People Power

At the moment we cast a vote (or not) every few years - and then blame the government when things go wrong. Patently an absurd way to behave. We should rather choose a pressure group – or even join the relevant political party and get active there… Except that we are just one voice amongst millions….

Lobbyists are paid hundreds of thousands of pounds in retainers to advise companies on how to   ensure that legislation reflects their master’s interests – so what hope do we, the ordinary citizen, have?    

And, indeed, what right – we might also well ask – do we have to expect to be listened to? Psychologists have been lining up in the past decade to tell us how irrational we all are!

And that includes government ministers who are notoriously so rushed off their feet as to be unable to focus on the country’s long-term interests – even if they wanted to…

At the moment, the only people who are pressing governments to take a longer - more strategic – view of things are the Extinction campaigners.  

But the idea of “deliberative democracy” has slowly been emerging – principally via the device of “Citizen Juries” structured on randomly-selected groups of citizens being presented over several days with a range of evidence which is then discussed as at a jury. The Irish Republic used citizen juries before several significant referenda on social issues in recent years – with interesting results.

Indeed pressure groups should be uniting these days to insist that municipalities (in the first instance) experiment with citizen juries – to help build up a head of steam nationally behind the concept…

It’s all very well for academics to talk about the need for governments to develop a more long-term and strategic sense. The Club of Rome is one of the most influential global thinktanks and commissioned the most famous global policy advisor of the time, Yeheziekel Dror, to produce in 2001 a book on the subject - The capacity to govern. It sank without trace.

But that is perhaps too pessimistic a note on which to end....A few years back - before Brexit and Trump -  there was quite a buzz around these ideas of more deliberative democracy and here's one book which nicely summarises that discussion - Can Democracy be Saved?  - participation, deliberation and social movements; Donatella Della Porter (2013)