Examining Civil Society Legitimacy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Saskia Brechenmacher and Thomas Carothers at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “Civil society is under stress globally as dozens of governments across multiple regions are reducing space for independent civil society organizations, restricting or prohibiting international support for civic groups, and propagating government-controlled nongovernmental organizations. Although civic activists in most places are no strangers to repression, this wave of anti–civil society actions and attitudes is the widest and deepest in decades. It is an integral part of two broader global shifts that raise concerns about the overall health of the international liberal order: the stagnation of democracy worldwide and the rekindling of nationalistic sovereignty, often with authoritarian features.

Attacks on civil society take myriad forms, from legal and regulatory measures to physical harassment, and usually include efforts to delegitimize civil society. Governments engaged in closing civil society spaces not only target specific civic groups but also spread doubt about the legitimacy of the very idea of an autonomous civic sphere that can activate and channel citizens’ interests and demands. These legitimacy attacks typically revolve around four arguments or accusations:

  • That civil society organizations are self-appointed rather than elected, and thus do not represent the popular will. For example, the Hungarian government justified new restrictions on foreign-funded civil society organizations by arguing that “society is represented by the elected governments and elected politicians, and no one voted for a single civil organization.”
  • That civil society organizations receiving foreign funding are accountable to external rather than domestic constituencies, and advance foreign rather than local agendas. In India, for example, the Modi government has denounced foreign-funded environmental NGOs as “anti-national,” echoing similar accusations in Egypt, Macedonia, Romania, Turkey, and elsewhere.
  • That civil society groups are partisan political actors disguised as nonpartisan civic actors: political wolves in citizen sheep’s clothing. Governments denounce both the goals and methods of civic groups as being illegitimately political, and hold up any contacts between civic groups and opposition parties as proof of the accusation.
  • That civil society groups are elite actors who are not representative of the people they claim to represent. Critics point to the foreign education backgrounds, high salaries, and frequent foreign travel of civic activists to portray them as out of touch with the concerns of ordinary citizens and only working to perpetuate their own privileged lifestyle.

Attacks on civil society legitimacy are particularly appealing for populist leaders who draw on their nationalist, majoritarian, and anti-elite positioning to deride civil society groups as foreign, unrepresentative, and elitist. Other leaders borrow from the populist toolbox to boost their negative campaigns against civil society support. The overall aim is clear: to close civil society space, governments seek to exploit and widen existing cleavages between civil society and potential supporters in the population. Rather than engaging with the substantive issues and critiques raised by civil society groups, they draw public attention to the real and alleged shortcomings of civil society actors as channels for citizen grievances and demands.

The widening attacks on the legitimacy of civil society oblige civil society organizations and their supporters to revisit various fundamental questions: What are the sources of legitimacy of civil society? How can civil society organizations strengthen their legitimacy to help them weather government attacks and build strong coalitions to advance their causes? And how can international actors ensure that their support reinforces rather than undermines the legitimacy of local civic activism?

To help us find answers to these questions, we asked civil society activists working in ten countries around the world—from Guatemala to Tunisia and from Kenya to Thailand—to write about their experiences with and responses to legitimacy challenges. Their essays follow here. We conclude with a final section in which we extract and discuss the key themes that emerge from their contributions as well as our own research…

  1. Saskia Brechenmacher and Thomas Carothers, The Legitimacy Landscape
  2. César Rodríguez-Garavito, Objectivity Without Neutrality: Reflections From Colombia
  3. Walter Flores, Legitimacy From Below: Supporting Indigenous Rights in Guatemala
  4. Arthur Larok, Pushing Back: Lessons From Civic Activism in Uganda
  5. Kimani Njogu, Confronting Partisanship and Divisions in Kenya
  6. Youssef Cherif, Delegitimizing Civil Society in Tunisia
  7. Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, The Legitimacy Deficit of Thailand’s Civil Society
  8. Özge Zihnioğlu, Navigating Politics and Polarization in Turkey
  9. Stefánia Kapronczay, Beyond Apathy and Mistrust: Defending Civic Activism in Hungary
  10. Zohra Moosa, On Our Own Behalf: The Legitimacy of Feminist Movements
  11. Nilda Bullain and Douglas Rutzen, All for One, One for All: Protecting Sectoral Legitimacy
  12. Saskia Brechenmacher and Thomas Carothers, The Legitimacy Menu….(More)”.

