the COP26 as well as many countries around the world – into upcoming summits on democracy and open governance. </p>
<p>When the space is created for citizens to truly have a say on their energy futures, especially in often resource-rich but repressive regimes, then perhaps we can perhaps also say that democracy is being renewed. </p>
<p><em>Two global summits will be taking place in December, with important implications for the state of democracies around the world. On December 9-10, US President Joe Biden will host the virtual <a href="https://www.state.gov/summit-for-democracy/">Summit for Democracy</a> for leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector. Then on December 15-17, the government of Korea will host the 10th <a href="https://ogpsummit.org/">Open Government Partnership Summit</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171749/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This article is based on research funded with UK aid from the UK government (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office – FCDO, formerly DFID). The opinions are the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of IDS or the UK government. </span></em></p>The focus on building democracy should be on more intermediary outcomes, which can serve as building blocks for longer term democratic renewal.John Gaventa, Professor, Institute of Development StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1059652018-11-08T22:59:58Z2018-11-08T22:59:58ZDon’t give up on politics. It’s where the fight for the fair go must be won<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243618/original/file-20181102-83629-1kvqfit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Governments have made a difference to inequality in the past, as Roosevelt's New Deal did in the 1930s, and could do so again if citizens acted to ensure their voices are heard. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Signing_Of_The_Social_Security_Act.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is the third in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/reclaiming-the-fair-go-61200">Reclaiming the Fair Go</a> series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a> and the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/">Sydney Peace Foundation</a> to mark the awarding of the <a href="http://sydneypeacefoundation.org.au/peace-prize-recipients/2018-joseph-stiglitz/">2018 Sydney Peace Prize</a> to Nobel laureate and economics professor Joseph Stiglitz. These articles reflect on the crisis caused by economic inequality and on how we can break the cycle of power and greed to enable all peoples and the planet to flourish. The Sydney Peace Prize will be presented on November 15 (tickets <a href="https://www.stickytickets.com.au/spp/events?page=1">here</a>).</em></p>
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<p>Deepening economic inequality is a scourge across most of the world’s democracies. For decades now, the <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674504769">gap between the wealthiest and the poorest has been widening</a>. This has very real and very dangerous <a href="http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/107925/E92227.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">consequences for people’s mental and physical health and for the cohesion of our communities</a>. So why isn’t anything serious being done about it?</p>
<p>Reversing this trend, or at least ameliorating it, would not be difficult. Economists around the world have spent the last few years laying out some fairly straightforward policy solutions. These range from reform of the rules governing how pay is set in the big corporations to sustained investment in the foundational social services that everyone but the very richest relies upon, including public education, health and housing.</p>
<p>Despite this clarity, very few of these initiatives are being pursued in any of the developed democracies. Instead, political action remains focused on tax cuts that favour the wealthy or big business, on immigration restrictions that can hinder economic growth, and on public subsidies for a handful of old industries, even where there are environmental reasons to be transitioning away from them.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fair-go-is-a-fading-dream-but-dont-write-it-off-105373">The fair go is a fading dream, but don't write it off</a>
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<h2>Why the inaction on inequality?</h2>
<p>The question that matters more than almost any other when it comes to inequality right now, then, is not whether it is a problem or how to resolve it, but what is it that’s holding us back from doing what we need to do?</p>
<p>The answer to this question cannot lie in an absence of practice, knowledge or understanding. Most countries successfully initiated inequality-tackling reforms in previous generations. And they often did so in far more pressing political and economic circumstances, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s or the immediate aftermath of the second world war.</p>
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<span class="caption">Joseph Stiglitz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Stiglitz_05.jpg">Bengt Oberger/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Even where there is not previous experience to draw upon, politicians and their advisers can draw upon a host of more recent studies of the causes, consequences and potential responses to the rise of inequality. This includes the work of this year’s Sydney Peace Prize recipient, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2012/05/joseph-stiglitz-the-price-on-inequality">Joseph Stiglitz</a>. There is no shortage of expertise for a new generation of egalitarian reformers to draw upon.</p>
<p>Nor does the answer lie in entrenched public unwillingness to tackle the problem. It is true that in the 1980s and 1990s, electorates the world over were often skittish about interventionist economic policy proposals. They favoured tax reductions over public service investment and were anxious about government’s efforts to “pick winners” in the economy.</p>
<p>But such anxiety has greatly lessened right now. Indeed, polling consistently suggests that even in countries without a sustained tradition of government action against inequality, a large <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/americas-surprising-views-on-income-inequality">public appetite now exists for measures to tackle it</a>. Such measures, stretching from sharp increases in minimum wages to the nationalisation of major public utilities, enjoy majority support in many democracies. </p>
<p>We have also witnessed electorates across the world take bold and risky decisions in their voting behaviour. This includes support for extremist political movements motivated partly by a desire fundamentally to shift away from the status quo.</p>
<h2>The problem lies with our politics</h2>
<p>If the problem does not lie in knowledge or public support, it must lie somewhere that does not currently get enough attention: in our processes of policymaking – in short, our politics.</p>
<p>Political life in the developed democracies has been radically transformed in the last few decades. Usually this is told in a storybook version, with an endless rise of openness and inclusivity. </p>
<p>In the early decades of the 20th century, this narrative goes, women and the poorest won the vote. In the middle of the century, trade unions and civil society organisations exerted increasing influence on national political decision-making. And as the century aged, other groups including LGBTQI action groups, minority and indigenous populations began to find some long-denied political influence.</p>
<p>But there is another, far darker story to tell. The last few decades have witnessed the rise of another way of doing politics. The anthropologist Janine Wedel brilliantly describes that way in <a href="http://janinewedel.info/unaccountable.html">Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt our Finances, Freedom, and Security</a> (2014). </p>
<p>It is the world of the professional lobbyist, of the revolving door between global corporations and the highest levels of government, of uneasy relationships between public decision-making and private profit, and of the capture of elite thinking by norms and expectations that owe too much to the practices of the financial services sector.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Meet the New Influence Elites, a 2016 IPR Public Lecture by Professor Janine Wedel.</span></figcaption>
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<p>All of this has happened at the same time, of course, as a sharp decline in the organisations that used to do much to hold these tendencies back. Union membership has fallen rapidly in the advanced democracies, for instance. And formal mechanisms that guaranteed that governments had to explain their policy decisions to multiple stakeholders have been <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1447-ruling-the-void">eroded across the world</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/to-tackle-inequality-we-must-start-in-the-labour-market-105729">To tackle inequality, we must start in the labour market</a>
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<p>As a result, the salience of issues such as “what the public thinks” and “what the public needs” when it comes to the economy have been significantly eroded as well.</p>
<p>What all of this means is that economic decision-making increasingly responds to a narrower and narrower section of society. In such circumstances, it is no wonder that almost no concerted action has been taken to halt the rise of inequality.</p>
<h2>Fight for the fair go is political first</h2>
<p>What it also means, though, is that the action we need to restore the fair go cannot begin with the economy. It must instead begin with policymaking and politics.</p>
<p>We need to make sure the voices of those affected by inequality are genuinely heard and heeded. This commitment should run through everything we do: from supporting our local trade union to opening up scholarly resources to those people in need, from demanding action to rein in corporate lobbying and special access to generating exciting and innovative ideas for using new technologies to accentuate the voice of those without access to formal power.</p>
<p>These ideas are where our energy needs to be. If we want to see greater equality, we need to spend time working out precisely how our political life can become truly responsive. And then we must campaign to make those changes real.</p>
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<p><em>You can read other articles in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/reclaiming-the-fair-go-61200">here</a>.</em></p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-unions-so-unhappy-an-economic-explanation-of-the-change-the-rules-campaign-105673">Why are unions so unhappy? An economic explanation of the Change the Rules campaign</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marc Stears has received funding from the Leverhulme Foundation and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). </span></em></p>Governments’ lack of response to rising inequality is not a problem of knowledge or public support. The problem is that those whose needs are being ignored must find a way to make themselves heard.Marc Stears, Professor and Director, Sydney Policy Lab, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/800832017-08-11T02:09:20Z2017-08-11T02:09:20ZWe frown on voters’ ambivalence about democracy, but they might just save it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177787/original/file-20170712-14452-n1dwgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Voters might be quite rational in refusing to give the green light to those who wield power and benefit from the status quo.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/edenius/11035402625/">Mats Edenius/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> project, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<p><em>This piece is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/after-populism-39385">After Populism</a>, about the challenges populism poses for democracy. It comes from a talk at the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Populism-Symposium-6-April-2017.pdf">Populism: What’s Next for Democracy?</a> symposium hosted by the <a href="http://www.governanceinstitute.edu.au/">Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis</a> at the University of Canberra in collaboration with <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
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<p>The flipside of the populism coin is voter ambivalence about “democracy” as we know it.</p>
<p>Though much of the reporting of last year’s US presidential race focused on the “angry” American voter, it has been <a href="https://cer.columbian.gwu.edu/sites/cer.columbian.gwu.edu/files/Sides2016.pdf">observed</a> that perhaps the most striking feature of the campaign that led to the election of Donald Trump was not so much that people were angry, as “ambivalent”.</p>
<p>In another surprising 2016 election, in the Philippines, <a href="http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/article/vote-philippines-elite-democracy-disrupted">observers also reflected</a> that a shared “ambivalence” about democratic government must in large part have led many middle-class voters to support the firebrand Rodrigo Duterte.</p>
<p>And in France, people explained the <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/4-takeaways-from-the-french-parliamentary-election/">record low turnout</a> in June’s parliamentary elections by pointing to the “<a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/05/03/macron-le-pen-runoff-reveals-fault-lines-french-catholic-revival">ambivalent base</a>”. Despite Emmanuel Macron’s election, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/18/world/europe/france-parliament-elections-emmanuel-macron.html?_r=0">new president had</a> “yet to convince many French voters that his ideas and legislative program will make their lives better”.</p>
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<span class="caption">This French voter isn’t easily won over.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">radiowood/flickr</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>These examples suggest political ambivalence is everywhere <a href="http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/sites/default/files/Foa%26Mounk-27-3.pdf">on the rise</a>, and that these are anxious times politically. </p>
<p>If the appeal of leaders like Trump and Duterte is anything to go on, despite or perhaps because of their peddling of a violent and exclusionary rhetoric, widespread ambivalence among citizens of democracies has potentially dangerous consequences.</p>
<h2>A wilful, rational response</h2>
<p>We often equate ambivalence with indecision or indifference. But it’s a more complex and more spirited idea than that. Ambivalence reflects our capacity to say both “yes” and “no” about a person or an object at the same time.</p>
<p>Eugen Bleuler, the Swiss psychiatrist who <a href="http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ambivalence">coined the term in 1910</a>, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=RiTyZUYp9asC&pg=PR33&lpg=PR33&dq=Symbiosis+and+Ambiguity&source=bl&ots=pIZi_P3P3G&sig=lir2rqgmv7vz5sYeTAPoyKib_8w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjB77ClpbrVAhXEHJQKHfm8BDIQ6AEIPTAF#v=onepage&q=dreams%20of%20healthy&f=false">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the dreams of healthy persons, affective as well as intellectual ambivalence is a common phenomenon.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Freud soon picked up the term to describe our capacity to love and hate a person all at once.</p>
<p>We needn’t be Freudians to see that ambivalence reflects our common “<a href="http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/635426">inner experience</a>”. While we cannot physically be in two places at once, in our minds it is not only possible but likely that dualities and conflicting ideas or beliefs co-exist at the same time. Think of Hamlet’s soliloquy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To be, or not to be, that is the question:</p>
<p>Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer</p>
<p>The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,</p>
<p>Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,</p>
<p>And by opposing end them…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The point is that, rather than reflecting some psychological deficiency or cognitive dissonance, ambivalence is an active and wilful position to take. </p>
<p>Ambivalence is even rational, in that it requires an awareness of mutually exclusive choices and a refusal to choose; just as wanting a bit of both is also rational.</p>
<h2>Is this a dangerous development?</h2>
<p>When it comes to politics, we often hold conflicting, even mutually exclusive visions, of the sort of society we want. </p>
<p>In the Philippines, the middle-class voters I interviewed in 2015 wanted the civil liberties that democracy provides. At the same time, they were concerned that too much freedom was causing social and political chaos. </p>
<p>The two ideas, though contradictory, co-existed in people’s minds. This type of ambivalence at least partly explains why urban middle-class voters <a href="http://news.abs-cbn.com/halalan2016/nation/05/11/16/more-class-abc-voters-picked-duterte-exit-poll">came out in numbers</a> to elect someone like Duterte. </p>
<p>As ambivalence is often linked to the victories of populists, there is a general sense that our ambivalence is destabilising, dangerous and needs to be purged. Ambivalent citizens, the reasoning goes, place a heavy burden on their country’s democracy, as by questioning the status quo of the modern democratic state they undermine its very legitimacy. </p>
<p>The failure to reach clarity implies a failed agency on the part of the ambivalent citizen; it is they who carry the burden of resolving their own feelings and returning to a place of undivided certainty. </p>
<p>Commentary after the US election spoke of not letting the ambivalent Trump-voting middle class (who should have known better) “<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/138754/blame-trumps-victory-college-educated-whites-not-working-class">off the hook</a>”.</p>
<p>Yet, as Zygmunt Bauman <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=iegdiOrGugkC">noted</a>, the more we try to eradicate ambivalence by calling it ignorance and “mere opinion”, the more the opposite is likely to occur. </p>
<p>Furthermore, people who have been reduced to decision-takers will be more likely to see radical, revolutionary, even destructive change as the only way to resolve their ambivalence.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177830/original/file-20170712-10371-lol25q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Those in positions of power often view ambivalence on the streets as socially toxic or threatening.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">jprwpics/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ambivalence can be a check on power</h2>
<p>Democracy and ambivalence, rather than being antithetical, may be strange bedfellows. At the heart of the democratic idea is a notion of “the people” as both the source and guardians of power.</p>
<p>Consider the way <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0191453706059848">Ernesto Laclau</a> sees the political as always in conflict, inherent in conflicting identities struggling for dominance. </p>
<p>While the collective identity of “the people” claims to accommodate difference, this is impossible without the constitutive exclusion of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/modis-polarising-populism-makes-a-fiction-of-a-secular-democratic-india-80605">the other</a>”. </p>
<p>If this is the case, democracy should stimulate our scepticism. Who is being excluded in the name of “the people”? And who has gained the power to constitute their particular identity as a unified whole?</p>
<p>Ideally, representative democracy seeks not only to recognise but to institutionalise this scepticism, and to manage our disappointment with democracy. It is our ability to withdraw our support and give it elsewhere that means our contested visions of society don’t lead to its destruction.</p>
<p>The trouble is that the 21st-century democratic state has little tolerance of our scepticism about power. Citizens are pressured to turn their trust over to a bureau-technocratic order led by “experts” in order to deal with complex, contemporary problems. The role of voters is transformed into that of passive bystanders, prone to chaos and irrationality, and not to be trusted.</p>
<p>Matters are made worse by extreme concentration of wealth and income inequality. Thomas Piketty correctly <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674430006">warned</a> that extreme inequality would threaten the democratic order. </p>
<p>Despite observing (and experiencing) the undermining of basic social protections and equity principles, people are expected to stay in their place. It is as if ordinary citizens are not trusted to make their own judgements, unless those judgements endorse the path of little or no change. </p>
<p>Their ambivalence, which may be a purposive response to their evaluation of how democracy is actually working, is deemed toxic and socially useless.</p>
<p>No doubt such widespread ambivalence, as well as this denial of the valid expression of unmet aspirations, has provided fertile ground for populist politicians. </p>
<p>The likes of Trump and Duterte appeal to people’s desire not to be fixed into pre-determined standards of how to think and behave. And in claiming to fill a gap as “true” representatives of “the people”, they enable what often turns out to be a radical expression of voter ambivalence.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177819/original/file-20170712-20377-1xyv26g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rodrigo Duterte poses with the Philippines military and boxer and senator Manny Pacquiao in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rene Lumawag/Republic of the Philippines Presidential Communications Office</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A chance to rethink the status quo</h2>
<p>Political ambivalence is more than a flawed tension of opposites. Neither is it a temporary deviance. It is deeply rooted, and likely here to stay. </p>
<p>The more we dismiss and disparage it, rebuking voters who “should know better”, the more we risk its manifestation in destructive ways.</p>
<p>A more constructive first step for managing ambivalence as a society would be to recognise it – even embrace it – as a chance to reflect critically on the status quo.</p>
<p>Kenneth Weisbrode <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ambivalence">likened</a> ambivalence to a yellow traffic light, the one that exasperates us at the time, but in fact helps us avoid fatal collisions:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… a yellow light that tells us to pause before going forward pell-mell with green, or paralysing ourselves with red.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If we heed his advice, the presence of widespread ambivalence should prompt us to pause and look around.</p>
<p>This is more radical than it may sound. Slowing down, and contemplating how our democracy is working for us as a community, potentially limits the power of those who benefit from the status quo. </p>
<p>It could even be seen as one of democracy’s internal safety mechanisms, since being sceptical about the exercise of power and keeping in check those who benefit from it, is what keeps democracy alive. </p>
<p>Bauman <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?redir_esc=y&id=ftcYAAAAYAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=by+hook">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The world is ambivalent, though its colonisers and rulers do not like it to be such and by hook and by crook try to pass it off for one that is not.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ambivalence may be the most rational response to the fact that, in 2017, the notion of democracy as a politics of self-government and collectively made choices has, in many respects, become a lullaby, mere rhetoric that serves the interests of those who benefit from the persistence of a shared yet elusive ideal.</p>
<p>If not the populist figures, who or what else in our democracies today is claiming to represent “the people”? A living democracy hinges upon this type of circumspection. It could even usher in a new era of democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80083/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Adele Webb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ambivalence among voters is reason to think about how democracy is working for us as a community. To keep democracy alive we need to be sceptical about the exercise of power and keep it in check.Dr Adele Webb, PhD Researcher, Department of Government and International Relations / Sydney Democracy Network, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/787622017-07-20T04:09:27Z2017-07-20T04:09:27ZEveryday makers defy populists’ false promise to embody ‘your voice’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173486/original/file-20170613-1873-q6f4oe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Populism celebrates laypeople without offering them any real autonomy or integrity.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/geoliv/32549211206/">Geoff Livingston/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> project, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<p><em>This piece is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/after-populism-39385">After Populism</a>, about the challenges populism poses for democracy. It comes from a talk at the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Populism-Symposium-6-April-2017.pdf">Populism: What’s Next for Democracy?</a>“symposium hosted by the <a href="http://www.governanceinstitute.edu.au/">Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis</a> at the University of Canberra in collaboration with <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Populism is not about bureaucracy, technocracy or even democracy. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign slogans – "America First” and “Make America Great Again” – clearly express the essence of populism. It is a moral and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/what-is-nativist-trump/521355/">nativist</a> political response to the increasing globalisation, professionalisation and individualisation of national policy.</p>