Democratic deliberation should be an integral part of policy making

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Matthew Taylor at the RSA: “I have, more or less, chosen the topic for my annual lecture. There’s just one problem. How do I get anyone to take notice?…The lecture will make the case for democratic deliberation to become an integral part of our political and policy making processes. I’ll do this by highlighting just a few of the many problems with our current form of representative democracy (and what is seen as its main alternative, direct democracy). I will argue that not only is deliberation the best way to gauge public preferences on many issues, but that by adding depth to debates and engagement it can help repair the democratic system as a whole. Indeed, deliberation is best seen not as an alternative to elections but as a way of making politics more about representing people and less about the fight between – often deeply unrepresentative – vested interests.

Making democratic deliberation a reality

An important and new aspect of my argument will be to suggest a set of practical measures. These are the policies that would need to be enacted if we wanted to take deliberation from the exotic and occasional margins of policy making instead to make it a recognised, vital and permanent part of how we are governed. For example, one might be that Government commit to holding at least two fully constituted citizens’ juries every year and to the relevant minister making a formal response to each jury’s outcomes in a statement to the House.

My speech may quote the Hansard Society democratic audit published today. This shows, on the one hand, an increase in people’s interest in politics and in their intention to vote but, on the other, very low ratings for the way we are governed and for the trustworthiness and efficacy of political parties; institutions which continue to be central to the way our democracy functions. …

Democratic deliberation is not the same as direct democracy nor is it simply another form of general engagement. It is the use of specific and robust methods to inform representative groups of ordinary citizens so that these citizens, having heard every side of an argument and having had a chance to deliberate, can reach a view which – like a jury in a criminal trial – can stand for the conclusions which would have been reached by any representative group going through the same process. As I will explain in my lecture, these processes have been used successfully on a wide range of issues in a wide variety of jurisdictions. The problem is not about whether deliberation works: it is about how to make it a core part of how we do politics….(More)”.

The Public, the Political System and American Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Pew Research Center: “Most say ‘design and structure’ of government need big changes…At a time of growing stress on democracy around the world, Americans generally agree on democratic ideals and values that are important for the United States. But for the most part, they see the country falling well short in living up to these ideals, according to a new study of opinion on the strengths and weaknesses of key aspects of American democracy and the political system.

The public’s criticisms of the political system run the gamut, from a failure to hold elected officials accountable to a lack of transparency in government. And just a third say the phrase “people agree on basic facts even if they disagree politically” describes this country well today.

The perceived shortcomings encompass some of the core elements of American democracy. An overwhelming share of the public (84%) says it is very important that “the rights and freedoms of all people are respected.” Yet just 47% say this describes the country very or somewhat well; slightly more (53%) say it does not.

Despite these criticisms, most Americans say democracy is working well in the United States – though relatively few say it is working very well. At the same time, there is broad support for making sweeping changes to the political system: 61% say “significant changes” are needed in the fundamental “design and structure” of American government to make it work for current times.

The public sends mixed signals about how the American political system should be changed, and no proposals attract bipartisan support. Yet in views of how many of the specific aspects of the political system are working, both Republicans and Democrats express dissatisfaction.

To be sure, there are some positives. A sizable majority of Americans (74%) say the military leadership in the U.S. does not publicly support one party over another, and nearly as many (73%) say the phrase “people are free to peacefully protest” describes this country very or somewhat well.

In general, however, there is a striking mismatch between the public’s goals for American democracy and its views of whether they are being fulfilled. On 23 specific measures assessing democracy, the political system and elections in the United States – each widely regarded by the public as very important – there are only eight on which majorities say the country is doing even somewhat well….(More)”.

Data rights are civic rights: a participatory framework for GDPR in the US?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Elena Souris and Hollie Russon Gilman at Vox: “…While online rights are coming into question, it’s worth considering how those will overlap with offline rights and civic engagement.

The two may initially seem completely separate, but democracy itself depends on information and communication, and a balance of privacy (secret ballot) and transparency. As communication moves almost entirely to networked online technology platforms, the governance questions surrounding data and privacy have far-reaching civic and political implications for how people interact with all aspects of their lives, from commerce and government services to their friends, families, and communities. That is why we need a conversation about data protections, empowering users with their own information, and transparency — ultimately, data rights are now civic rights…

What could a golden mean in the US look like? Is it possible to take principles of the GDPR and apply a more community based, citizen-centric approach across states and localities in the United States? Could a US version of the GDPR be designed in a way that included public participation? Perhaps there could be an ongoing participatory role? Most of all, the questions underpinning data regulation need to serve as an impetus for an honest conversation about equity across digital access, digital literacy, and now digital privacy.

Across the country, we’re already seeing successful experiments with a more citizen-inclusive democracy, with localities and cities rising as engines of American re-innovationand laboratories of participatory democracy. Thanks to our federalist system, states are already paving the way for greater electoral reform, from public financing of campaigns to experiments with structures such as ranked-choice voting.