<p>We no longer live in a collectively disciplined mass society with clearly defined groups and classes along the left-right axis. The connections between bureaucracy, capitalism and democracy have long been undercut.</p>
<p>These have been reshaped to fit <a href="https://theconversation.com/neoliberalisms-failure-means-we-need-a-new-narrative-to-guide-global-economy-69096">globalist neoliberalism</a> and its celebration of the accumulation of human capital as the foundation of economic, political and social development. </p>
<p>Neoliberalism is not about hierarchy (the state), anarchy (the market) or solidarity (civil society). It’s principally about self-management. Enhancing global competition and growth is about increasing the stock value of the human capital that identifies one as a “whole person”. It is about governing individuals positively and constructively to constantly value or appreciate themselves. </p>
<p>Such chronic monitoring is required to improve their own self-appreciation and thereby their chances of success in the competitive and professionalised neoliberal world. “Co-production”, “citizen-centric government” and “evidence-based policy” are all about steering individuals, from cradle to grave, to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-neoliberalisms-moral-order-feeds-fraud-and-corruption-60946">seek success</a> above everything else.</p>
<p>Populism, on the other hand, springs from the idea of the exceptional moral and political leader who rises to prominence and power in order to restore and protect the nation as the home of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-the-people-the-charms-and-contradictions-of-populism-63769">we the people</a>”. Neoliberalism creates a democratic dilemma by identifying self-governance only with those individuals who exercise their human faculties professionally and successfully. </p>
<p>But when Trump exclaims “I am your voice”, he indicates that laypeople have no political voice of their own at all.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BEuboZ98TxE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘They are forgotten, but they are not to be forgotten long … they no longer have a voice. I am your voice.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since populism is primarily about political authority and leadership (citizenship and the political community are secondary), it doesn’t actually make the life of political “amateurs” easier. By subjecting them to an exceptional leader’s struggle for hegemony, populism doesn’t seek to make the laypeople better at governing and taking care of themselves. </p>
<p>Instead, leaders like Trump are trying to persuade them to blindly follow and support him in his battle against the establishment or the globally interconnected and collaborating “<a href="https://theconversation.com/britains-bregret-offers-timely-lessons-for-australian-voters-this-weekend-61806">professionals</a>” who purportedly trample on their feelings and values.</p>
<p>It’s Trump as political leader, not “the people”, who is re-articulating the boundaries between us and them. His is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-resist-the-political-rise-of-the-global-nativist-70173">nativist</a>/globalist opposition that precedes all other societal cleavages, including the overarching contest between the right and the left.</p>
<p>It is him, not them, who is the moral and political medium for placing Americans first and making the nation great again. Trump wants to reawaken the lonely, silenced and atomised crowd to help <em>himself</em>.</p>
<p>In short, populism considers politics:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>a property of communication which takes form in retrospective demands (“Make America Great Again”);</p></li>
<li><p>a metaphysics about the “pure people” and the extraordinary leader as its physical embodiment;</p></li>
<li><p>a conflict-driven discourse, constructing the political order in terms of a binary friend/foe opposition;</p></li>
<li><p>a crisis-focused framing of the political situation in terms of a resistance identity aimed at crushing a so-called rigged and corrupt system;</p></li>
<li><p>a moralist and emotionalist political discourse that condemns everyone who neglects, devalues, or exploits the nation as the home of the pure people;</p></li>
<li><p>an anti-technocratic mode of governance that celebrates the exceptional leader’s power and will to decide and act immediately, intuitively, toughly and smartly in the face of an emerging or escalating crisis; and</p></li>
<li><p>a counter-elitist strategy for replacing the “<a href="https://twitter.com/louisfarrakhan/status/704333938723045376?lang=en">wicked</a>” political establishment of globally networked elites with “<a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-both-the-old-crazy-and-the-new-normal-58728">authentic</a>” political leaders who are drawn from, or more effectively represent, the interests and values of the pure people.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Rounding up the forgotten amateurs</h2>
<p>Somewhat shamefully, mainstream political theory and research did not see populism coming, just as they didn’t foresee the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/egalit-libert-sexualit-paris-may-1968-784703.html">1968 Youth Rebellion</a> or the fall of the Berlin Wall. </p>
<p>One reason is that the mainstream has, in this period, paid less and less attention to the “amateurs” that populism calls upon and attempts to mobilise in its quest for hegemony.</p>
<p>This is odd, given the widespread <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/trump-edelman-trust-crisis/513350/">reports</a> of escalating distrust in established politicians, political parties and democratic governments. New but fading social movements like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-spanish-political-laboratory-is-reconfiguring-democracy-74874">Indignados</a> and Occupy Wall Street also recognise that a crucial dilemma for democracy lies in its neglect of laypeople’s political capacities to interrupt how “professionals” authoritatively articulate, deliver and evaluate policies.</p>
<p>Still, had the theorists and researchers read <a href="https://www.socialeurope.eu/2016/11/democratic-polarisation-pull-ground-right-wing-populism/">Jurgen Habermas</a>, they might have been forewarned. Habermas concludes <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/inclusion-other">The Inclusion of the Other</a> with:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The private autonomy of equally entitled citizens can be secured only insofar as citizens actively exercise their civic autonomy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Amateurs are at the core of democracy in Habermas’ conception of the lifeworld. This consists of laypeople who express themselves by connecting with each other in various networks and project communities. There can be no representative, participatory, discursive or deliberative democracy without laypeople who can and will govern and take care of themselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173689/original/file-20170614-30067-1exy01o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In a democracy, political amateurs should be able to organise and govern themselves.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ted Eytan/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Populism’s main challenge to democracy, then, is its claim that laypeople lack the faculties required for governing themselves. It celebrates laypeople without offering them any real autonomy or integrity as political subjects of history. </p>
<p>Instead, the laypeople must depend for their sovereignty on an exceptional leader who can marshal them around a collective resistance identity and lead them in the struggle against the establishment.</p>
<p>And yet populism destroys the possibility of self-governance precisely by imposing a homogenising collective identity upon laypeople. Without difference, there can be no self-governance and no civic autonomy. </p>
<p>The idea of the exceptional leader as the very embodiment of the “pure people” is as metaphysical as it is anti-democratic. It doesn’t only deny laypeople a voice of their own. It also relegates those who don’t identify with the great leader to “non-people” who must be kicked out from the home of “the people”.</p>
<p>Clearly, Trump places national sovereignty before “people power”. For him, “the people” is just a collective construct that will help him <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting">gaslight</a> the establishment, seize power and sustain his own order. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=BSO1CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT129&lpg=PT129&dq=The+assumption+of+a+compulsory,+collective+identity+necessitates+repressive+policies,+whether+it+be+the+forced+assimilation+of+alien+elements+or+the+purification+of+the+people">Habermas</a> would strongly oppose this populist self-image of the leader as “unbound”, a symbol of the (pure) people’s hopes and desires. As he conceives of democracy, despotism will take over whenever and wherever people power becomes synonymous with a national quest for collective self-assertion and self-realisation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The assumption of a compulsory, collective identity necessitates repressive policies, whether it be the forced assimilation of alien elements or the purification of the people through apartheid and ethnic cleansing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trump, “<a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/04/30/526199913/trump-stars-on-stage-he-built-himself-far-from-washington">The People’s President</a>”, constantly reaffirms that he will never let his voters down. But by taking responsibility for the people’s collective choices, he moves to dominate their political existence. “The people” effectively become the exceptional leader’s own construct. </p>
<p>Certainly, Trump recognised from the outset how big an asset “<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/12/30/2016-was-year-deplorables.html">the deplorables</a>” would be to his campaign, if only he could <a href="http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article91203222.html">convince</a> them he was their man.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up the people who cannot defend themselves … Nobody knows the system better than me. Which is why I alone can fix it.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The thorn in populism’s side</h2>
<p>Without laypeople’s acceptance of what’s got to be done, a political system could not survive, far less develop, at least in the long run. The authority relationship between professionals and amateurs is at the heart of the political.</p>
<p>There must be political authorities if authoritative decisions are to be made and implemented for the population. However, it does not follow that political control must always lie in the hands of the few.</p>
<p>The difference between authorities and non-authorities is functional, not causal. In principle, at least, their relationship could be shaped to involve balanced reciprocities of power, knowledge and trust. </p>
<p>In fact, political authority could always have been shaped otherwise. As such, Habermas speaks about the lifeworld as composed of laypeople who can act spontaneously, emotionally, personally and communicatively as interconnected “fire alarms”, “experimenters” and “innovators”.</p>
<p>This is <a href="https://theconversation.com/whither-anarchy-perspectives-on-anarchism-and-liberty-59979">anarchism</a> with a twist: the laypeople’s sociopolitical integrity and self-governance are not considered the only things that matter in a democracy. Democratic action must also often be spontaneous, fast and emotionally driven. </p>
<p>This does not diminish the value of strong, collective civil action and rigorous and “slow” deliberation. It simply maintains there is often no time for any of this. </p>
<p>This is why laypeople’s chronic disruptions of how things are done are so important. Anarchists consider the laypeople a permanent thorn in the side of existing superpowers that police people power.</p>
<p>I call active laypeople who engage with one another in political networks and action communities to pursue various goals and projects <a href="https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/42117">everyday makers</a>. They:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>want to do things themselves;</p></li>
<li><p>do it for fun or because they find it necessary;</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/173692/original/file-20170614-8123-1x6jt9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Everyday makers at the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, DC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lorde Shaull/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<ul>
<li><p>on their own terms and conditions;</p></li>
<li><p>with or without experts;</p></li>
<li><p>for, against, with, or by avoiding the system;</p></li>
<li><p>on and off, when they have time for it and feel like it;</p></li>
<li><p>by connecting with others across all differences;</p></li>
<li><p>online and offline; and</p></li>
<li><p>as expressive persons who want to make a difference, when associating to articulate and pursue a common project or cause.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Recovering laypeople’s political importance for democracy means moving beyond both neoliberalism and populism. Democracy is not about homogenised or atomised individuals. </p>
<p>And democracy can only function properly with mutual acceptance and recognition of difference at all levels, from the personal to the global. To handle the existential risks it faces, contemporary democracy must essentially be “glocal”, rather than global or national in its orientation.</p>
<p>Everyday makers, then, must strive for self-governance and political integrity, not just for freedom from bureaucratic or technocratic domination. They must also push against populism by reminding political authorities that the only exceptional leaders we need today are the ones who help us to govern and take care of ourselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78762/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henrik Bang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The only exceptional leaders we need today are the ones who help us to govern and take care of ourselves.Henrik Bang, Professor of Governance, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/765762017-06-07T02:24:20Z2017-06-07T02:24:20ZDeliberative democracy must rise to the threat of populist rhetoric<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166399/original/file-20170424-22270-1j9vug5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can we avert a populist apocalypse through good old-fashioned deliberation?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nightfall404/14346785804/">Richard Hopkins/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> project, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> between The Conversation and the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<p><em>This piece is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/after-populism-39385">After Populism</a>, about the challenges populism poses for democracy. It comes from a talk at the “<a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Populism-Symposium-6-April-2017.pdf">Populism: what’s next for democracy?</a>” symposium hosted by the <a href="http://www.governanceinstitute.edu.au">Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis</a> at the University of Canberra in collaboration with <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org">Sydney Democracy Network</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>We are “living in the end times”, or so <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/968-living-in-the-end-times">Slavoj Žižek</a> tells us. We have seen the arrival of the “four horsemen of the apocalypse”: the global ecological crisis, sharp inequalities in the economic system, the biogenic revolution, and exploding social divisions. </p>
<p>The global rise of populism, it seems, is only a symptom of these long-standing tragedies in the making.</p>
<p>Populist claims – the grand promises that prey on unrealistic expectations, those that dodge responsibility by conjuring “alternative facts”, and the kind that leaves citizens committed to the project of Enlightenment dazed and breathless — are both outcomes and drivers of Žižek’s apocalyptic vision.</p>
<p>How should we make sense of these realities? Wicked problems and intractable conflict have indeed marked the past few decades. But these have also been times of <a href="https://participedia.net/">widespread democratic experimentation</a>.</p>
<p>Participation in “traditional” politics such as <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/international/21716023-democracies-are-risk-if-young-people-continue-shun-ballot-box-millennials-across">voting</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-11/poll-data-reveals-waning-interest-in-politics/5662568">party membership</a> may be declining, but there has been an explosion of activities that seek to “<a href="http://realdemocracynow.com.au/page/3/">do democracy differently</a>”.</p>
<h2>The promise of deliberative democracy</h2>
<p>Deliberative democracy could once have been dismissed as pie in the sky with no bearing on the world of practical politics.</p>
<p>More recently, practitioners of deliberative innovations have generated compelling evidence to show the democratic virtues of <a href="http://realdemocracynow.com.au/1-1/">mini-publics</a>. These involve small(ish) groups of randomly selected citizens who meet several times to deliberate on an issue.</p>
<p>Random selection, similar to the logic of jury selection, underpins this process such that the forum represents a microcosm of the wider population. </p>
<p>In recent years, the case for mini-publics has been articulated more boldly, by <a href="https://penguin.com.au/books/against-elections-9781847924223">David van Reybrouck</a> and then, just this year, by <a href="https://unbound.com/books/the-end-of-politicians">Brett Hennig</a>. Both make a case for <a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-is-due-for-an-overhaul-could-lawmaking-by-jury-be-the-answer-49037">sortition</a>, where a group of citizens drawn by lot are given a mandate to deliberate and propose, if not decide, policies that bind the rest of the polity.</p>
<p>Given the enthusiasm for mini-publics, why has this not been enough to avert “the apocalypse”? There are three ways of looking at this.</p>
<h2>1. We haven’t scaled up enough</h2>
<p>The application of mini-publics has been disparate, inconsistent and small-scale.</p>
<p>Had people, especially the so-called “pissed-off white men”, had more opportunities to participate in deliberation, they would have, potentially, taken a more complex view of issues that they feel threaten their identities, such as immigration or gay rights.</p>
<p>Had “smug cosmopolitan liberal types” engaged in deliberation with “pissed-off white men”, societies could have developed a shared vocabulary to cohabit a world with meta-consensus on the range of legitimate discourses.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166400/original/file-20170424-12468-1dagr55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Forms of deliberative democracy are not only effective, but also much needed in deeply divided societies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joe Flood/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is evidence that mini-publics work in deeply divided societies. Examples include deliberative polls in <a href="http://participedia.net/en/cases/omagh-education-policy-omagh-northern-ireland">Northern Ireland</a> and deliberative forums involving ex-combatants and paramilitaries in <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Deliberation_Across_Deeply_Divided_Socie.html?id=uf4ovgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Colombia</a>. </p>
<p>We can only wonder how the US elections or the UK’s Brexit referendum might have turned out had they convened a “deliberation day” where citizens deliberated systematically before the vote.</p>
<h2>2. We are scaling up incorrectly</h2>
<p>One could argue that mini-publics, by themselves, are not the answer to mass democracy’s legitimacy deficit. Even where well-resourced, excellently designed and high-quality deliberations unfold, these have little bearing if the epistemic gains and civic virtues developed in these forums do not spill over into the broader public sphere.</p>
<p>To scale up deliberation is not simply to host bigger mini-publics (mega-publics?) but to think of ways in which mini-publics can be <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11077-015-9238-5">linked to the broader public discourses</a>.</p>
<p>What use is it if we replace politicians with a randomly selected group of citizens if the public sphere is mostly still characterised by partisan point-scoring, cheap political tactics, spin-doctoring and market-driven media? </p>
<p>The reforms of deliberative politics must equally focus on reforming the broader structures that shape public discourse.</p>
<h2>3. Mini-publics are not the answer</h2>
<p>The logic of mini-publics primes participants to be respectful, public-spirited, other-regarding and open-minded. Unsurprisingly, citizens who harbour deep scepticism, strongly held views and defensiveness in their private interests may not find these forums to be the most understanding and supportive spaces. </p>
<p>In other words, mini-publics may have inherent limitations in processing populist rhetoric. This is because they, by design, aim to keep loud and insistent voices out of the room to celebrate the voice of the “average reasonable person”.</p>
<p>Discursive enclaves such as those found online, or in assemblies of populist supporters, may provide a more hospitable stage for impassioned, confrontational and sometimes bigoted discourses.</p>
<p>While mini-publics enable citizens to carefully reflect on their prejudices, one must take a step back and consider that some do not want to reconsider their views. </p>
<p>Research on climate change deniers provides evidence for this. Australian <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0963662511430459">studies</a> have revealed how deliberation not only <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-novel-idea-on-climate-change-ask-the-people-1962">fails to dispel scepticism</a> but also makes the deniers feel like they are not listened to, so they become more dogmatic and belligerent. </p>
<p>Other research <a href="https://lirias.kuleuven.be/handle/123456789/580046">data</a> demonstrate how people with a “social dominance orientation” tend to see participatory processes as rigged if the forums do not produce their preferred outcomes.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sG8gLt4GChg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">ABC’s Q&A often illustrates the limitations of some forms of deliberation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The issue of trust compounds such alienation. Mini-publics typically rely on information presented by expert witnesses and resources persons, and we now know that many people have simply <a href="https://theconversation.com/britains-bregret-offers-timely-lessons-for-australian-voters-this-weekend-61806">had enough of experts</a>. </p>
<p>Beyond expertise, public trust in Australian politics and politicians is at a staggering low. Recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/now-for-the-big-question-who-do-you-trust-to-run-the-country-58723">research</a> suggests the public has little trust in any level of government in Australia. For the most part, mini-publics in Australia are instigated by or at least associated with government.</p>
<p>Even though the best-designed forums are independently organised and facilitated, we have to recognise that people may simply not trust the process, organiser or the expertise presented. “<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2006.00612.x">Micro</a>” deliberative events don’t exist in a political vacuum. We cannot design out the broader context and power relations.</p>
<h2>How can things go right?</h2>
<p>There are many reasons to consider populist rhetoric as the opposite of deliberative reason. Populism appeals to base instincts. It sacrifices intellectual rigour and evidence to the promise of quick solutions. </p>
<p>The polarising speech style of populism creates information silos, which bond rather than bridge, opposing views. Inherent in the populist logic is the division of the “virtuous people” versus “the dangerous other”. This inflames prejudices and misconceptions, instead of promoting public-spirited ways of determining the common good.</p>
<p>Given the coming populist apocalypse, then, it is worth revisiting how deliberative democrats conceptualise power and its relationship to knowledge. </p>
<p>The populist moment reminds us of the insidious legacies of power, the kind we generally take for granted, but experience every day. Drawing on the “<a href="http://www.sunypress.edu/p-4439-race-and-epistemologies-of-igno.aspx">epistemologies of ignorance</a>”, the solution is not simply to offer facts, but to lay bare the structural phenomenon that disables people from seeing in a certain way. We undeniably find ourselves facing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… an <a href="http://shifter-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/mills-white-ignorance.pdf">ignorance that resists</a> … an ignorance that fights back … an ignorance that is active, dynamic, that refuses to go away.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Deliberative democracy may have been the punching bag of those who remain sceptical of the virtues of participation governed by reason. But it has also been a beacon of hope for visionaries who keep on asking how we can make democracy better. </p>
<p>This field of democratic theory and practice has a lot more to offer, especially when we set our gaze towards spaces for reform beyond the forum.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Curato receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is currently a Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellow ((DE150101866),</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy J Parry is affiliated with Participedia, a global project documenting democratic innovations around the world.</span></em></p>Populist politics would appear to have left deliberative democracy by the wayside, but innovations that engage citizens in reasoned decision-making have much to offer.Nicole Curato, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis, University of CanberraLucy J Parry, Research Assistant, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/719382017-03-01T02:57:05Z2017-03-01T02:57:05ZWhat would a wise democracy look like? We, the people, would matter<p>All governments would like to overcome impasses caused by contentious issues. Particularly when they turn into a political slanging match, the result is loss of money, time and public trust. </p>
<p>Take the decades-old, contentious dilemma in Western Australia of whether to build the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-11/roe-8-highway-extension-in-western-australia-explained/7923658">Roe 8 highway</a> through the <a href="https://thebeeliargroup.wordpress.com/">Beeliar</a> wetlands to reach Fremantle Harbour, or <a href="https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/greens-back-cockburn-port-ng-b88346805z">build a new harbour</a> in Cockburn, which would involve a different way to transport goods to port.</p>
<p>Communities are at loggerheads. The project affects some positively, some negatively. It’s now a key <a href="http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/state/2017/02/18/wa-labor-reaffirms-vow-to-scrap-roe-8.html">issue in the March 11 state election</a>; the incumbent Liberals will construct Roe 8, Labor will not. </p>
<p>Election analyst William Bowe <a href="http://www.afr.com/business/transport/trucking/road-planned-for-50-years-could-cost-west-australian-liberal-premier-colin-barnett-power-20170201-gu2v0o">notes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s not really clear who it advantages and disadvantages, but it will be a big issue either way.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The democratic problem</h2>
<p>Communities feel like pawns in someone else’s game. What if governments applied more “power with” rather than “power over” the people? What if the people and communities involved learned to co-own the problem, co-design the solution and co-decide what to do?</p>
<p>Democracies everywhere are in trouble. Citizens are increasingly <a href="https://theconversation.com/now-for-the-big-question-who-do-you-trust-to-run-the-country-58723">losing trust</a> in politicians and democratic institutions. Precisely when far-reaching decisions need to be made (on issues such as climate change and inequality), democracies lack the public legitimacy to act effectively. </p>
<p>The political lurch to the right is one response – “we just need a stronger leader” – but this will lead us further away from a strong democracy. Instead, why not re-think and re-invent democracy?</p>
<h2>Creating a wiser democracy</h2>
<p>If democracy is “<a href="https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm">government of the people, by the people, for the people</a>”, then a wise democracy would involve the diversity of constituents in collaborative problem-solving, co-deciding and co-enacting ways forward.</p>
<p>This was the <a href="http://www.ancient.eu/Athenian_Democracy/">original democracy in Athens</a> and through Europe in the Middle Ages. Democracy was more than voting for politicians; it was a process for every major, difficult decision.</p>
<p>The appointment of public officials by “lot”, or lottery, was seen to be far superior democratically than by “election”, which was seen to be aristocratic. True, the Athenians limited citizenship to free, adult men, but the range of tasks given to citizens to resolve was remarkably broad. </p>
<p>Confidence was placed in people selected by lottery for at least three reasons. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>First, you got everyday people in the roles of public officials. </p></li>
<li><p>Second, with time and information to resolve an issue, these citizens developed useful solutions.</p></li>
<li><p>And, third, the more you did this, the more people got involved – strengthening democracy.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Nowadays we call this “<a href="http://deldem.weblogs.anu.edu.au/2012/02/15/what-is-deliberative-democracy/">deliberative democracy</a>”. It functions just as effectively today as it did 3,000 years ago (or better, since we no longer limit “citizenship” to adult men). Deliberative democracy stresses that if everyday people think a decision by politicians will affect them, then they should have the right to participate in making that decision.</p>
<p>Participation involves deliberation in an egalitarian and respectful environment. Disparate viewpoints are carefully considered, and a coherent/reasoned way forward is sought.</p>
<p>If all those affected cannot be involved, then a group that mirrors that population needs to be selected – one that is “descriptively representative” of the broader group. The best way to achieve that is via selection by lottery, or random selection.</p>
<p>For public participation in the process to be “meaningful”, governments need to commit to abiding by or being clearly influenced by citizens’ decisions. In short, a deliberative democracy process needs to be representative, deliberative and influential.</p>
<h2>Deliberative democracy works</h2>
<p>Deliberative democracy has been successfully applied across the globe. Examples include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="http://participedia.net/en/methods/participatory-consensus-conferences">The Danish Board of Technology</a> randomly selects citizens to deliberate technological issues involving ethical concerns to help draft legislation.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://participedia.net/en/organizations/world-wide-views-global-warming-overview-and-analysis">World Wide Views</a> randomly selected participants in countries across the globe to deliberate the topic of the forthcoming COP (UN Climate Change Conference), with their combined global report presented to the conference.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=644&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158008/original/image-20170223-6426-1nc2hq0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=809&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Oregon, a representative panel of citizens assesses proposals to be put to a public ballot.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.indivisible.us/oregon-citizens-initiative-review/">healthydemocracy.org</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="http://participedia.net/en/methods/citizens-initiative-review">the Citizens’ Initiative Review</a> in Oregon, US, enables citizens selected by lottery to deliberate to develop the “for” and “against” cases for ballot measures, which are then distributed to voters so they have succinct, useful and trustworthy information.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://participedia.net/en/cases/we-citizens-ireland">Constitutional conventions</a> in Ireland and some European countries apply deliberative democracy processes to resolve constitutional issues.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.participatorybudgeting.org/">Participatory budgeting</a> in around 3,000 places across the globe empowers the people to allocate a portion (around 10%) of the budget. With citizens at the helm, community groups develop projects, local citizens vote on their preferred options, and the top priorities within the allocated budget are implemented.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Examples from Australia</h2>
<p>Australia is at the forefront of deliberative democracy reform, though its application has been scattered and not mainstreamed. Examples include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>In Western Australia in the early 2000s, a Labor minister, Alannah MacTiernan, led <a href="http://www.21stcenturydialogue.com/index.php?package=Initiatives&action=Index&static=">pioneering deliberative democracy processes</a> to resolve tough planning and infrastructure issues. These included <a href="http://participedia.net/en/cases/dialogue-city">Dialogue with the City</a>, Australia’s largest deliberation involving around 1,000 people, with continued public participation to develop a plan for the greater Perth metropolis. This was taken to cabinet, was accepted, and is still relevant today.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/citzens-juries-giving-power-to-the-people/5779168">Canada Bay</a>, New South Wales, <a href="http://participedia.net/en/cases/city-greater-geraldton-deliberative-participatory-budget">Greater Geraldton</a>, WA, and <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/experiment-pays-off-melbourne-peoples-panel-produces-robust-policy-20150628-ghzoz4.html">Melbourne</a>, Victoria, have pioneered participatory budgeting in Australia. The process empowers a random selection of the people to recommend the allocation of 100% of a city’s budget – operational and/or infrastructure. In each instance, the elected council supported all or most recommendations. Their constituents accepted often difficult decisions on service cuts and infrastructure changes without the usual uproar.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/158007/original/image-20170223-6431-1ttz3i3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Participatory budgeting is a way for citizens – in this case New Yorkers – to help decide government spending priorities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/neotint/6267976938">Daniel Latorre/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<ul>
<li><p>Numerous Australia cities have implemented deliberative democracy initiatives, including issues such as <a href="http://www.newdemocracy.com.au/ndf-work/187-city-of-sydney-safe-vibrant-nightlife">urban planning</a>, <a href="http://www.newdemocracy.com.au/ndf-work/184-moorebank-intermodal-citizens-jury">transport</a>, <a href="http://www.newdemocracy.com.au/ndf-work/287-vichealth-victoria-s-citizens-jury-on-obesity-2015">health</a>, and <a href="http://www.newdemocracy.com.au/ndf-work/316-sa-cj-nuclear-fuel-cycle">waste and the environment</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>Research shows that local people trust the voice of recommendations from randomly selected people who deliberate over time, more than they trust the decisions of elected officials.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>What’s the obstacle to reform?</h2>
<p>So why isn’t deliberative democracy happening more often? Simple. Those in power are wary about sharing their power. </p>
<p>Unlike the Athenians, we don’t believe that every citizen is capable of participating in important decision-making. We assume most people are too self-interested to make decisions for the common good. </p>
<p>However, this is <em>not</em> the case, as deliberative democracy initiatives across the globe have consistently discovered. As the Athenians knew, everyday people can be entrusted to come to wise decisions <em>if</em> they are given comprehensive information and the time to deliberate.</p>
<p>Presumably, the WA election will resolve Roe 8 – for now. However, the cost will be far too high, including the “collateral damage” – environmental, economic, social and political. </p>
<p>What if the issue could have been resolved using “power with” rather than “power over”, with a bipartisan undertaking to abide by the recommendations of a deliberative democracy process? </p>
<p>For instance, 100-plus participants could have been selected by lottery to carefully deliberate over time the diverse viewpoints, the data and the trade-offs, knowing that their participation would be meaningful. By integrating social media and webcasting the deliberations, the process could have enhanced inclusiveness, transparency, public education and social capital. </p>
<p>Instead, we have a lose/lose situation – even the winners will be losers.</p>
<p>Governments for whom democracy equals voting squander their most important asset – public wisdom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71938/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janette Hartz-Karp does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One reason Perth’s Roe 8 project is the subject of passionate protests is that it’s a case of a government asserting power over people rather than exercising power with local communities.Janette Hartz-Karp, Professor, Sustainability Policy Institute, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/637712016-08-29T04:03:42Z2016-08-29T04:03:42ZFace the facts: populism is here to stay<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135247/original/image-20160824-30252-1tqtlhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tea Party supporters have been demanding to be heard for a long time. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/valkyrieh116/4453194314/">Valerie Hinjosa/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. Benjamin Moffitt will appear in SDN’s “<a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/events/festival-democracy-people/">We the People</a>” populism slam on September 2 as part of the annual <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/festival-democracy-2016/">Festival of Democracy</a>.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>When it comes to politics, 2016 has been a very strange year to say the least. Things that aren’t “supposed to happen” – well, they just keep happening. </p>
<p>Pauline Hanson, written off as a serial electoral pest whose best days lay back in the late 1990s, has returned to Australian politics with a vengeance, <a href="https://theconversation.com/pauline-hanson-the-big-winner-as-senate-finalised-63504">roaring into the Senate</a> with three other One Nation senators by her side.</p>
<p>Donald Trump, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/123228/how-donald-trump-evolved-joke-almost-serious-candidate">previously dismissed as a joke candidate</a>, is one of two main candidates for perhaps the most important position of power in the world. </p>
<p>And let’s not forget Brexit. Turning expert opinions and <a href="https://theconversation.com/eu-referendum-how-the-polls-got-it-wrong-again-61639">most opinion poll results</a> on their heads, it turned out in the referendum that 52% of UK voters did indeed want out of the European Union (EU), allegedly willing to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/britain-flirts-with-economic-insanity/2016/05/01/bb8d7a4a-0e1f-11e6-bfa1-4efa856caf2a_print.html?utm_term=.faaa9ece5820">“commit economic suicide”</a>.</p>
<p>What has been the reaction to such strange events? Shock. Gasps. Grief. Shaking of heads. And, perhaps worst of all, the “tsk-tsk-tsking” at “the people” who are supposed to know better than to fall for such populist tricks. </p>
<p>In all of these situations where “the people” were supposed to “know better”, media pundits, mainstream parties, pollsters and experts of various stripes have been stunned by outcomes that seemed inconceivable. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135269/original/image-20160824-30238-11ycc3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Populism has gone global as a political style that’s working in many political and cultural contexts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stanford University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My contention is that these are not blips on the radar, not weird one-offs. These events are happening across the globe, where “the people” are spitting in the face of “the elite” and rejecting what is being offered to them.</p>
<p>We are witnessing what I have termed <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25175">The Global Rise of Populism</a>. Populism, once seen as a fringe phenomenon relegated to another era or only certain parts of the world, is now a <a href="https://theconversation.com/trendy-electoral-superheroes-from-the-americas-to-europe-the-populists-confront-us-51905">mainstay of contemporary politics across the globe</a>, from the Americas to Europe, from Africa to the Asia Pacific. </p>
<p>Populism – a political style that features 1) an appeal to “the people” versus “the elite”; 2) the use of “bad manners” that are allegedly “unbecoming” for politicians; and 3) the evocation of crisis, breakdown or threat – isn’t going anywhere. It is here to stay. The sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we can do something about it.</p>
<h2>What explains the rise of populism?</h2>
<p>First, “the elite” is on the nose in many parts of the world. Mainstream parties are increasingly seen as incapable of channelling popular interests, governments are viewed as being in thrall to global finance, and experts are increasingly distrusted and questioned. In many cases, <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1447-ruling-the-void">this cynicism is justified</a>. </p>
<p>Populists posit themselves as representing a break from the status quo. They claim to be able to <a href="https://theconversation.com/return-of-the-town-hall-will-brexit-bring-british-democracy-closer-to-the-people-62194">return power to “the people”</a>. This message has great resonance at this particular historical juncture, where faith in institutions has been badly shaken. </p>
<p>Second, the shifting media landscape favours populists. In a time of <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/democracy-and-media-decadence">communicative abundance</a>, populists deliver a simple, often headline-grabbing message that plays to mass media’s desire for polarisation, dramatisation and emotionalisation. </p>
<p>This allows them to “break through” the constant noise and grab free media attention. There is no better example of this than Trump, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/10/reading-6000-of-his-tweets-has-convinced-us-donald-trump-is-a-social-media-master/">whose single tweets inspire media frenzy</a>, or, on a local level, the Australian media’s willingness to report <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/oops-pauline-hanson-caught-drinking-allegedly-halal-milk-20160707-gq0nub.html">every utterance of Hanson since her election</a>. </p>
<p>Also, many populists have been at the forefront of using social media to communicate “directly” with their followers. The examples of Italy’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-brexit-keep-a-close-watch-on-italy-and-its-five-star-movement-61589">Five Star Movement</a>, the <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/08/05/donald-trump-and-the-tea-party-myth-why-the-gop-is-now-an-identity-movement-not-a-political-party/">US Tea Party</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/stranded-on-a-platform-refugees-feel-the-force-of-hostility-in-hungary-47047">Hungary’s Jobbik</a> are instructive here. This type of engagement is something on which mainstream parties have tended to be woefully behind the times.</p>
<p>Third, populists have become more savvy and increased their appeal in the past decade. In fields of candidates who often seem to be cut from a very similar cloth, populists stand out by <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-both-the-old-crazy-and-the-new-normal-58728">offering a performance</a> that seems more authentic, more appealing and often downright more entertaining than other politicians. </p>
<p>This is something that often gets skirted past in the panic over Trump: much of his appeal stems from the fact that <a href="https://theconversation.com/youre-fired-donald-trump-shows-rivals-how-its-done-in-entertainment-politics-5432">he is entertaining</a> and often quite funny, no doubt a byproduct of years on reality television and media training. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RPfxyFMUd1k?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Harking back to his days on The Apprentice, Donald Trump ‘fires’ Barack Obama as the crowd cheers.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although being entertaining and amusing may seem trivial when we talk about politics, these things matter. Populists understand that contemporary politics is not just a matter of putting forward policies for voters to deliberate rationally upon as some kind of <em>Homo politicus</em>, but rather of appealing to people with a full performative “package” that is attractive, emotionally resonant and relevant. </p>
<p>Fourth, populists have been remarkably successful at not only reacting to crises, but actively aiming to <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/article_S0017257X1400013X">bring about and perpetuate a sense of crisis</a> through their performances. </p>
<p>Populist actors use this sense of crisis, breakdown or threat to pit “the people” against “the elite” and associated enemies, to radically simplify the terms and terrain of political debate, and to advocate (their) <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/22/donald-trump-republican-convention-speech-law-order">strong leadership and quick political action</a> to solve the crisis. </p>
<p>In an era where it seems that we pinball from crisis to crisis – the global financial crisis, the Eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis and an alleged widespread “crisis of democracy” among others – this tactic has proven very effective. </p>
<p>Finally, populists are often good at exposing the deficiencies of contemporary democratic systems. Populism in Latin America and Asia has in many cases been an understandable reaction to corrupt, hollowed-out and exclusionary “democratic” systems. In Europe, many populist actors’ opposition to the EU or the demands of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_troika">European troika</a> has brought to light the “democratic deficit” <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-and-eu-both-need-major-democratic-reform-to-survive-brexit-fallout-55870">at the heart of elite projects</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, populists have often posited themselves as the only true voice standing up to the economic and social forces of globalisation, which many mainstreams parties by and large support. This means the populists can effectively appeal to those at the pointy end of such processes.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135271/original/image-20160824-30246-a9rdwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 2011 poster for a citizen intervention rally in Washington, DC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">outtacontext/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>So, why the shock?</h2>
<p>If we take these factors together, it is little surprise that populism is on the rise across the globe. People have very valid reasons for following and voting for populist actors and are doing so in increasing numbers.</p>
<p>As such, let’s drop the surprise. Instead of being dumbfounded every time a populist does well: when Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, when Rodrigo Duterte is elected president of the Philippines, when Pauline Hanson is elected to the Senate, when Nigel Farage’s UKIP dreams <a href="https://theconversation.com/having-divided-and-conquered-nigel-farage-makes-a-perfectly-timed-exit-62012">become reality</a>, when Austria comes <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-era-may-be-dawning-again-for-radical-right-populists-in-austria-and-europe-61662">close to electing a far-right president</a> – a list from only the past couple of months – we need to face reality. </p>
<p>These are not mistakes, not outliers, not weird anomalies. It’s time to drop the “tut-tutting”, the shaking of heads in disbelief and the disapproval of those who vote for such characters. At its worst, this <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html">smacks of dangerous anti-democratic elitism</a>. </p>