In these local federalist experiments, civic participation is slowly becoming a crucial tool. Innovations from participatory budgeting to interactive policy co-production sessions are giving people in communities a direct say in public policies. For example, the Rural Climate Dialogues in Minnesota empower rural residents to impact policy on long-term climate mitigation. Bowling Green, Kentucky, recently used the online deliberation platform Polisto identify common policy areas for consensus building. Scholars have been writing about various potential participatory models for our digital lives as well, including civic trusts.

Can we take these principles and begin a serious conversation for how to translate the best privacy practices, tools, and methods to ensure that people’s valuable online and offline resources — including their trust, attention span, and vital information — are also protected and honored? Since the people are a primary stakeholder in the conversation about civic data and data privacy, they should have a seat at the table.

Including citizens and residents in these conversations could have a big policy impact. First, working toward a participatory governance framework for civic data would enable people to understand the value of their data in the open market. Second, it would provide greater transparency to the value of networks — an individual’s social graph, a valuable asset, which, until now, people are generating in aggregate without anything in return. Third, it could amplify concerns of more vulnerable data users, including elderly or tech-illiterate citizens — and even refugees and international migrants, as Andrew Young and Stefaan Verhulst recently argued in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

There are already templates and road maps for responsible data, but talking to those users themselves with a participatory governance approach could make them even more effective. Finally, citizens can help answer tough questions about what we value and when and how we need to make ethical choices with data.

Because data-collecting organizations will have to comply abroad soon, the GDPR is a good opportunity for the American social sector to consider data rights as civic rights and incorporate a participatory process to meet this challenge. Instead of simply assuming regulatory agencies will pave the way, a more participatory data framework could foster an ongoing process of civic empowerment and make the outcome more effective. It’s too soon to know the precise forms or mechanisms new data regulation should take. Instead of a rigid, predetermined format, the process needs to be community-driven by design — ensuring traditionally marginalized communities are front and center in this conversation, not only the elites who already hold the microphone.

It won’t be easy. Building a participatory governance structure for civic data will require empathy, compromise, and potentially challenging the preconceived relationship between people, institutions, and their information. The interplay between our online and offline selves is a continuous process of learning error. But if we simply replicate the top-down structures of the past, we can’t evolve toward a truly empowered digital democratic future. Instead, let’s use the GDPR as an opening in the United States for advancing the principles of a more transparent and participatory democracy….(More)”.

Participatory Budgeting: Step to Building Active Citizenship or a Distraction from Democratic Backsliding?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

David Sasaki: “Is there any there there? That’s what we wanted to uncover beneath the hype and skepticism surrounding participatory budgeting, an innovation in democracy that began in Brazil in 1989 and has quickly spread to nearly every corner of the world like a viral hashtag….We ended up selecting two groups of consultants for two phases of work. The first phase was led by three academic researchers — Brian Wampler, Mike Touchton and Stephanie McNulty — to synthesize what we know broadly about PB’s impact and where there are gaps in the evidence. mySociety led the second phase, which originally intended to identify the opportunities and challenges faced by civil society organizations and public officials that implement participatory budgeting. However, a number of unforeseen circumstances, including contested elections in Kenya and a major earthquake in Mexico, shifted mySociety’s focus to take a global, field-wide perspective.

In the end, we were left with two reports that were similar in scope and differed in perspective. Together they make for compelling reading. And while they come from different perspectives, they settle on similar recommendations. I’ll focus on just three: 1) the need for better research, 2) the lack of global coordination, and 3) the emerging opportunity to link natural resource governance with participatory budgeting….

As we consider some preliminary opportunities to advance participatory budgeting, we are clear-eyed about the risks and challenges. In the face of democratic backsliding and the concern that liberal democracy may not survive the 21st century, are these efforts to deepen local democracy merely a distraction from a larger threat, or is this a way to build active citizenship? Also, implementing PB is expensive — both in terms of money and time; is it worth the investment? Is PB just the latest checkbox for governments that want a reputation for supporting citizen participation without investing in the values and process it entails? Just like the proliferation of fake “consultation meetings,” fake PB could merely exacerbate our disappointment with democracy. What should we make of the rise of participatory budgeting in quasi-authoritarian contexts like China and Russia? Is PB a tool for undemocratic central governments to keep local governments in check while giving citizens a simulacrum of democratic participation? Crucially, without intentional efforts to be inclusive like we’ve seen in Boston, PB could merely direct public resources to those neighborhoods with the most outspoken and powerful residents.