<p>Such actions are merely self-serving and ultimately paralysing. The first step in combating populism is acknowledging that it is not an aberration, but rather a central part of contemporary democratic politics. Only after we face that fact can we begin do anything about it. When it comes to the global rise of populism, acceptance is the first step to recovery.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63771/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Moffitt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We are witnessing the global rise of populism. Once seen as a fringe phenomenon from another era or only certain parts of the world, populism is a mainstay of politics today across the globe.Benjamin Moffitt, Postdoctoral Fellow, Stockholm UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/558702016-07-07T20:05:21Z2016-07-07T20:05:21ZUK and EU both need major democratic reform to survive Brexit fallout<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128107/original/image-20160625-28366-1sh2u59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=597%2C313%2C4394%2C2839&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Without democratic reform, the time ahead for both Britain and the EU looks bleak indeed. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/27695343075/in/photostream/">Gary Knight/flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-32810887">Brexit referendum vote</a> on June 23 was the outcome of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/sheffield-what-happened-in-this-city-explains-why-britain-voted-for-brexit-61623">disillusionment and disengagement</a> that permeated the UK for <a href="https://he.palgrave.com/page/detail/Why-Politics-Matters/?K=9781403997395">much of the 2000s</a>. Sections of the British public (<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-geography-of-brexit-what-the-vote-reveals-about-the-disunited-kingdom-61633">predominantly English and Welsh</a>) voted resoundingly to leave the European Union, a basic pillar of Britain’s economic successes for the past 40 years. </p>
<p>With the weight of expert opinion, geopolitical leaders and the major political parties stacked against them, these voters’ disengagement turned into anger. Rather than being repelled, the voters were driven to the polls in defiance and revolt. </p>
<p>The immediate impact is <a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-impact-will-be-worse-than-the-2008-crash-61648">clearly economic</a>, but this is only the symptom of a deeper democratic crisis. Resolving this crisis will go hand in hand with mitigating the economic fallout of the referendum result.</p>
<h2>Economic solutions include political reform</h2>
<p>Economically, the time ahead looks bleak. If anything, the immediate shock of Brexit may be less important than the long-run cultural and social fallout that will drag inward investment away from the UK. </p>
<p>Perhaps even more worryingly for the EU, stockmarkets have tumbled throughout the member states. The eurozone will not be immune from this shock and other members, goaded by a belligerent far right, may seek to trigger exit votes.</p>
<p>There is a temptation in the face of financial crisis to focus on steering the economic ship through choppy waters. Brexit itself will take many years to negotiate, and the UK parliament (the majority of whom were for Remain) may well block any law to enable <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-article-50-the-law-that-governs-exiting-the-eu-and-how-does-it-work-60262">Article 50</a> to be triggered. </p>
<p>Brussels may become more accommodating to a nuanced resolution, depending on the strength of economic shock felt through the EU and their patience with the UK’s negotiators. It may well end up with the UK being given an intermediary status of some sort, but the years of uncertainty are likely to leave growth, taxes and inflation extremely volatile.</p>
<p>This volatility is hard enough to manage without the UK’s underlying sociopolitical divisions opening up even further. Perhaps clearest in the referendum result is the UK’s remarkably dislocated ideological landscape. Northern Labour heartlands like Rotherham, Doncaster, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Wigan gave thumping majorities for Leave. Scotland, Northern Ireland and the metropolitan cities of London, Manchester and Liverpool voted the other way, albeit with less enthusiastic turnouts. </p>
<p>These divisions are complex, yet stark. With immigration the number one grievance for Leave voters, there is a clear feeling of cultural, alongside economic, injustice.</p>
<p>Worryingly, these tensions appear to be spreading throughout Europe. We see far-right movements in <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-era-may-be-dawning-again-for-radical-right-populists-in-austria-and-europe-61662">countries like Italy, France, Austria and Germany</a>, and worrying signs of racially driven attacks. </p>
<p>These problems must be tackled alongside attempts to stabilise economic growth. This can only be done by political leaders genuinely reforming. This needs to happen in UK parties and parliamentary democracy, but also in the EU.</p>
<h2>Britain needs a representative Labour Party</h2>
<p>Aside from the future of the United Kingdom as a “whole”, the breakdown in party-political allegiances poses a monumental challenge for British parties. How can they realign themselves to represent the desires of their traditional supporters? </p>
<p>Given that any strong democracy requires a strong opposition, how might Labour in particular deal, ideologically, with issues close to the hearts of working-class communities? </p>
<p>While some <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/53094-2/">“blue labour”</a> advocates have highlighted for a while the dangers of ignoring local community and identity, the party has struggled with being pulled in different directions over the immigration issue. Should social democratic thinkers pay more attention to community cohesion and identity as well as economic inequality? Would reforms to address the latter necessarily ameliorate the former? </p>
<p>As former Labour leader Ed Miliband <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-it-is-sensible-labour-wont-erase-ed-miliband-from-its-collective-memory-42792">found out</a>, this connection cannot be engineered. It must grow from the bottom up and inform the very heart of a party and its ideas.</p>
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<h2>We need a constitutional convention</h2>
<p>In Westminster, MPs from both major parties have turned against their leaders. Really, they should be looking at the country’s democratic system. In the 2015 general election, the first-past-the-post system <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-case-for-proportional-representation-in-the-uk-just-became-clearer-41544">gave UKIP one seat</a> for its 3.9 million votes – 12.7% of the total. This built up even more resentment from UKIP voters that the “elite” was rallying against them. </p>
<p>Now Scotland may well seek independence. Pro-Remain London may want special dispensation in protest against this savagely majoritarian referendum result. </p>
<p>The splits in British society are becoming reminiscent of countries wracked by historic internal divisions, like Belgium or Spain. These tend to be kept together by proportional electoral systems and highly decentralised, federalist structures. We should consider adopting similar arrangements.</p>
<p>All major parties need to hold a joint constitutional convention to look at ways of reforming our broken system. They need to set up a coherent <a href="http://www.democraticaudit.com/?p=22508">federal constitution</a>. This should give each part of the country clear autonomy from Westminster and enshrine explicit responsibilities to appropriate levels of government. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-strange-resurrection-of-the-british-political-tradition/">British “political tradition”</a> of parliamentary sovereignty can no longer be allowed to get in the way when the country’s politics have fragmented so dramatically and dangerously.</p>
<h2>We need a democratic Europe</h2>
<p>In the European Union more generally, there will be a temptation to close ranks, get the negotiations over with, and proceed with business as usual. However, the UK’s vote not only reflects domestic political dynamics, but is the culmination of a more long-term democratic deficit in the EU’s governance structures. A range of possible reforms can be made, all of which have knocked around for some time. </p>
<p>Potentially, more extensive, transparent and (crucially) well-resourced <a href="http://fpc.org.uk/publications/eudemocratic">stakeholder engagement</a> with a broader range of groups in European society could improve EU legitimacy. This “incremental” democratisation is necessary to bring a far greater range of citizens to the table and to ensure EU governance has tangible meaning for them. </p>
<p>In the wake of Brexit, however, reform must be far broader. The European Parliament, for example, must become recognised by countries beyond the most “Europhile” ones as a legitimate centre of political debate and decision-making. </p>
<p>Also, countries from across the EU need to find a way of getting citizens talking to each other about common European problems and ways to solve them collectively. Fostering and enabling a <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12163/abstract?userIsAuthenticated=false&deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=">European public sphere</a> is not simply a fanciful wish of political theory; it is now a political and economic necessity.</p>
<h2>Why we need democratic reform</h2>
<p>At a national and transnational level, democratic reform is desperately needed in both Britain and the EU to prevent the tensions in this referendum becoming more protracted or even violent. </p>
<p>In his post-referendum speech, Leave campaign leader Boris Johnson claimed Britain still had a place in Europe and British people were “proud Europeans”. I suspect many voting Leave and some politicians within touching distance of power disagree with him profoundly. </p>
<p>Whatever happens in coming months and years, the negotiations to come should be used as a crucial turning point for democratising both national and transnational politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55870/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Wood receives funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council, for research informing his contribution to the Foreign Policy Centre's recent report Europe and the People: Examining the EU's Democratic Legitimacy.</span></em></p>The Brexit vote was the outcome of the disillusionment and disengagement that have permeated the UK. Many Europeans share that mood, which is why both the UK and EU need radical democratic surgery.Matthew Wood, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/587282016-05-13T21:48:01Z2016-05-13T21:48:01ZDonald Trump: both the old crazy and the new normal<p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>When cultural practices and performances become obsolete, they rarely simply collapse into exhausted redundancy. Rather, they linger as grotesque parodies, displaying with uncontrollable intensity the very reasons for their implausibility. </p>
<p>The embarrassing spectacle of the hack comedian whose tasteless jokes and predictable routines generate audience cringe rather than mirth stands as a warning that performative repertoires do not come with sell-by dates. You find out your act is outmoded when the audience start to ask for their money back.</p>
<p>Political leaders are beginning to resemble seaside comics who have failed to recognise that the deckchairs are empty. Repertoires that had them rolling in the aisles in the era of Churchill and Roosevelt – or even Nixon and Wilson – now look like mediocre impersonations.</p>
<p>Not only are political speeches replete with linguistically risk-averse <a href="https://theconversation.com/translated-the-baffling-world-of-business-jargon-52795">clichés borrowed from middle management</a> – “facing important challenges”, “we’re listening very carefully”, “moving forward”, “all in it together”, “people who do the right thing” – but the semiotic production has been reduced to a constant replay of metaphors designed for idiots.</p>
<p>Politicians wear hard-hats and orange protective jackets, as if to prove they thrive on the shop floor. Leaders have a routine habit of making speeches surrounded by “ordinary people” who look like <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--beijing-s-greatest-show-on-earth-set-the-bar-for-olympic-opening-ceremony-standards.html">involuntary participants in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics</a>. </p>
<p>The surprise is surely not that whole sections of the population are turned off by these preposterous rituals, but that some people are still paying any attention.</p>
<p>Popular distrust of politicians is not a new phenomenon. Apart from a brief period in the mid-20th century when people trusted Churchill because he wasn’t Hitler and then trusted Attlee because he wasn’t Churchill, political leaders have always been accepted on sufferance. </p>
<p>That isn’t a bad thing. The fantasy of perfect political trust evaporated when people stopped believing in the divine right of kings. Democracy can only work well when representatives are held accountable to those they claim to speak for. </p>
<p>The problem of contemporary democracies is not that citizens trust politicians less than they did in the past, but that leaders’ attempts to make themselves appear accountable have become increasingly implausible. Their scripts are stale; their gestures ritualistic; their evasions transparent; their artlessness palpable.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121756/original/image-20160509-20619-165np42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121756/original/image-20160509-20619-165np42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121756/original/image-20160509-20619-165np42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121756/original/image-20160509-20619-165np42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121756/original/image-20160509-20619-165np42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121756/original/image-20160509-20619-165np42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121756/original/image-20160509-20619-165np42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960 was watched by more than one in three Americans, an inconceivable audience today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">United Press International</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Technology transforms image-making</h2>
<p>Contemporary political distrust focuses on form as much as content. In the past, leaders were distant and, when it suited them, invisible. They had considerable control over their public images. </p>
<p>Technologies of public mediation have changed that. Television in particular places political actors under unprecedented levels of scrutiny. This has driven party machines to <a href="https://theconversation.com/election-2015-the-most-heavily-managed-campaign-of-all-time-41388">excesses of performance management</a> that cast politicians as mere functionaries delivering approved lines to median voters. </p>
<p>Politicians are caught between a relentless chase for mass-mediated publicity and a permanent anxiety about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-cameron-wobbles-conservative-hq-needs-to-ditch-the-negative-campaign-40864">risks of unwanted visibility</a>. Now that most people carry smartphones that can capture pictures and sound with a click, political impression management is a losing battle. Politicians continue to perform as if they are on stage (<a href="https://www.boundless.com/sociology/textbooks/boundless-sociology-textbook/social-interaction-5/understanding-social-interaction-50/dramaturgy-316-10348/">in Goffmanesque terms</a>), but it is the blurry zone between on and offstage that they now occupy, never immune from public judgement. </p>
<p>They are tested by their capacity to conform – literally, to subscribe to a performative form that is readable as “acting like a leader”. But it is a form that is becoming increasingly degraded and obsolete. The new political balancing act entails conforming sufficiently to legitimise the performance, while breaking the formal boundaries with a view to displaying a degree of authenticity that cannot be contained within the bounds of form.</p>
<h2>Trump, the performer</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121818/original/image-20160510-20577-1ngod9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121818/original/image-20160510-20577-1ngod9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121818/original/image-20160510-20577-1ngod9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121818/original/image-20160510-20577-1ngod9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121818/original/image-20160510-20577-1ngod9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121818/original/image-20160510-20577-1ngod9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121818/original/image-20160510-20577-1ngod9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121818/original/image-20160510-20577-1ngod9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump’s performance works by using the political stage to denounce the stage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/darronb/24280745856/in/photolist-D2Vkbn-CZBsAm-C5xw9M-C5xtNz-CUCoQP-CUCvmp-CtqTu4-CZB8zW-CzMAJo-Ctp9mx-C5vMC6-C5pCKu-CSmM27-CZBaPf-C5wyFT-do67cV-EvoTJU-FjV8Pn-FhCND3-CSkXib-CzMBJj-CzMxAE-CUBBFF-C5oNbf-C5oJKs-F1Kd6f-FhCKZ5-F1Kg4E-FhCP2N-F1KfRL-EvoTD3-FhCNWY-Fr285J-Fr25vW-FjVbA4-FtiEni-Fr25BN-F1Kde1-F1KfV3-FtiGU2-FtiH1z-FtiEoR-FtiH64-EvKsa4-FhCNT1-Fr25D1-EfbaMw-FJYYYo-FUywJh-FtiEta">Darron Birgenheier/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-declares-victory-expert-reaction-58886">Enter Donald Trump</a>: so unbalanced in his affair with political form that he permanently teeters between a mesmerising dance of solipsistic decadence and staggering off the stage. </p>
<p>Following a long line of populist form-busters, from <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-11981754">Silvio Berlusconi</a> to <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/26/viktor-orban-wades-into-dark-waters-eu-hungary-refugee-crisis-europe-jobbik/">Viktor Orban</a>, Trump performs as if he had just seen Peter Handke’s 1960s production, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offending_the_Audience">Offending the Audience</a>, and concluded that every performance before it had misunderstood what audiences were for.</p>
<p>Handke said that he aimed to do “something onstage against the stage, using the theatre to protest against the theatre of the moment”. This is precisely what Trump does well; he uses the political stage to denounce the political stage. He enters the temple, but only to blow away its walls. </p>
<p>Speaking at a rally before the New Hampshire Republican primary, Trump <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/donald-trump-politicians-full-s-t-article-1.2520351">said what he thought of politicians</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>These people – I’d like to use really foul language. I won’t do it. I was going to say they’re really full of shit. I won’t say that. No, it’s true. It’s true. I won’t say it. I won’t say it. But they are.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What is going on here? On the face of it, here is a leader wrestling with the conventions of political form. He simply can’t use certain words. Who knows what might happen to him if he let out what he really thinks? But his frothing authenticity gets the better of him. “I won’t say it. I won’t say it.” </p>
<p>He’s like a character in a Victorian novel who wants to press the hand of the girl he fancies, but is paralysed by propriety. But not quite paralysed; not quite propriety: his authentic self erupts, leaking its proscribed thoughts into the minds of followers who have already bathed in the same forbidden waters. </p>
<p>He is telling them what they know to be true. They trust him in the same way that they are seduced by their own shadow.</p>
<p>This is why Trump’s speech-making never sounds like oratory, but an inner conversation. He is seeking to convince his echo to stay faithful to the original rant.</p>
<h2>Manufacturing belief in anything</h2>
<p>Contemporary politicians have a trust problem, but Trump is different. It is not a crisis of distrust that Trump symbolises, but an excess of trust. While contributing to a general feeling that “they’re really full of shit”, he uses the pronoun to distance both himself and his followers from the smell. They are politicians. He is a man who happened to stumble on to the stage.</p>
<p>Trump embodies the crudest fantasies of the American dream. He can be trusted because, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/26/opinions/dantonio-trump-small-loan-from-father/">by his account, he is self-made</a> – except for the estimated US$200 million trust fund given to him by his father, which rather skews the narrative. </p>
<p>Because he is perceived as a man who made his own fortune, he is seen as a leader who owes nothing to anyone. Why vote for a politician who’s in the pocket of shady billionaires when you could vote for a shady billionaire?</p>
<p>The logic is perverse, but it is the foundation of a form of projection that allows <a href="http://www.p2016.org/photos15/summit/trump012415spt.html">the following</a> to be accepted as strategic thinking:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now, we have to build a fence. And it’s got to be a beauty. Who can build better than Trump? I build; it’s what I do. I build; I build nice fences, but I build great buildings. Fences are easy, believe me. </p>
<p>I saw the other day on television people just walking across the border. They’re walking. The military is standing there holding guns and people are just walking right in front, coming into our country. It is so terrible. It is so unfair. It is so incompetent. </p>
<p>And we don’t have the best coming in. We have people that are criminals, we have people that are crooks. You can certainly have terrorists. You can certainly have Islamic terrorists. You can have anything coming across the border. We don’t do anything about it. So I would say that if I run and if I win, I would certainly start by building a very, very powerful border.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This image of a man who builds nice fences, great buildings and beautiful walls can only be understood from the perspective of biblical metaphor. The politicians droning on about “cutting the deficit” as they pretend to blend in on the factory floor are mere theatrical extras compared to Trump, on stage and in flow, so hard and tall and foreigner-resistant that his audience purrs collectively in claustrophobic bliss.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.chesterton.org/ceases-to-worship/">G.K. Chesterton reminded us</a> that when people stop believing in something, they do not believe in nothing, but are more likely to believe in anything. Trump is a vessel for the deposit of American disbelief. He is the “anything” that occupies the space that would otherwise be “nothing”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121820/original/image-20160510-20595-14d2cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121820/original/image-20160510-20595-14d2cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121820/original/image-20160510-20595-14d2cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121820/original/image-20160510-20595-14d2cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121820/original/image-20160510-20595-14d2cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121820/original/image-20160510-20595-14d2cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121820/original/image-20160510-20595-14d2cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121820/original/image-20160510-20595-14d2cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump’s support comes from his ability to turn a crisis of distrust into a willingness to trust anything he says and does.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jbouie/20826825753">Jamelle Bouie/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Can democratic politics re-invent itself?</h2>
<p>Here lies the lesson for democratic politics. Just as obsolete forms atrophy slowly, lingering until the last drop of affective vitality evaporates, so new political forms often emerge as prefigurative contortions, only discernible through the trace lines of oddity. </p>
<p>Trump might not be the New Normal, but neither can his performance be dismissed as the Old Crazy. He is a spectre of things to come: of political performance in an age of projection rather than representation.</p>
<p>To represent is to stand in for those who must be absent. To represent democratically is to diminish the consequences of the electorate’s absence from the sphere of everyday decision-making by remaining accountable to their interests, preferences and values. </p>
<p>Political projection is representation in reverse. The dummy produces a ventriloquist that is in its own image. Citizens are not re-presented, but offered a fantasy of presence through the demagogic persona of a leader. They, the shit-filled politicians, cannot be trusted because you, the hollow public, should not be trusted.</p>
<p>Trump, on the other hand, provides a receptacle for indiscriminate trust – in him, in yourself, in anything, but never something.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"727565652253392897"}"></div></p>
<p>The faultlines in democratic politics are clearly marked. On the one side is a system of representation that is bad at making people feel represented. On the other is a process of projection that satisfies a visceral desire to be affectively registered, but amounts to little more than an incontinent protest against conventional political form. </p>
<p>Obsolete modes of representation are unlikely to defeat Trump – as the US Republican contest has shown. A key question for contemporary democracies is whether they can reinvent practices of democratic representation that allow people to communicate in ways that build commitment to something rather than surrender to anything. Such practices must amount to more than participatory tokenism or technological gimmickry. </p>
<p>Obsolete forms of representation as a distant relationship, ritually reaffirmed by periodic elections, cannot be resuscitated by simply putting them online, encouraging politicians to expose their inner feelings on TV chat shows, or changing the voting system. Clogged up with prejudices, resentments and semi-articulated desires, the political atmosphere surrounding prevailing relations of representation generates default disappointment.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/trendy-electoral-superheroes-from-the-americas-to-europe-the-populists-confront-us-51905">fast-growing cast of anti-politicians</a> who seem drunk on cheap trust (for Trump is by no means alone) will surely thrive and expand unless a more meaningful form of representation is established. </p>
<p>Rather than devoting huge energy pointing to the absurdity or toxicity of this new populism, democracies would be better served by beginning a debate about what it means to represent and be represented; what form democratic representation might take in an era of instantaneous communication.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58728/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Coleman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The faultlines in democratic politics are clear. On one side is a system of democracy that is bad at making people feel represented. On the other are anti-politician performers like Donald Trump.Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/585812016-04-28T04:45:21Z2016-04-28T04:45:21ZWill Budget 2016 deliver a new deal for Australian cities?<p>Will this budget mark the inception of a new deal for Australian cities? And will it herald a new dawn for Australian local democracy? <a href="http://www.act.ipaa.org.au/pm-address">Addressing the Australian Public Service</a> in the Great Hall of Parliament on April 20, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull chose to emphasise that “smart cities” would be the engine room of innovation and growth in Australia’s new economy to be delivered through the concept of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/city-deals-nine-reasons-this-imported-model-of-urban-development-demands-due-diligence-57040">City Deals</a>”.</p>
<p>Turnbull said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The “City Deal” approach used in the United Kingdom has been instrumental in the renaissance of Manchester and Glasgow, and we believe there are many elements that can be applied in Australia.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/163641838" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Turnbull’s address to the Australian Public Service.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what is the value proposition underpinning the “City Deal”? And can it be applied here in Australia?</p>
<h2>The value proposition</h2>
<p>The value proposition has historical, democratic and economic foundations. </p>
<p>Historically, it builds on the role of iconic cities in the advance of civilisations. For example, the following quotation from <a href="https://%20publichalthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2015/08/14/greater-manchester-devolution-the-public-health-revolution/">Mel Sirotkin’s evocative work</a> perfectly captures the central role of Manchester as the engine room of the Industrial Revolution:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>During the Industrial Revolution Greater Manchester seized the initiative to become the world’s first modern industrial metropolis. It is home to the nation’s first public library, the birthplace of modern chemistry, and the professional football league. It is where Dalton developed atomic theory and Rutherford split the atom. Inevitably it is also where the rainproof mackintosh was invented.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Democratically, it forms the next logical stage in the UK’s constitutional reform program, which began under Tony Blair in 1997. Blair delivered Scotland’s parliament and assemblies for Northern Ireland and Wales, but the English voted “no” to English assemblies on the basis that this would be too much government to bear. </p>
<p>The argument for delivering devolution through existing rather than new institutions – in this case city regions – has proved far more palatable.</p>
<p>However, it is the economic credentials of the “City Deal” that prove most powerful. The Cameron government believes that larger local government units such as city regions led by elected mayors with new powers will help spread prosperity. This is based on evidence – such as from the independent <a href="https://www.thersa.org/action-and-research/rsa-projects/public-services-and-communities-folder/city-growth-commission/">RSA City Growth Commission</a> – that the areas with the fastest growth and innovation around the world tend to have:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>large populations;</p></li>
<li><p>good connectivity;</p></li>
<li><p>high skill levels;</p></li>
<li><p>good infrastructure (including housing);</p></li>
<li><p>strong higher education institutions; and</p></li>
<li><p>empowered local leadership.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The powers that the UK government is devolving to city regions are therefore focused mainly in areas such as transport, business support, infrastructure development and training.</p>
<p>A further economic argument for devolution to cities is that they provide a concentration of population and need. These in turn provide a potential focal point for innovation to foster economic development and improve service delivery and effectiveness. </p>
<p>In part, the argument is that necessity will be the mother of innovation. But there are also arguments that the greater scale of a city region provides fertile conditions for economic development. There is likely to be a greater pool of talent, experience and resources to draw upon.</p>
<p>Working across a larger area can promote more effective services. In many cases outcomes are likely to be better if several services are connected together. That applies, for example, to health and social care, to the various educational, health and social services that engage with families in trouble, and to the various bodies that can help prevent re-offending.</p>
<p>The argument for devolution to cities in England is mostly not about democracy, and more about economic competitiveness and service effectiveness.</p>
<h2>What’s been achieved so far?</h2>
<p>The way the deals have been negotiated reinforces the sense that this is about efficiency more than democracy. Deals have been cut within Whitehall in a top-down approach with various city regions according to their ambition and political clarity. </p>
<p>In most cases, an elected mayor has been added to the mix to provide a fig leaf of democratic legitimacy. But many of the deals have been criticised as a stitch-up between city and national elites with little input from citizens and little prospect of citizen control.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the ad-hoc approach of doing the deals city by city, region by region, means that progress has been rapid. Substantial devolution <a href="https://www.nao.org.uk/report/english-devolution-deals/">is occurring</a>. </p>
<p>Although some worry about creating an unequal governance framework, others argue it’s about doing what works for different cities. The pragmatic patchwork program has been deliberately designed such that no two city regions must necessarily have the same deal and level of devolution.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00344893.2016.1165496">Greater Manchester City Deal</a> is by far the most advanced but only started this month. So, in truth, it’s too early to say how the deals will work in practice.</p>
<h2>How do City Deals translate to Australia?</h2>
<p>It is easy to see why the “City Deal” concept resonates with the Turnbull agenda. The image of the Australian city region as a centripetal catalyst to economic growth is both in keeping with the gravity of international evidence and the demographic changes articulated in the <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2015/2015-Intergenerational-Report">2015 Intergenerational Report</a>. This forecast a range of significant productivity problems arising from shifts in demography, workforce and participation.</p>
<p>It also provides a living laboratory for Turnbull’s <a href="http://www.innovation.gov.au/page/agenda">National Innovation and Science Agenda</a> and, in particular, the work of <a href="http://www.csiro.au/en/Research/D61">Data 61</a> and the <a href="https://www.dto.gov.au/">Digital Transformation Office</a>. </p>
<p>Most tangibly, it provides an opportunity for Turnbull to connect the government’s agenda to the everyday lives of Australians. This is something the polls suggest he has been unable to achieve so far.</p>
<h2>What would need to change make it happen?</h2>
<p>There are maximalist and minimalist versions of the “City Deal”. The minimalist version would be simply to negotiate a series of Commonwealth-funded programs with states and territories to lubricate the innovation agenda in Australian cities. The maximalist version, required to emulate the UK “City Deal”, would require constitutional change. </p>
<p>Devolution UK-style involves the transfer of power to a lower level, in this case to a local city or city region administration. However, unlike its European and North American counterparts, Australia’s political elite still has a strange, unfathomable disdain for local government – which is not shared by its citizenry. </p>
<p>Most significantly, devolution is not in the gift of Commonwealth government, as local government is a creature of state and (to a lesser extent) territory government. Changing federal powers requires constitutional change. </p>
<p>As Turnbull himself admits:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It requires a firm commitment to collaboration. Success is dependent on federal, state and local governments agreeing on a set of long‐term goals for cities and the investments, policies and regulatory settings to achieve them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Is it likely that state governments would cede authority over the jewel in their crown – the state capital? It would be like turkeys voting for Christmas. The smart money is on the minimalist version even though Australia’s future economic prospects require the courage and ambition of the maximalist version.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Evans receives funding from a variety of sources including foundations, research councils, governmental and non governmental organisations and international organisations. However, the views expressed in this article are his own and cannot be attributed to any particular funding organisation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>As an independent academic researcher Gerry Stoker receives funding from a variety of sources including foundations, research councils, governmental and non-governmental organisations and international organisations. However, the views expressed in this article are his own and cannot be attributed to any particular funding organisation.</span></em></p>The Turnbull government sees the ‘City Deal’ as a way for ‘smart cities’ to drive innovation and growth. But what is the value proposition behind this UK concept and how might it work in Australia?Mark Evans, Professor of Governance and Director of the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis and NATSEM, University of CanberraGerry Stoker, Fellow and Centenary Professor, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/558722016-04-04T01:09:56Z2016-04-04T01:09:56ZMetropolitan governance is the missing link in Australia’s reform agenda<p>Perhaps all Western countries with which Australia might choose to compare itself have, since the early 1990s, engaged in intergovernmental decentralisation. They have done so as part of a metropolitan “renaissance” that includes <a href="http://eur.sagepub.com/content/10/4/297.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc">“experiments” with metropolitan government</a>. </p>
<p>In contrast, Australia’s state governments are responsible for metropolitan governance. The state responsibility exists in a context of increasing intergovernmental centralisation that favours the federal government, as well as finance and treasury in federal and state governments.</p>
<p>New forms of metropolitan governance and a claimed worldwide decentralisation of roles and responsibilities have been a response to neoliberalism and the competitive forces arising from globalisation. How might Australia’s “<a href="http://www.acelg.org.au/sites/default/files/MetroWorkingPaper2012.pdf">unique model of metropolitan governance</a>” be explained? Does it enhance economic competitiveness and the building of fair cities?</p>
<p>At first blush an answer lies in Australia’s Constitution. Federalism in Australia is <a href="https://theconversation.com/rebalancing-government-in-australia-to-save-our-federation-33365">premised on subsidiarity</a> between the federal and state levels of government. No provision is made for the possibility that metropolitan governments might best undertake metro-scale roles and responsibilities.</p>
<p>Metropolitan governments can be created through constitutional change, but this is improbable. Instead, the governance of Australia’s urban regions is premised on local government being a “creature” of state government. This notion, a product of the 19th century, empowers state governments to legislate metropolitan governments. </p>
<p>A precedent exists for a state government creating a metropolitan government. Created in 1925, Brisbane City Council incorporated all the urban region’s local authorities with an eye to financial viability and metro-scale efficiencies in the delivery of water, sanitation, roads and so on. The council now serves about half of the effective metropolitan population.</p>
<h2>‘Rescaling’ is missing element of reform</h2>
<p>Neoliberalism, from an urban perspective, comprises reducing government spending and the role of government in the economy and in delivering infrastructure and services. The responsibility of government does not change – that is, to ensure the delivery of hitherto public goods and services. Its role changes substantially: government is not itself responsible for delivery.</p>
<p>Both the Labor and the Coalition, at all levels of government, have embraced public sector reform. This has involved increased competition, deregulation and privatisation and the outsourcing of infrastructure and service delivery. Where this cannot be done profitably, civil society is promoted – an example is NGOs’ involvement in social housing. </p>
<p>But government still bears responsibility for ensuring services are delivered. For example, failures in the private delivery of public transport services contributed to the <a href="http://electionwatch.edu.au/victoria-2014/welcome-election-watch-victoria">fall of the Brumby government</a> in Victoria in 2010.</p>
<p>Setting Australia apart, institutional restructuring has not been accompanied by intergovernmental decentralisation. In comparison, throughout the European Union the metropolitan “rescaling” of urban regions <a href="https://www.routledge.com/products/9780415274494">was undertaken</a> to enhance their global competitiveness. </p>
<p>This is especially relevant to global city strategies and, one might think, to Australia. Every state, except Tasmania, and the Northern Territory claim their capital cities are, or should become, <a href="http://www.saskiasassen.com/pdfs/publications/the-global-city-brown.pdf">global cities</a> (“world city” in the case of Queensland).</p>
<p>The metropolitan impetus arising elsewhere from globalisation is not felt in Australia. Australia has not created metropolitan governments. Consequently, there has been no debate by a metropolitan constituency about the desirability of a global city strategy. </p>
<p>Such strategies are closely associated with enhancing <a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-lockouts-sydney-needs-to-become-a-more-inclusive-city-55821">inner-city economies and lifestyles</a>. A common outcome is <a href="https://theconversation.com/sydneys-global-vision-bad-news-for-local-housing-affordability-22761">increased social and spatial divides</a>. The global city machismo of state governments is not matched by a concern for fairness.</p>
<h2>The missing link: metropolitan governance</h2>
<p>In effect, while Australia has embraced neoliberal institutional restructuring and state governments pursue global competitiveness as the foundation for urban policies, decentralisation is not on the agenda. While metropolitan governance is discussed, metropolitan government seldom is. </p>
<p>For example, after pointing to metropolitan governance, planning and democratic “deficits”, urban commentators refer to the need for “<a href="https://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/199299/urp-ip12-gleeson-et-al-2010.pdf">metropolitan-scale institutions</a>” and for a “<a href="http://www.sgsep.com.au/publications/taking-metropolitan-planning-authority-next-level">metropolitan governance forum</a>”.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sgsep.com.au/people/marcus-spiller">Marcus Spiller</a>, a prominent urban economist and planner, has written that state governance of Australia’s urban regions is leading to ineffectual metropolitan planning and infrastructure investment. The result is less productive and more socially divided cities. Spiller’s views should be read in the light of an OECD report that “<a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/urban-rural-and-regional-development/what-makes-cities-more-productive-evidence-on-the-role-of-urban-governance-from-five-oecd-countries_5jz432cf2d8p-en;jsessionid=5pkf2nfdr9soh.x-oecd-live-03">cities with fragmented governance structures have lower levels of productivity</a>”.</p>
<p>Transport and planning ministerial silos also compromise effective state leadership in the development of urban regions. Big-budget transport ministries show scant regard for planning ministries. </p>
<p>A consequence is that despite a professed commitment to compact cities in state-prepared metropolitan strategic plans, infrastructure investment has contributed to urban sprawl. This diminishes access to jobs and education opportunities, and negatively affects household incomes. The city loses the full productive potential of its labour force.</p>
<h2>Cities pay high price for funding imbalance</h2>
<p>Ineffectual planning and investment and compromised productivity also reflect Australia’s extreme vertical fiscal imbalance. In the <a href="http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1448853">words of Paul Keating</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The national perspective dominates Australian political life because the national government dominates revenue raising and only because the national government dominates revenue raising.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116559/original/image-20160329-17862-1s11b76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116559/original/image-20160329-17862-1s11b76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116559/original/image-20160329-17862-1s11b76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116559/original/image-20160329-17862-1s11b76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116559/original/image-20160329-17862-1s11b76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116559/original/image-20160329-17862-1s11b76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1118&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116559/original/image-20160329-17862-1s11b76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1118&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/116559/original/image-20160329-17862-1s11b76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1118&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Keating: ‘The national perspective dominates Australian political life because the national government dominates revenue raising.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/primeministers/keating/before-office.aspx">NAA: A6135, K15/9/89/28</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Without a constitutional remit to do so, vertical fiscal imbalance has created a “<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8500.2010.00687.x/abstract">perverse incentive</a>” for the federal government to get involved in transport funding, housing and other matters about which metropolitan residents might presume to know best.</p>
<p>Thus strategic plans that last the term of a state government and metro-scale infrastructure projects and services that depend on an alignment of state and federal priorities have proven fraught. This is epitomised by the <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/east-west-link-could-be-revived-by-infrastructure-victoria-20160226-gn54bp.html">East West Link</a> road project in Victoria. </p>
<p>Melbourne’s residents (75% of the state’s population) <a href="http://www.danielbowen.com/2013/07/17/transport-priorities/">favour public transport</a>, but this was irrelevant to the federal and state Coalition. Victorians now <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-09/auditor-general-reports-on-east-west-link-costs/7012618">have to pay the A$642 million termination fee</a> for the East West Link. </p>
<p>Federal priorities have changed between public transport, the “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/abbott-road-plan-criticised">roads of the 21st century</a>” and “agnosticism”. State priorities have fluctuated between public and private transport, and have been much influenced by federal priorities – that is, following the money. No wonder Infrastructure Australia complains about <a href="http://infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/policy-publications/publications/Australian-Infrastructure-Plan.aspx">“infrastructure gaps”</a>.</p>
<p>Dysfunctional infrastructure planning and funding, ineffectual metropolitan governance and endless blame-shifting poorly serve the creation of competitive and fair cities. It is no surprise that Jane-Frances Kelly and Paul Donegan of the Grattan Institute <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/154135">held that Australia’s cities “are broken”</a> and “are no longer keeping up with changes in how we live and how our economy works”. </p>
<p>It is at the scale of metropolitan areas where issues pertaining to globalisation, economic competitiveness, social diversity and inequality are embedded.</p>
<p>Labor and the Coalition, at federal and state level, serve metropolitan constituencies with an eye on the next election. Politicians parade trophy projects, services and plans with power, not a metropolitan perspective, in mind.</p>
<p>There is a wealth of comparative experience to guide us. Effective metropolitan governance requires intergovernmental decentralisation. Metro-scale planning, infrastructure investment and services, and partnerships with the private sector and civil society are best led by a representative and accountable metropolitan government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55872/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Tomlinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Representative and accountable metropolitan government is needed to lead metro-scale planning, infrastructure investment and services, and partnerships with the private sector and civil society.Richard Tomlinson, Professor of Urban Planning, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/514712016-01-06T01:25:11Z2016-01-06T01:25:11ZOur democracy can learn from China’s meritocracy<p>For several years now, polls by organisations like the <a href="http://www.lowyinstitute.org/lowyinstitutepollinteractive/democracy/">Lowy Institute</a> have been telling us that Australians aren’t particularly impressed by our democracy. This seems a startling revelation. But it shouldn’t be. </p>
<p>With five prime ministers in five years, Australia’s democracy hasn’t exactly been stable or functional of late. Yet there’s more to Australians’ dissatisfaction with their democratic system than Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott.</p>
<p>In a 2014 Australian <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/%7E/%7E/link.aspx?_id=01FD7901F7E14E9A86A44F9C217BFEC6&_z=z">parliamentary lecture</a>, Lowy polling director Alex Oliver advanced other theories said to explain Australians’ ambivalence about democratic politics. Most had to do with the state of our democracy or society. But Oliver also put forward the interesting idea that non-democratic powers in our region are influencing Australians’ view of democracy at home:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… nations with different political systems, particularly in our region, are seen as successful despite being non-democratic, and present a somewhat viable, even attractive, alternative to our imperfect democratic system.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In particular, countries like China offer Australians “aware of these different political systems and their successes” a political blueprint not necessarily “wedded to the ideal of democracy as the only viable form of government for a successful nation”.</p>
<p>Oliver’s theory is an interesting one. For her, it’s quite plausible that Australians who are sick and tired of our democracy’s immaturity, epitomised by revolving-door leaderships, are looking at more stable authoritarian systems like China <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10357718.2015.1081146?journalCode=caji20#.Vll7FfkrLIU">for answers</a>.</p>
<h2>The China model and political meritocracy</h2>
<p>Shouldn’t this worry us? Not according to an important new book by one of the leading Western intellectuals working in China today.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103781/original/image-20151130-10265-1i11ls.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C152%2C300%2C172&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103781/original/image-20151130-10265-1i11ls.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C152%2C300%2C172&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/103781/original/image-20151130-10265-1i11ls.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103781/original/image-20151130-10265-1i11ls.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103781/original/image-20151130-10265-1i11ls.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103781/original/image-20151130-10265-1i11ls.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103781/original/image-20151130-10265-1i11ls.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/103781/original/image-20151130-10265-1i11ls.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In The China Model, Daniel Bell argues that democracies can learn from China’s system of political meritocracy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10418.html">Princeton University Press</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10418.html">The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy</a>, Daniel Bell argues that contemporary Chinese politics has become defined by a system of political meritocracy that might offer solutions to some of democracy’s most enduring woes. </p>