On the other hand, we don’t want to dismiss the significant opportunities that come with PB’s rapid global expansion. For example, what happens when social movements lose their momentum between election cycles? Participatory budgeting could create a civic space for social movements to pursue concrete outcomes while engaging with neighbors and public officials. (In China, it has even helped address the urban-rural divide on perspectives toward development policy.) Meanwhile, social media have exacerbated our human tendency to complain, but participatory budgeting requires us to shift our perspective from complaints to engaging with others on solutions. It could even serve as a gateway to deeper forms of democratic participation and increased trust between governments, civil society organizations, and citizens. Perhaps participatory budgeting is the first step we need to rebuild our civic infrastructure and make space for more diverse voices to steer our complex public institutions.

Until we have more research and evidence, however, these possibilities remain speculative….(More)”.

A New Model for Industry-Academic Partnerships

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Working Paper by Gary King and Nathaniel Persily: “The mission of the academic social sciences is to understand and ameliorate society’s greatest challenges. The data held by private companies holds vast potential to further this mission. Yet, because of its interaction with highly politicized issues, customer privacy, proprietary content, and differing goals of firms and academics, these data are often inaccessible to university researchers.

We propose here a new model for industry-academic partnerships that addresses these problems via a novel organizational structure: Respected scholars form a commission which, as a trusted third party, receives access to all relevant firm information and systems, and then recruits independent academics to do research in specific areas following standard peer review protocols organized and funded by nonprofit foundations.

We also report on a partnership we helped forge under this model to make data available about the extremely visible and highly politicized issues surrounding the impact of social media on elections and democracy. In our partnership, Facebook will provide privacy-preserving data and access; seven major politically and substantively diverse nonprofit foundations will fund the research; and the Social Science Research Council will oversee the peer review process for funding and data access….(More)”.

Democracy is in danger when the census undercounts vulnerable populations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Emily Klancher Merchant at The Conversation: “The 2020 U.S. Census is still two years away, but experts and civil rights groups are already disputing the results.At issue is whether the census will fulfill the Census Bureau’s mandate to “count everyone once, only once, and in the right place.”

The task is hardly as simple as it seems and has serious political consequences. Recent changes to the 2020 census, such as asking about citizenship status, will make populations already vulnerable to undercounting even more likely to be missed. These vulnerable populations include the young, poor, nonwhite, non-English-speaking, foreign-born and transient.

An accurate count is critical to the functioning of the U.S. government. Census data determine how the power and resources of the federal government are distributed across the 50 states. This includes seats in the House, votes in the Electoral College and funds for federal programs. Census data also guide the drawing of congressional and other voting districts and the enforcement of civil and voting rights laws.

Places where large numbers of people go uncounted get less than their fair share of political representation and federal resources. When specific racial and ethnic groups are undercounted, it is harder to identify and rectify violations of their civil rights. My research on the international history of demography demonstrates that the question of how to equitably count the population is not new, nor is it unique to the United States. The experience of the United States and other countries may hold important lessons as the Census Bureau finalizes its plans for the 2020 count.

Let’s take a look at that history….

In 1790, the United States became the first country to take a regular census. Following World War II, the U.S. government began to promote census-taking in other countries. U.S. leaders believed data about the size and location of populations throughout the Western Hemisphere could help the government plan defense. What’s more, U.S. businesses could also use the data to identify potential markets and labor forces in nearby countries.

The U.S. government began investing in a program called the Census of the Americas. Through this program, the State Department provided financial support and the Census Bureau provided technical assistance to Western Hemisphere countries taking censuses in 1950.

United Nations demographers also viewed the Census of the Americas as an opportunity. Data that were standardized across countries could serve as the basis for projections of world population growth and the calculation of social and economic indicators. They also hoped that censuses would provide useful information to newly established governments. The U.N. turned the Census of the Americas into a global affair, recommending that “all Member States planning population censuses about 1950 use comparable schedules so far as possible.” Since 1960, the U.N. has sponsored a World Census Program every 10 years. The 2020 World Census Program will be the seventh round….

Not all countries went along with the program. For example, Lebanon’s Christian rulers feared that a census would show Christians to be a minority, undermining the legitimacy of their government. However, for the 65 sovereign countries taking censuses between 1945 and 1954, leaders faced the same question the U.S. faces today: How can we make sure that everyone has an equal chance of being counted?…(More)”.