<p>According to Bell – a Canadian scholar who has lived and <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/teaching-political-theory-in-beijing">taught political theory</a> in China for the past 12 years – Westerners <em>should</em> be looking to China for political inspiration. </p>
<p>The China Model is animated by Bell’s growing suspicion that democracy is not the universal good many assume it to be. Beleaguered by a number of tyrannies, democracy too often ignores the interests of all but the voting classes. It’s shortsighted and rarely anything other than an exercise in replacing one group of bastards with another.</p>
<p>Hostage to the whims of self-interested voters and populist politicians, democratic politics has been <a href="https://griffithreview.com/articles/out-of-the-ordinary/">likened to a ship of fools</a>.</p>
<p>Bell sees “Chinese-style political meritocracy”, which he admits remains far from perfect and in some instances far from realised, as “a grand political experiment with the potential to remedy key defects of electoral democracy”. </p>
<p>Notions that leaders should be meritorious intellectually, socially and with respect to virtue date as far back as the <a href="http://www.britannica.com/event/Spring-and-Autumn-Period">Spring and Autumn Period</a> (771 to 476 BC). Such ideas have become central to Chinese Communist Party rule. China now has a complex system of exams and tests that aspiring politicians must pass to attain positions of influence and power. </p>
<p>Assessments are put in place to ensure those who lead possess above-average aptitude – intellectually, socially and morally. Over years and decades, aspiring leaders are put through a series of trials that test their capacity to run a country. In China, no Palin or Trump would ever get close to an office of power. </p>
<p>Many may still see China as an “authoritarian” country. But Bell indicates that measures like these assure citizens only the Communist Party’s best and brightest will lead.</p>
<p>In this way, a political meritocracy lives and dies by the political maturity, virtue and achievement of its politicians. Without having to adopt multi-party elections, the Communist Party can thus claim legitimacy based on continued performance. </p>
<p>But while it may be no democracy, China’s meritocratic system isn’t entirely devoid of democratic traits either. </p>
<p>Bell believes that what makes the China model unique is its blend of meritocracy at the central level of government and <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/05/chinese-democracy-isnt-inevitable/394325/">democracy at the local level</a>. Between these two extremes, bold political <a href="http://www.democracy21.com/d21-in-china-first-steps/">experimentation</a> is also encouraged and, where successful, replicated.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/122753058" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Daniel Bell explains the ‘China model’: meritocracy at the top, experimentation in the middle, and democracy at the bottom.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Bell puts it, it makes sense for people to vote for representatives at the village level. They know who they’re voting for. Even if they get things wrong, the stakes aren’t so great. Mistakes can be rectified.</p>
<p>At the national level, it’s more complex. Choosing a wrong or inexperienced leader can jeopardise the lives of a billion people. For this reason, only those who have shown certain traits and proven themselves at various levels of government over decades should be tasked with leading a nation.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Daniel Bell discusses his book, The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy, with Stein Ringen of the University of Oxford.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Two lessons for Australia</h2>
<p>Australia’s recent track record shows even a supposedly mature leader and stable political party doesn’t provide immunity from political gaffes, partyroom tantrums and ruthless power grabs. Though our system couldn’t be more different from China’s, there’s good reason to take note of what’s happening in the world’s largest “non-democratic” country.</p>
<p>Specifically, Australian citizens and politicians can take away two lessons from China.</p>
<p>First, it’s not enough for politicians to be popular. They must continually demonstrate their merits to lead. More governmental and institutional measures are required to ensure political representatives are virtuous, experienced and knowledgeable enough to be our country’s chief political leaders – before they reach this position. </p>
<p>While this may not be very democratic, our recent record shows very clearly that not every person who manages to win a vote should lead. Some shouldn’t be representing us at all. There’s too much at stake to always reduce a nation’s fate to “one person, one vote”.</p>
<p>Second, citizens need to learn to have more faith in politicians who can demonstrate their leadership merits. Politics is hard and it takes time. Citizens need to realise that. </p>
<p>Democracy, as English political theorist <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/defending-politics-9780199644421?cc=au&lang=en&">Matthew Flinders</a> has written, cannot “make every sad heart glad”. Acknowledging this will free our politicians from the servitude of popularity polls and negative media. </p>
<p>Certainly, this could make them less accountable to us. But the more likely outcome is a mandate to get on with the job; to deliver what was promised at election time.</p>
<p>These lessons are hard to implement and harder still to swallow in a democracy such as Australia. Like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS130QDg6Fw">Bell</a>, had I read what I’ve written here five years ago, I too would have called myself undemocratic. Yet maybe the time has come for Australia’s system of governance to become slightly less democratic and just that bit more meritocratic.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51471/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Chou does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The China Model features political meritocracy at the top, democracy at the bottom and experimentation in between. The West can learn from the best of Chinese leadership, even if it is authoritarian.Mark Chou, Associate Professor of Politics, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/491352015-12-02T19:29:12Z2015-12-02T19:29:12ZDemocracy that bows down to the market is a false compromise<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99115/original/image-20151021-32264-1h0ef6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When our political institutions are market-driven, they risk becoming a democratic shell that no longer serves the people, as the European Union experience is showing.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/theo_reth/16202337168/">Theophilos Papadopoulos/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>From a historical perspective, democracy has undeniably made progress in areas such as minority rights, gender equality and tolerance toward the other. But there have been setbacks.</p>
<p>Two of democracy’s most serious ills today are the emasculation of politics vis-à-vis markets (a self-inflicted wound) and the increasing exclusion of the lower strata from participation and substantial representation. Both deficiencies must be corrected. If not, we will soon be left with a post-democratic, empty shell.</p>
<p>Led and pressured by the US, modern democracies have removed most of the boundaries that used to restrain capitalism. Financial market deregulation means that, when it comes to crucial issues of monetary, budgetary and tax policy, the tone is set by powerful investors, banking crises and supposedly practical constraints, instead of by the democratic majority.</p>
<h2>Changing approaches to capitalism in the West</h2>
<p>After the <a href="http://useconomy.about.com/od/glossary/g/stagflation.htm">1970s’ stagflation</a>, the Keynesian paradigm of state responsibility for maintaining demand lost its magic. <a href="http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/03/basics.htm">Monetarism</a>, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/06/13/trickle_downs_middle_class_massacre_failure_of_conservative_economics_should_discredit_these_bankrupt_ideas_forever/">supply-side economics</a> and fiscal conservatism swept the field, first in scholarly circles and then in politics. </p>
<p>Markets allegedly had to be liberated from the productivity-suppressing and distorting regulations of politics. Once that had been accomplished, creative destruction would open up new potential areas for innovation. Supply and demand would find a dynamic equilibrium on their own.</p>
<p>Entrepreneurs and citizens were to be freed from the unreasonable demands of high taxation. The new economic dynamism would even benefit the lower classes through the so-called trickle-down effect, so prosperity would eventually extend to the lowest strata of society.</p>
<p>Nearly all the (<a href="http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/">OECD</a>) economies followed this script. Even social democratic governments got in on the act.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99106/original/image-20151021-32252-1t4b1zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99106/original/image-20151021-32252-1t4b1zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99106/original/image-20151021-32252-1t4b1zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99106/original/image-20151021-32252-1t4b1zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99106/original/image-20151021-32252-1t4b1zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1095&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99106/original/image-20151021-32252-1t4b1zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1095&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99106/original/image-20151021-32252-1t4b1zk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1095&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters in Occupy Seattle in 2011 don’t seem to believe in the trickle-down effect.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">cactusbones/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Economic denationalisation has abetted this process alarmingly. When financial and commodity markets become global, the nation-state loses its ability to influence them. The politics of national budget-setting, a key element in the effort to create a fair society, also loses some of its importance.</p>
<p>The European Union is driven by its <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/competition/consumers/what_en.html">commitment to competition law</a>. For that reason, it has not turned out to be a bulwark against the depoliticisation of markets. Instead, it is something like their Trojan horse.</p>
<h2>A two-thirds democracy</h2>
<p>Over the last three decades, conventional political participation has <a href="https://theconversation.com/failing-union-of-capitalism-and-democracy-fuels-rise-in-inequality-27217">continued to decline</a> in developed democracies. This holds true for both voter participation and membership in parties and labour unions. </p>
<p>The peculiar dilemma for democracy in this context is to be found in the phenomenon of social selection. The bottom third of society has disengaged from politics. </p>
<p>The middle and upper classes stick with conventional politics or seek out new organisational forms. When they are young, they join NGOs; when older, they get involved in civil society or ecological causes. Or perhaps they will fight the upgrading of railroad stations.</p>
<p>We are heading for a two-thirds democracy in which the lower strata are underrepresented, while the middle and upper classes are overrepresented.</p>
<p>All this differs from the 1950s and 1960s insofar as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/inequality-can-be-addressed-only-if-we-start-talking-about-the-working-class-44442">great collective organisations</a>, such as labour unions and mass parties, have been eroded. These once served as crucial trustees and world-explainers for the social strata without much education. </p>
<p>Now people must rely on their own knowledge in deciding whether and how to become politically involved. Not surprisingly, those who are remote from the world of education also end up estranged from the world of politics.</p>
<p>Even forms of direct political involvement such as referenda, deliberative forums, citizens’ councils, participatory budgeting, or digital democracy have one thing in common: in theory they promise to enhance democracy, while in practice they exacerbate the problem of the two-thirds democracy. Social selection becomes even more rigorous, so the lower classes remain shut out.</p>
<p>This is especially true when it comes to the panacea paradoxically endorsed by the left: referenda. The examples of <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/18586520">Switzerland and California</a> have repeatedly shown that the results of these plebiscites usually end up preserving the vested economic interests of the well-off. They also frequently discriminate against minorities. </p>
<h2>A false compromise</h2>
<p>So, the institutions and organisations of representative democracy continue to bear the main burden of our political community. Political parties must become more open and differentiate themselves more sharply from one another. The left parties, which have been preoccupied with cultural issues since the 1970s, finally should refocus on the question of distribution.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99111/original/image-20151021-32264-1g1m41k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99111/original/image-20151021-32264-1g1m41k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99111/original/image-20151021-32264-1g1m41k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99111/original/image-20151021-32264-1g1m41k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99111/original/image-20151021-32264-1g1m41k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99111/original/image-20151021-32264-1g1m41k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99111/original/image-20151021-32264-1g1m41k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99111/original/image-20151021-32264-1g1m41k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Labour unions engaged less educated workers in political action by putting substantive issues on the table.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/32129686@N00/8617002624/in/photostream/">rightsreaders/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our citizens have become apathetic, but they could be re-politicised if substantive issues were put on the table again. That would be the case if political conflicts revealed clear differences among the antagonists, if public debates were to question the privileges of the rich and super-rich, if democratic governments were for once to criticise the US, if the depoliticising notion of practical constraints were banished from public discourse, and if we could talk again about the nationalisation of banks.</p>
<p>The historic <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/philippe-marliere/decline-of-europes-social-democratic-parties">social democratic compromise</a> among business associations, labour unions and the democratic state, reached under the direct threat of an existential crisis in the global economy, once made possible a productive relationship between a capitalist economy and social democracy. </p>
<p>Today it is a pale shadow of its former self. During the decades dominated by neoliberalism, the balance of power shifted against the democratic state and the labour unions. </p>
<p>The task ahead, then, is to give more power back to the democratic state. That cannot be done unless we regain some of the territory ceded to deregulated capital. Progressive forces have to admit to themselves that capitalism cannot be tamed by civil society, quotas for women in business and paid parental leave for men.</p>
<p>The democratic state is not everything. But without a strong democratic state our societies cannot be structured fairly. Our enthusiasm for civil society has led us to forget what its limits are. </p>
<p>The unfair distributive mechanisms of capitalist societies can be corrected only by relying on the state’s regulatory instruments. Besides, civil society is mainly an affair of the middle class. We need a less symbolic and more substantive politics.</p>
<p>Democracy’s problem is not the crisis but the triumph of capitalism. Democracy has become market-conforming. If one wants to risk greater democracy, one has to turn the tables and finally make markets conform more fully to democracy. </p>
<p>In the long run, deregulated markets destroy themselves and social cohesion. Social democracy should be more courageous and tackle the distribution issue more energetically before the latter gets out of hand and becomes an insoluble class issue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49135/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wolfgang Merkel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Democracy’s problem is not the crisis but the triumph of capitalism. Democracy has become market-conforming, resulting in whole sections of society lacking meaningful representation.Wolfgang Merkel, Professor of Comparative Political Science and Democracy Research at the Humboldt University Berlin; Associate of the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney; Director of Research Unit Democracy: Structures, Performance, Challenges, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/477632015-09-28T00:58:24Z2015-09-28T00:58:24ZFear, smear and the paradox of authoritarian politics in Singapore<p>Few observers anticipated a 10% swing to the ruling People’s Action Party (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Action_Party">PAP</a>) in Singapore’s general election this month – not even the PAP leadership and its “true believers”. The government received <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34205869">70% of the vote</a>, an improvement from 60% in the 2011 “breakthrough” election – its worst electoral performance. How did the PAP achieve this?</p>
<p>The PAP’s unbroken 56-year rule in Southeast Asia’s only Chinese-majority state has been underpinned by fear, insecurity and a subtle degree of ethno-nationalism. These features become more apparent when the 2015 and 2001 election results are closely examined.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singaporean_general_election,_2001">2001 elections</a> were purposefully held just after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The PAP garnered a whopping 75% of the vote. </p>
<h2>Stacked in the government’s favour</h2>
<p>The 2015 election was held after a <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-08/quirks-of-singapore-s-elections">nine-day campaign</a>, the legal minimum. The electoral process was far from democratic, with the PAP systematically <a href="http://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/politics-not-elections-will-change-singapore/">stacking the institutional odds</a> in its favour. The government’s machinations suggest that, typical of elected authoritarian regimes, it remains hyper-vigilant and insecure.</p>
<p>The vote was held shortly after extravagant <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-10/singapore-marks-50th-birthday-with-grand-parade-fireworks/6684236">National Day celebrations</a> marking 50 years of independence, when nationalist fervour was high. Only months earlier, the nation’s “founder” and former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32012346">died</a>, garnering sympathy votes for the PAP.</p>
<p>The Elections Department, an arm of the Prime Minister’s Office, arbitrarily redrew the electoral boundaries. The department abolished “problematic” seats that the PAP nearly lost in 2011, created new ones, merged others and redrew seats. </p>
<p>These changes diminished the electoral clout of key voting groups, particularly the educated middle-class. In the last decade or so, they have tended to be critical of the PAP’s draconian actions against public intellectuals and supportive of opposition parties. Unlike the less well-off, middle-class Singaporeans are not strongly beholden to the government for subsidies and handouts.</p>
<h2>A campaign of smear and fear</h2>
<p>With the help of compliant media, a “smear and fear” campaign was unleashed against the Workers Party (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_Party_of_Singapore">WP</a>) for supposed financial mismanagement of the Aljunied town council and the Singapore Democratic Party (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Democratic_Party">SDP</a>) for its left-leaning policies. </p>
<p>Threatened by effective opposition campaigning strategies, the PAP unleashed its well-oiled propaganda machinery, particularly in the last five days of the campaign. The PAP had felt threatened by massive opposition rallies, an impressive line-up of opposition candidates and the WP’s call to send 20 opposition politicians to the 89-seat parliament – an increase from the previous seven. The WP argued that stronger opposition representation was needed to put pressure on the government to institute much-needed reforms.</p>
<p>The WP and SDP election manifestos offered comprehensive and coherent social and economic policies. These presented a sharp contrast to the PAP agenda, which retained unpopular policies in areas such as immigration, education and superannuation. </p>
<p>Circuitous debates between opposition and PAP politicians, via the mainstream media and nightly rallies, indicated that many of the PAP’s technocratic ministers were handicapped by wooden personae and elitist attitudes. Their politically savvy opposition counterparts would likely have outperformed them in direct debates. </p>
<p>Callous <a href="http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2015/07/msf-ministers-post-on-cardboard-collectors-draws-flak/">comments</a> by one minister, Tan Chuan Jin, who said the aged poor who collect cardboard for cash were only doing it for exercise, shocked the public. For many, this confirmed suspicions that PAP leaders had become out of touch.</p>
<p>In lieu of rigorous debates and analyses in the media, the contest of metaphors, puns and double-speak between competing politicians provided some relief from the grim reality of an election fought on a less-than-level playing field. Having failed to restrict the focus to the PAP’s leadership renewal and narrow town council issues, rather than national policy, and with the opposition gaining momentum, the government mounted a scare campaign. PAP leaders repeatedly warned that as all seats were contested, there was no guarantee that the PAP would form the next government.</p>
<p>Voters were warned that even if the PAP was returned with a reduced majority, weak governance would ensue, jeopardising Singapore’s economic success. At a rally in the city’s financial district, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke of the country facing oblivion (using the Chinese dialect word <em>liow</em>) if the opposition won government. </p>
<p>The SDP’s policies of raising taxes for top earners, imposing minimum wages and increasing social spending were lambasted for taking Singapore down the road of failed economies such as Greece. The SDP’s proposed cut in defence spending was denounced as reckless because it would subject Singapore to the vagaries of regional (non-Chinese) bullies. </p>
<p>Singaporeans were reminded of the debilitating political coups in Thailand, Malaysia’s slide towards political chaos, corruption and anti-Chinese ethno-nationalism, Islamist terrorist cells stalking the region and beyond, and China’s economic downturn. </p>
<p>The PAP also raised the spectre of instability and turmoil in the West in the form of ethnic riots, moral decay and welfare-induced economic degeneration. In this threatening global environment, the inference was that only the PAP could safeguard the country’s security and stability. </p>
<p>Mainstream media faithfully echoed the PAP’s discourse of fear. The media failed to rigorously analyse the major parties’ key policies. Comparing government and opposition policies would also have negated the PAP’s projection of itself as a national movement rather than just a political party.</p>
<h2>A peculiar model of democracy</h2>
<p>Former prime minister Goh Chok Tong <a href="http://news.asiaone.com/news/general-election/ge2015-shows-system-works">brazenly opined</a> that less debate and discussion on sensitive issues had contributed to the success of Singapore’s political system.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ours is not the same system as in the West. It’s modified for our needs.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Singapore is certainly not a liberal democracy. It is not even a pluralist democracy akin to other industrialised nations in East Asia such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia. In my 2009 book, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/products/9780415484107">Singapore in the Malay World: Building and Breaching Regional Bridges</a>, I explore the PAP’s cultivation of a Singaporean identity rooted in a culture of fear, paranoia, ethno-nationalist insecurity and an ambiguous Southeast Asian consciousness – mirroring that of Lee Kuan Yew. </p>
<p>Recent statements from the PAP leadership, the mainstream media and establishment academics suggest further political and electoral engineering may be underway. This is in line with the prime minister’s repeated assertions during the campaign that the PAP needed to “get the politics right”.</p>
<p>Having gained a solid mandate, the PAP is poised to get on with deepening the construction of a political model that purportedly works for Singapore. A long-serving regime and its formidable state apparatus, which presided over one of Asia’s most robust economies, has cultivated a citizenry that is prepared to press for substantive policy reform but remains fearful of regime change.</p>
<p>Authoritarian regimes and one-party states, heartened by the PAP’s landslide victory, will no doubt be closely observing how it’s done.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47763/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lily Rahim works at the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney. </span></em></p>Elections Singapore-style are so heavily stacked in favour of the PAP, which has ruled for 56 years, that the country’s newly re-elected government is more authoritarian than democratic.Lily Rahim, Associate Professor of Politics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/444102015-07-13T04:19:21Z2015-07-13T04:19:21ZLet the Constitution and democratic principle guide us to renew federalism<p>An exercise in <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/renewing-federalism">reform of the Australian federation</a> is underway. <a href="https://federation.dpmc.gov.au/publications">Issues papers</a> have been published. A draft discussion paper <a href="https://theconversation.com/abbott-releases-federalism-paper-after-labor-ramps-up-scare-attack-43731">has been released</a>. The heads of government are <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/jay-weatherill-has-four-point-plan-for-federation-overhaul/story-e6frgczx-1227432867056">scheduled to meet</a> to discuss it later this month.</p>
<p>This initiative follows years of mounting concern about the operation of federalism in Australia. These concerns should not be overstated: it is meaningless, for example, to describe the federation as “broken”. There is no doubt, however, that it is underperforming.</p>
<p>The present initiative offers an opportunity for reform that should be seized in a way that makes a difference.</p>
<h2>What are the problems?</h2>
<p>The problems with which federalism reform must deal include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the complexity, duplication and serious accountability deficit caused by the labyrinth of intergovernmental arrangements;</p></li>
<li><p>the over-concentration of power in the executive branch, at both levels of government, to which federalism as it presently operates makes a major contribution;</p></li>
<li><p>the wild policy swings in areas of state as well as Commonwealth responsibility, caused by changes of federal government; and</p></li>
<li><p>the waste of potential, in terms of diversity, policy innovation, responsive government and public engagement, which is the cost of underperforming federalism.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Many attempts have been made over the years to tackle some of these problems. Most have involved not much more than a tweak here and there. It is telling that the <a href="http://www.federalfinancialrelations.gov.au/content/intergovernmental_agreements.aspx">Federal Financial Relations Agreement</a> and the <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:N6VmPnqloWYJ:archive.coag.gov.au/coag_meeting_outcomes/2006-02-10/index.cfm+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au">creation</a> of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Reform Council were held out as major steps forward. Neither had any significant effects; neither proved lasting.</p>
<h2>Answers lie in coming to grips with federal democracy</h2>
<p>The common thread that would enable us to deal with these problems collectively and coherently is democracy.</p>
<p>In a democratic state, we necessarily accept that democracy is the key to good government, in the sense of government that improves the lives of its people through policies that suit the circumstances on the ground. In a state in which democracy primarily takes effect through representation in parliament, the lines of accountability for efficient and effective government run through those parliaments to the people. </p>
<p>Parliaments have the additional democratic advantage of providing a public forum in which dissenting voices can be heard, even if they do not prevail. Their decisions are matters of public record.</p>
<p>If the state also is a federal state, as in Australia, that makes a difference. But the difference is not to make democracy irrelevant or to justify by-passing parliaments. On the contrary, it makes it necessary to come to grips with what democracy involves in a federation or, in other words, with federal democracy. </p>
<p>In a sense, this is democracy plus, insofar as it offers representative and accountable government at two levels. When each level of government is exercising its own responsibilities it must do so through the usual democratic forms. </p>
<p>But when governments pool their authority, horizontally or vertically, as in federations they sometimes need to do, the additional challenge of federal democracy is to find ways of ensuring that co-operation achieves its goals without eroding democratic principle and practice.</p>
<h2>Constitution provides a solid framework</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution">Australian Constitution</a> sets up the framework for federal democracy surprisingly well, at the level of principle.</p>
<p>It divides responsibility by reference to what it has become fashionable to describe as the principle of <a href="https://theconversation.com/rebalancing-government-in-australia-to-save-our-federation-33365">subsidiarity</a>. Commonwealth powers, as now broadly interpreted, for the most part are suitable for a national sphere of government. Powers not assigned to the Commonwealth, including education, hospitals, housing, urban infrastructure, windfarms and school chaplains, are by and large suitable for exercise by the states, the problem of the fiscal imbalance aside.</p>
<p>The Constitution provides mechanisms for co-operation that involve the parliaments and are broadly compatible with democratic principle. These include the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_51(xxxvii)%20_of_the_Australian_Constitution">reference power</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_96_of_the_Constitution_of_Australia">grants power</a> and the power to make <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/library/pubs/rn/2001-02/02rn43.pdf">agreements in relation to borrowing</a>.</p>
<p>The Constitution assumes that each level of government will raise taxes for its own purposes. But it also recognises the possibility of a fiscal imbalance, leaving the Commonwealth with tax sources that exceed its own proportionate expenditure needs. It <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s94.html">describes this</a> as a “surplus” to which the states are entitled on such basis as is deemed “fair”.</p>
<p>This provision quickly became a dead letter, through political practice and judicial interpretation. What is relevant for present purposes, however, is that it provides a principle that has considerable contemporary relevance to the problem of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/renewing-federalism-what-are-the-solutions-to-vertical-fiscal-imbalance-31422">fiscal imbalance</a>.</p>
<h2>Let democratic accountability guide reform</h2>
<p>If we used federal democracy, thus understood, as the framework for federalism reform, it would have the following implications.</p>
<p>As a starting point, each level of government would take primary responsibility for the exercise of its own constitutional powers, through the usual democratic forms.</p>
<p>When collaboration is said to be needed, the need should be identified and the collaboration structured so that it is fit for the purpose. It should also be designed to minimise the impact on democratic accountability, thus also maximising the chances of effective outcomes.</p>
<p>Collaboration should take effect through transparent intergovernmental machinery, capable of supporting it as a shared enterprise. A successor to <a href="https://www.coag.gov.au/">COAG</a> should be serviced by an independent secretariat, on which all participating governments can rely.</p>
<p>Proceedings, including both inputs and outcomes, should be publicly available. Participants should be accountable to their cabinets, their parliaments and their people for the stance that they, respectively, take. Parliaments should be involved in major decisions, at a formative stage.</p>
<p>The fiscal imbalance should be managed so as to remove its distorting effects. This might be done by giving the states access to additional tax sources, for which the Commonwealth should make room. </p>
<p>If that is considered a bridge too far, we should acknowledge that the current imbalance is merely a matter of convenience and that the states are entitled to a share of revenue raised by the Commonwealth by reference to the concept of surplus, determined by a transparent means. Either of these solutions requires each government to be responsible to its own people for the expenditure on its own responsibilities.</p>
<p>The spirit, as opposed to the letter, of federal democracy has other implications as well. It demands respect between levels of government, as representatives of the Australian people. Respect and trust in turn should carry consequences for the quality and shelf-life of key agreements.</p>
<p>Federal democracy also should be understood as a repudiation of centralisation for its own sake, not only at the Commonwealth level but in state capitals as well. It imports a commitment to extending the principles of subsidiarity and democratic accountability further to more local levels, including Indigenous communities, which also are entitled to respect, for the same reasons.</p>
<h2>Only principled democratic reform will work</h2>
<p>Federalism reform along these lines would require commitment to pursue. The current problems are of long standing. Habits, attitudes and interests have become entrenched. </p>
<p>There is no other effective solution, however. Any other approach will deliver more of the same. If we do not deal with these problems now, we will be talking about them again in another five or ten (wasted) years.</p>
<p>The draft <a href="https://federation.dpmc.gov.au/publications/discussion-paper">discussion paper</a> released towards the end of June identifies many of the problems that federalism reform should tackle. But it offers almost no real guidance about what to do and why.</p>
<p>The discussion paper’s reasoning is inconsistent. It does not lead to clear conclusions, or even to clear choices, leaving outcomes to horse-trading at best. It is too opaque to encourage the public comment that it purports to seek.</p>
<p>Nor does it pay any regard at all to the relevance of functioning federalism to Australian democracy, and vice versa. Accountability is conceived in purely bureaucratic terms. COAG and all its accoutrements are described as “back office” arrangements, of no interest to the Australian public, despite their centrality to the Australian system of government.</p>
<p>That is the way in which federalism has been treated in the past. But the past has not served us well in this regard. If we have the necessary vision and fortitude, federalism reform through the lens of democracy has the potential to strengthen both.</p>
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<p><em>Cheryl Saunders and Jonathan Green will discuss the principles that should underpin reform of Australian federalism in the 2015 <a href="http://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/the-2015-john-button-oration-tickets-17561268226">John Button Oration</a> on July 14 at 6.30pm.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44410/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cheryl Saunders receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>The federalism discussion paper is out and the prime minister has called a leaders’ ‘retreat’ to consider it. They should build on the Constitution’s democratic principles to make the federation work better.Cheryl Saunders, Laureate Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/389112015-03-31T19:04:50Z2015-03-31T19:04:50ZAnthropocene raises risks of Earth without democracy and without us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75753/original/image-20150323-17699-1icdke4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the Anthropocene, human-driven forces are shaping the planet in ways that may risk the collapse of human civilisation.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbakr/9380065716">Damián Bakarcic/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series on <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures-biosphere-and-energy">Biosphere and Energy</a> for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> project, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/shortcodes/images-videos/articles-democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The term Anthropocene has made many democrats nervous about democracy’s future. Earth scientists tell us we have <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/quaternary/holocene.php">drifted out of the Holocene</a> into the Anthropocene. In this new epoch, humans are the dominant “geological force” shaping the Earth’s systems.</p>
<p>Over the past 11,500 years, the Holocene provided a relatively stable climate conducive to the emergence and development of human civilisation. In contrast, the Anthropocene may be characterised by unpredictable and possibly abrupt and cataclysmic environmental changes.</p>
<p>Scientists warn that human-wrought changes may be creating a climate and a biosphere that will become increasingly inhospitable to human civilisation unless human societies drastically change their ways. That is, within the next few decades societies need to confine their activities within the “safe operating space” of our <a href="http://www.stockholmresilience.org/21/research/research-news/1-15-2015-planetary-boundaries-2.0---new-and-improved.html">“planetary boundaries”</a>.</p>
<p>So why do these warnings make democrats nervous?</p>
<p>On the one hand, pundits are warning that if climate negotiations fail to hold warming below two degrees Celsius, democracy will unravel on a hot and lawless planet. Earth will be marked by extreme weather events, ecological collapse, food and resource scarcity, millions of displaced people and increasing conflict and violence. </p>
<p>Some have argued that uncontrollable climate change is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/apr/16/requiem-for-a-species-clive-hamilton">already locked in</a> and/or that we can expect an <a href="http://apo.org.au/files/Resource/beeson_coming_of_environment_authoritarianism.pdf">age of authoritarianism</a>.</p>
<p>However, this very prospect of civilisational collapse has been invoked to justify the suspension or truncation of democracy to ensure the protection of planetary boundaries through authoritarianism or technocratic planetary management via geoengineering techniques such as solar radiation management. Either way, democracy loses.</p>
<p>Yet many of those who reject such prescriptions also have little faith in the capacity of existing liberal democracies, environmental multilateralism or proposals for <a href="http://www.earthsystemgovernance.org/about">“Earth-systems governance”</a> to usher in an ecological transition.</p>
<h2>Beyond time, space and community</h2>
<p>The question for democrats, then, is: how might the idea of the Anthropocene be enlisted to expose and overcome the limitations of existing democracies? How might democratic debate and practice be radicalised so that we are better prepared to respond to global ecological challenges? </p>
<p>This requires getting back to basics. We need to reflect critically on the fundamental coordinates of democracy: time, space and community.</p>
<p>The space-time-community co-ordinates of liberal democracies are ill-suited to serving the long-term public good of environmental protection. This arises from not only short-term election cycles but also inequalities of political participation and bargaining power in the policymaking process, low levels of ecological literacy and, in cases of concentrated media ownership, a distorted public sphere. </p>
<p>Together, these features make it easier for well-organised private interests to influence policy at the expense of diffuse and much less organised public interests.</p>
<p>Even if these problems could be fixed, liberal democracies perpetuate a more fundamental democratic problem of accountability to others. Political representatives are not obliged to answer to non-citizens (for example, foreigners, non-human species and future generations) for the trans-boundary and trans-temporal ecological and social consequences of their decisions. This is so even when it is clear that this broader constituency will be seriously affected. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75768/original/image-20150324-17696-1q6g3p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75768/original/image-20150324-17696-1q6g3p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75768/original/image-20150324-17696-1q6g3p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75768/original/image-20150324-17696-1q6g3p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75768/original/image-20150324-17696-1q6g3p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75768/original/image-20150324-17696-1q6g3p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75768/original/image-20150324-17696-1q6g3p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75768/original/image-20150324-17696-1q6g3p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How might the leaders of nation-states be made accountable for the global impacts of their decisions?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">White House/Peter Souza</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Democracy should not be bordered</h2>
<p>This problem of accountability follows from the organisation of democracy as an enclosure. It is made up of fixed demos (the democratic political community or “people”) and clearly defined territory. Liberal nationalists and civic republicans would argue that this is as it should be: only “the people”, or “the nation”, constitute the legitimate source of democratic authority.</p>
<p>Yet these claims are vulnerable to the paradoxical “democratic boundary problem”: there is no democratic means for determining the boundaries of the people/nation or the territory of the state for the purposes of self-rule. Modern liberal democracy has simply fastened onto pre-existing territorial boundaries.</p>
<p>These boundaries were determined under non-democratic forms of sovereign authority. They were not, and cannot be, democratically negotiated because that presupposes the existence of a demos, the boundaries of which will always remain democratically disputed.</p>
<p>None of these arguments are likely to undo existing political boundaries. However, they can certainly make them less reified and sacrosanct by exposing their undemocratic and ecologically arbitrary character. And they provide a strong basis for demanding that governments, corporations, investors and consumers publicly justify why they should be allowed to externalise ecological risks onto others in space and time.</p>
<p>Whereas liberal democracies hail citizens as members of a nation, as Ben Dibley has <a href="http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-2012/dibley.html">pointed out</a>, the Anthropocene hails Earthlings. Where each of us was born matters less than the fact that we all inhabit a planet that will become less conducive to the flourishing and even survival of ourselves and other species.</p>
<p>Being an Earthling does not require renunciation of national citizenship. It does put citizenship and territorially based democracy in a more critical and less exclusivist light.</p>
<h2>An outdated narrative of progress</h2>
<p>A common criticism of the Anthropocene idea is that, in seeking to focus on our common fate as Earthlings or humans, it obliterates class, race, gender and other social inequalities.</p>
<p>The new grand narrative of humanity’s new geological agency also deflects attention away from crucial issues of power, geopolitics and the legacy of imperialism. These have produced a world in which the distribution of benefits and burdens is deeply and unfairly skewed. As Malme and Hornborg <a href="http://anr.sagepub.com/content/1/1/62">argue</a>, the causes of global environmental change are sociogenic, not anthropogenic.</p>
<p>This is true. The Anthropocene cannot provide an explanation for the ecological crisis or a political prescription for change. But it can perform critical political work by relocating political and economic history into the context of geological time. </p>
<p>The social forces and institutions that are most implicated in bringing about the Anthropocene (most notably, capitalism and the modern nation state) still depend upon a 19th-century narrative of human progress. That narrative is deeply out of touch with the social relations of risk and responsibility in this new epoch.</p>
<p>Modern democracy developed alongside the Industrial Revolution, the development of fossil-fuel-based economies and the emergence of political parties representing the “producer interests” of capital and labour. These, in turn, were informed by liberal and socialist political ideologies that understood “the environment” as a mere backdrop upon which the human drama unfolded. </p>
<p>As a means to human ends, the environment became a constraint against which individual self-realisation and emancipation, as well as collective self-determination, might be achieved. Liberalism and socialism embraced the ideas of human exemptionalism, human mastery, the appropriation of a bountiful Earth, and a narrative of freedom and progress for everyone (notwithstanding that these ideals have never been enjoyed by everyone).</p>
<h2>Can we contemplate an Earth without us?</h2>
<p>A critical narrative of the Anthropocene can connect us to the planet and its other inhabitants – all things and forces both living and non-living – in a way that the progressive, modernist narrative of humanity does not. While the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_Revolution">Copernican</a> and Darwinian revolutions chipped away at the idea of human exceptionalism/chauvinism, the Anthropocene provides an even more sobering lesson in humility. </p>
<p>It prompts us to contemplate the possibility and meaning of the unthinkable: an Earth without us.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75771/original/image-20150324-17716-15acp6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75771/original/image-20150324-17716-15acp6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75771/original/image-20150324-17716-15acp6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75771/original/image-20150324-17716-15acp6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75771/original/image-20150324-17716-15acp6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75771/original/image-20150324-17716-15acp6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75771/original/image-20150324-17716-15acp6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75771/original/image-20150324-17716-15acp6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The issue confronting climate change negotiators is that no one-can continue to act as if they are autonomous.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference#/media/File:COP20_Lima_inauguration_Reinel_1_Dec_2014.jpg">Wikipedia/Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores from Perú</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Anthropocene forces us to rethink the conditions of human autonomy and progress. We need to debate what kind of autonomy is generalisable for all, including the more-than-human world upon which we depend. Rather than thinking about ecological boundaries or limits as a constraint on human freedom, the Anthropocene helps us recognise that these provide the conditions for our individual and collective freedom and survival.</p>
<p>The Anthropocene also provides a basis for refocusing our attention on hybridity and co-evolution. From an Earth systems perspective, there is no firm ontological divide between the citizen and the foreigner, the human and the non-human, nature and culture, the domestic and the wild, or the natural and the technological. </p>
<p>Hybridity therefore prompts a quintessentially political question for democratic debate: how ought we human Earthlings co-evolve with other Earthlings? What kinds of technological practices, and what forms of resistance to technological practices, are most consistent with democracy and ecology?</p>