Algorithmic Sovereignty

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Thesis by Denis Roio: “This thesis describes a practice based research journey across various projects dealing with the design of algorithms, to highlight the governance implications in design choices made on them. The research provides answers and documents methodologies to address the urgent need for more awareness of decisions made by algorithms about the social and economical context in which we live. Algorithms consitute a foundational basis across different fields of studies: policy making, governance, art and technology. The ability to understand what is inscribed in such algorithms, what are the consequences of their execution and what is the agency left for the living world is crucial. Yet there is a lack of interdisciplinary and practice based literature, while specialised treatises are too narrow to relate to the broader context in which algorithms are enacted.

This thesis advances the awareness of algorithms and related aspects of sovereignty through a series of projects documented as participatory action research. One of the projects described, Devuan, leads to the realisation of a new, worldwide renown operating system. Another project, “sup”, consists of a minimalist approach to mission critical software and literate programming to enhance security and reliability of applications. Another project, D-CENT, consisted in a 3 year long path of cutting edge research funded by the EU commission on the emerging dynamics of participatory democracy connected to the technologies adopted by citizen organizations.

My original contribution to knowledge lies within the function that the research underpinning these projects has on the ability to gain a better understanding of sociopolitical aspects connected to the design and management of algorithms. It suggests that we can improve the design and regulation of future public, private and common spaces which are increasingly governed by algorithms by understanding not only economical and legal implications, but also the connections between design choices and the sociopolitical context for their development and execution….(More)”.

How Democracy Can Survive Big Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Colin Koopman in The New York Times: “…The challenge of designing ethics into data technologies is formidable. This is in part because it requires overcoming a century-long ethos of data science: Develop first, question later. Datafication first, regulation afterward. A glimpse at the history of data science shows as much.

The techniques that Cambridge Analytica uses to produce its psychometric profiles are the cutting edge of data-driven methodologies first devised 100 years ago. The science of personality research was born in 1917. That year, in the midst of America’s fevered entry into war, Robert Sessions Woodworth of Columbia University created the Personal Data Sheet, a questionnaire that promised to assess the personalities of Army recruits. The war ended before Woodworth’s psychological instrument was ready for deployment, but the Army had envisioned its use according to the precedent set by the intelligence tests it had been administering to new recruits under the direction of Robert Yerkes, a professor of psychology at Harvard at the time. The data these tests could produce would help decide who should go to the fronts, who was fit to lead and who should stay well behind the lines.

The stakes of those wartime decisions were particularly stark, but the aftermath of those psychometric instruments is even more unsettling. As the century progressed, such tests — I.Q. tests, college placement exams, predictive behavioral assessments — would affect the lives of millions of Americans. Schoolchildren who may have once or twice acted out in such a way as to prompt a psychometric evaluation could find themselves labeled, setting them on an inescapable track through the education system.

Researchers like Woodworth and Yerkes (or their Stanford colleague Lewis Terman, who formalized the first SAT) did not anticipate the deep consequences of their work; they were too busy pursuing the great intellectual challenges of their day, much like Mr. Zuckerberg in his pursuit of the next great social media platform. Or like Cambridge Analytica’s Christopher Wylie, the twentysomething data scientist who helped build psychometric profiles of two-thirds of all Americans by leveraging personal information gained through uninformed consent. All of these researchers were, quite understandably, obsessed with the great data science challenges of their generation. Their failure to consider the consequences of their pursuits, however, is not so much their fault as it is our collective failing.

For the past 100 years we have been chasing visions of data with a singular passion. Many of the best minds of each new generation have devoted themselves to delivering on the inspired data science promises of their day: intelligence testing, building the computer, cracking the genetic code, creating the internet, and now this. We have in the course of a single century built an entire society, economy and culture that runs on information. Yet we have hardly begun to engineer data ethics appropriate for our extraordinary information carnival. If we do not do so soon, data will drive democracy, and we may well lose our chance to do anything about it….(More)”.

The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Yascha Mounk: “The world is in turmoil. From India to Turkey and from Poland to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result, Yascha Mounk shows, democracy itself may now be at risk.

Two core components of liberal democracy—individual rights and the popular will—are increasingly at war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of “rights without democracy” took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create something just as bad: a system of “democracy without rights.”

The consequence, Mounk shows in The People vs. Democracy, is that trust in politics is dwindling. Citizens are falling out of love with their political system. Democracy is wilting away. Drawing on vivid stories and original research, Mounk identifies three key drivers of voters’ discontent: stagnating living standards, fears of multiethnic democracy, and the rise of social media. To reverse the trend, politicians need to enact radical reforms that benefit the many, not the few.

The People vs. Democracy is the first book to go beyond a mere description of the rise of populism. In plain language, it describes both how we got here and where we need to go. For those unwilling to give up on either individual rights or the popular will, Mounk shows, there is little time to waste: this may be our last chance to save democracy….(More)”