<p>In short, the idea of the Anthropocene provides a fresh warrant for exposing the growing democratic crisis of accountability between those who generate and/or benefit from ecological risks and those who suffer the consequences. If we Earthlings are to call our communities and decision-makers to account in this way, then we will need more democracy, and more than ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38911/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robyn Eckersley is on the executive of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI) at the University of Melbourne and a co-convenor of MSSI’s research cluster on Sustainability in the Anthropocene. This article is based on a longer paper on "Democracy in the Anthropocene", which was presented to the Sydney Democracy Network at the University of Sydney on March 4.</span></em></p>The Anthropocene, as an epoch of human-driven planetary change, poses huge environmental and political problems. But it could also force us to develop proper ecological and democratic accountability.Robyn Eckersley, Professor of Political Science, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/379652015-02-25T00:06:40Z2015-02-25T00:06:40ZTalking a bird down from a tree: a conversation with Chee Soon Juan<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72832/original/image-20150223-32244-1ptz9vn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chee Soon Juan, pictured campaigning for Singapore's 2011 general elections, hopes to build on that success in the next election, which is widely expected to be held early, possibly even this year. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SDP_Walkabout_Yuhua.jpg">Wikimedia Commons/Dexterleezh</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Singapore is facing political uncertainty with the dominating figure of Lee Kuan Yew <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-21/singapore-first-prime-minister-hospitalised-with-pneumonia/6180478">in hospital</a> on life support and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-16/singapore-prime-minister-lee-hsien-loong-prostate-cancer/6111878">undergoing surgery</a> for cancer last week. Their People’s Action Party (PAP) has ruled the island state since 1959, but had its worst result ever in the 2011 elections. Chee Soon Juan has emerged as a key figure in the fight for change and John Keane interviews the opposition leader about his political convictions and hopes for a democratic Singapore.</em> </p>
<p><em>The interview is part of a series on <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures-political-leadership">political leadership</a> for the <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a></strong> project, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/shortcodes/images-videos/articles-democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century</em>. </p>
<hr>
<p><strong>John Keane:</strong> Dr Chee Soon Juan, you find yourself in the thick of Singapore politics, but it wasn’t always so. What made you a political animal?</p>
<p><strong>Chee Soon Juan:</strong> It happened in the most unexpected way. When I was in my early 20s, the government introduced what they called the “Graduate Mother’s Scheme”. It specified that “intelligent” women with university degrees could have as many children as they wished. Women lacking a university degree would be penalised if they had more than two children. I found the policy most repulsive. Even though at the time I had no tertiary education, it stirred something inside me. But then I left as a student for the United States, where I spent the better part of the 1980s. When I came back, things hadn’t really changed. There was still a one-party state that specialised in social engineering. So instead of just complaining about our situation and developing ulcers, I decided I wanted to do something. I became political.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Indignation is often the catalyst of political involvement, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to the feeling that politics is a vocation. Has it become your calling?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I don’t know if it’s my calling, but after realising that the policies of this government weren’t good for the country, I became persuaded that I’d done the right thing by entering politics. As soon as I did, the government began targeting me. The more they pursued me, the more resolute I became. Their heavy-handed tactics galvanised rather than weakened me. I was not prepared to turn tail and run.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Your political commitments brought you suffering, including time in prison, yet you’ve shown great determination. What’s the basis of your inner resilience?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I take heart from the truism that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Each time the government came for me I felt ever more determined. I grew convinced I was doing the right thing. I’ve also had the very good fortune of having my family behind me. My wife has been very supportive. She has given me strength. Without her, it would have been tremendously difficult to go on.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Are you in politics because of your children?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> My political involvement started well before I had children but, when I did, I realised how children make you look ahead towards the future they are going to inherit. I know how clichéd it is when people say we should think of our children and our children’s children. But it’s true, especially in a non-democratic state. At some point, future generations will look back and ask: what did you do when you had the chance to make changes, and why didn’t you? I’ve become very conscious of this point, and am trying to show my children, too, that things worth doing are never easy. Perseverance counts. Running away is no solution.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Do you think a sense of spirituality is an ingredient of political stamina?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I think it is. The first time I went to jail I was put in solitary, behind a big metal door, watched through a slit by guards I couldn’t see. The solitude grated on my mind. Access to books was a constant battle. In prison, they became my best friends, but the authorities limited me to three, including my Bible. They forced me to register them and put a time limit on their use. Every time they took my books away, I suffered withdrawal. I learnt I had to lean on more than myself. I was forced to dig deep, in search of hope. I found myself needing to think there was a higher being who would take me through this difficult moment. As a Christian, I had faith that if I did the right thing, and persevered, things would turn out right. It helped.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Faith in things unseen is often linked to courage. How important is courage in politics?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Prison was a tough test of my capacity for courage. We all have different degrees of what psychologists call basal arousal, but in my own case solitary confinement was especially difficult because it challenged my strong need for communication with other people. Fear made me hesitate to do certain things. It froze me into inaction – and made me deeply aware that I had to act, in spite of my fear. I’d say there are times when we need our heads to overrule our hearts. We must do the analysis: calculate there’s something worth doing because it is right. At those moments, we have to out-vote our emotions. We must tell ourselves that we must “just go for it”. In that way, we grow stronger.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Churchill famously said that “politicians shouldn’t be sofas”, by which he meant they need to stand up for their own principles and visions, and not be pushed around, or simply sat upon and shaped by others. How important are principles in political life?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Principles are vital in politics. When I first challenged the government over its strict political controls and the lack of fundamental freedoms in Singapore, it wasn’t a popular issue. People in Singapore had been so conditioned into thinking that political freedom would bring chaos, frighten investors and cause economic ruin.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> You were an isolated dissident?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Yes, and it was most disconcerting. People called me a political exhibitionist and even some of my liberal-minded friends questioned my actions. It was again one of those moments in politics when you must do the calculations about doing the right thing. Everybody wants to be popular among their peers. We feel the need to be talked about with respect. But there are times when we have to think ahead and to tell ourselves that doing the right thing will be judged kindly by history. At that moment, as Churchill said, you have to transcend the instinct for popularity and instead work for the longer term.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> You’ve spoken of our desire for popularity, to communicate with others and to be liked by them. How does this work in electoral politics? In media-saturated settings, aren’t politicians in the business of public self-projection? Isn’t politics nowadays a form of dramatic performance?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> When entering politics, there’s a strong temptation to set aside politics and instead become an actor. I’m uncomfortable with the trend simply because if substance is lacking – if you really don’t know what you want to say or where the rest of society should be heading – then politics becomes empty. It’s reduced to reading and performing a script before an audience. Self-belief and being true to your self are sacrificed. When that happens, politicians get a bad name. People see through it. They can tell whether or not politicians are authentic. I try not to appear that way. I’ve been accused of being too academic, but it doesn’t bother me. What’s important is for politicians to have substance.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> But surely there are situations where Chee Soon Juan plays Chee Soon Juan? Substance never comes in “pure” form. Doesn’t it always involve a performance: communicating something with others in particular situations using a defined style?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Yes, politics is the art of communicating with others, not by means of decimals and bullet points but by talking to people in such a way that they want to listen. I’m still in the process of learning how to do it. It’s been said politicians campaign in poetry but govern in prose. We must find a right balance. For me, politics involves finding a way of speaking to people about substance. Otherwise, politicians come across sounding vacuous.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaks of the importance in politics of “persuasive power”, the ability of public representatives to put people at ease by convincing them in word and deed they’re trustworthy and decent. How important for you is this capacity of putting people at ease?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> If you have to strive consciously to put people at ease then you’re automatically in trouble. Politicians need a measure of authenticity. Good leadership means being genuine with others and being true to oneself. In order for others to want to follow, or even to listen to the things they say, genuine leaders must be able to demonstrate that they’re not in it for themselves. Otherwise, people lose trust. On top of that, good leaders must be dedicated, committed to leading by example, rather than expecting people to do things they would not do themselves. True leaders must really care about what they’re doing, for the sake of the wider political community. People see through fakes.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> But isn’t going into politics synonymous with media slander and misrepresentation? The government of Singapore dishes out its fair share in your direction. It claims you spread “falsehoods” and peddle “libel”. They say you’re both deeply “dishonourable” and a “political failure” now posing as “the Aung San Suu Kyi of Singapore politics”.</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> If I was given a dollar for every time someone told me that I am not the monster government media makes me out to be then I’d be as rich as the millionaire ministers of the Singapore government. I may not be an angel, but I’m not the devil the government has painted me to be. Just by talking to me, people realise how much they’ve been misled.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72877/original/image-20150224-32217-bbw1jt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chee Soon Juan, speaking recently in Sydney, argues that courage, decency and truth telling are the basis of authentic political leadership.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Giovanni Navarria</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Doesn’t your commitment to authenticity, decency and honesty put you at odds with a basic maxim of Western politics that every politician has to sell snake oil? Is it really possible to be in politics without perfecting the art of persuading others of something in which you don’t believe, or have reservations about?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Citizens can be won over for a time using snake oil, but present moments pass quickly. Then what? My struggle has been more long-term: even when misunderstood, I have wanted people to say, at some point in the future, “Yes, what he said was right, it’s true.” Consciously telling yourself to resist the political temptation to sell snake oil is an investment for the future.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Many citizens today say politicians are chronic liars. In a roundabout way, they accept Machiavelli’s maxim that lying is unavoidable in politics. You value living truth, but do you think there are moments when truth is a political hindrance?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> The ongoing issue in politics is how economical one wants to be with the truth. It’s complex. Think of Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to deal with his less progressive opponents. To hold the Union together, he initially chose not to abolish slavery. Every politician has to deal with this dilemma of sometimes having to choose between lesser evils. Unfortunately, when making their choice, many politicians succumb to the temptation to peddle lies. This gives politics a bad name, despite the fact that there are plenty of politicians who try their very best to advance the interests of whole communities in circumstances that are not to their advantage. I’m hopeful more decent people will come forward into politics, which is only ever as good as the good people it attracts.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> In a one-party system where official lying is chronic, isn’t it much easier, paradoxically, to live in the truth when in opposition?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> It’s always easier to fight for principles than to live by them. Living up to principles you believe to be true is equally challenging. There’s no simple formula for how to do it, and very few people manage it. People like Gandhi, Mandela and Martin Luther King all had their flaws. There were times when they deviated from their own principles. But they were deeply conscious of the need always to come back to basics. They tried hard to harmonise what they were saying in public with the way they lived their lives. Character is vital: doing the right thing when people aren’t looking, when the cameras aren’t clicking, is very important. You don’t always succeed. But you remain conscious of the need to aspire to living the truth.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> A famous Scottish politician (Jimmy Maxton) once said that politics is a bloody circus and if you’re in it you better learn to ride two bloody horses at once. You stand for sincerity, authenticity, decency and honesty. But politics is also about knives and conniving, combining the rough with the smooth, isn’t it?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> People say politics is about finding friends and dealing with enemies. I may live to regret saying this, but we have people in our Singapore Democratic Party who remain genuine. Perhaps it’s because there’s nothing – money, power – to be gained by joining the party. I’m aware things will change if and when we grow bigger, but we’ll deal with the issue when it arises. In the meantime, our aim within the party is to build up positive political capital, among people who are persuaded that they’re doing the right thing. Although such capital isn’t a resource that comes from hard political power, I do think it minimises political back-stabbing and conniving, hopefully in order to get us through to government.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> But governing brings its own burdens, such as the need for public disinformation, doesn’t it?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I would relish the challenge to prove otherwise! Governments don’t need to tell lies to their electorates. They need instead to carry people with them, by being honest with them. Many politicians underestimate people’s ability to understand this difference. That’s why they get into such trouble, especially when they grow prepared to say and do anything, just to stay in office. Hackneyed though it may sound, honesty, the political ability to couch things frankly, is still the best policy.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> This is an old Greek democratic idea: candid speech is a powerful weapon against devious opponents.</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> In politics, you have to know yourself as well. The moment you let someone else sow the seeds of doubt within you, undermine your confidence and affect what you do, you are in trouble. Loss of confidence is your Achilles heel. When my kids were quite young, I was asked by an interviewer whether I worried about what they would in future think about all the nasty names the government hurled at me. My answer was that they would measure their father against what he said, and what he stood for and what he did, and then make up their own minds. I expect others to do that of me. And I try to apply the same rule to myself. I know who I am, and because I know who I am, I will carry on doing what I’m doing, and then let people around me and history be my judge.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> But how do you deal with naysayers and plotters and opponents with knives? Most people would say being true to your sense of self isn’t enough.</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> There are some people you can’t convince. If you speak ill of the Singapore government and its leaders, for instance, they may consider it defamatory. They take you to court and sue you for every last penny you have. They call you everything under the sun. Confronted by such opponents, I try not to be distracted by the animosity. For instance, I’ve written open letters and in court told Lee Kuan Yew that I harbour no hatred or ill will towards him. As he fights his inner demons and strives to prove his own legacy, I continue to wish him the best. He has to live his own life and face the verdict of history, as we all do. Confronted by political opponents, it’s also important to continue down our own paths. Resilience is a powerful virtue. So is talking and persuasion, which can be much more powerful than knives. I strongly prefer conversation and debate. My training in neuropsychology comes in handy. It taught me that there are always more questions than there are answers. In politics, especially in autocratic politics, it is the other way around. So I strive to infuse questioning into our politics. However heated things become, it’s important to make sure all sides are heard, and to let the chips fall where they may. If your enemies see the truth, then that’s a good outcome, even when they’re not in agreement.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> What would you say is the worst thing about being in politics?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Fund-raising. I accept it’s something that must be done for the sake of running campaigns, but it’s not always pleasant.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Others would say the worst thing about a political career is physical exhaustion, or the loss of privacy.</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I’ve still got petrol in my tank. When it comes to privacy, politicians reveal much more than they should. I don’t use Facebook for things I want to keep personal. I work on the assumption that I’m being watched by the secret police in Singapore, but I have nothing to hide from the public.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Edmund Burke once said that in politics flattery is a curse because it corrupts both the giver and the receiver. What about toadies in politics? You must have had your fair share?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I’ve attended political conferences where delegates went around using the sweetest of words, as if they thought they could talk a bird down from a tree. They approached complete strangers, put their arms around them and treated them as though they were long-lost friends. The Americans call this behaviour “schmoozing”. I instinctively recoil from it. It’s the height of fakery. It’s not the way to win friends. I just don’t like it one bit.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> How do you deal with the political cynics you encounter?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I can live with cynics. Having been through the mill, I find it personally rewarding when people come around, even though at first they were utterly cynical. I came into opposition politics in Singapore not only to change votes, but also to change minds. Cynicism is to be expected in politics, but it can and must be dealt with by maintaining a measure of composure, through equanimity and the hope that the cynics will drop their cynicism.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> It has often been said that all political careers end in failure. Do you think yours will?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> There’s a good chance that in my case there won’t even be the success that comes before failure! In politics, things go wrong. How difficult situations are handled determines success or failure. Not knowing when to leave office and its complement, blindly clinging on to power beyond its expiry date, are key reasons why political careers fail.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> Does the temptation of clinging to a political role apply to you? Are you worried that politics is going to your head?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> I’m certainly conscious that power is often intoxicating and that people unwisely cling to it. I also know that political power and all its trappings can be lost in seconds. I try to do what I believe to be right, but for the moment I haven’t any power, if by that is meant having an office, hiring and firing people, having a guaranteed budget and spending large sums of money.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> In Singapore and well beyond Southeast Asia, money has become a basic ingredient of politics. Do you think on balance it’s having poisonous effects?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Big money and buying off politicians by big moneyed interests are terrible scourges on politics in mature democracies. I may be wrong, but support can be won regardless of campaign ads oiled by big money. As I’ve said, fund-raising is important, but it’s not automatically persuasive. In Singapore, where the government filters and controls all media, politics is also being challenged through the internet, where Facebook and YouTube and other social media are providing avenues for running a campaign and reaching out to Singaporean citizens without spending an arm and a leg to beat our government opponents, who have unlimited resources at their disposal.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> You now find yourself at the beginning of a long campaign by your party to win its first-ever parliamentary seats in the next general election, which is due by January 2017. The outcome is uncertain. Do you think about the powerful role played by surprise in politics?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> In politics, you have to be a bit philosophical. You take the bitter with the sweet. You roll with the punches. When events work in your favour, you capitalise on them. When things go wrong, you try your level best to turn them into an opportunity. You mustn’t try to contrive and control everything. Good things always come mixed with bad things, so what’s needed is a strategy for dealing with each. Here’s the rule: don’t grow too elated when things turn out well, but don’t become despondent when things go badly.</p>
<p><strong>JK:</strong> It’s been said that giving up prematurely is a key cause of failure in politics, and that when everything seems hopeless hoping against hope sometimes work wonders. How important is hope for you?</p>
<p><strong>CSJ:</strong> Right now, the Singapore opposition has virtually no alternative but to look to the future and to believe that things will turn out better. The government is as wilful and intransigent as ever, despite the fact that without democracy we are just going to go nowhere. I’m excited by the prospect of leading the SDP into the next elections, excited about the opportunity of presenting our alternative vision to the people of Singapore and excited that we have the opportunity of taking Singapore in a different direction, towards a dynamic, more equal and compassionate democracy. The hope that democracy will come to Singapore looms large in our calculations. So does the conviction that hope must be backed by sweat, and by deeds. At the end of the day, I have not a shred of doubt who will emerge victorious in the struggle for democratic reform in Singapore. I say this because the human spirit can only be suppressed, never crushed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Keane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Lee dynasty and their People’s Action Party have ruled Singapore since 1959, but their grip on power has weakened. Opposition leader Chee Soon Juan talks about about his long fight for change.John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.