Globally, Broad Support for Representative and Direct Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Pew Global: “A deepening anxiety about the future of democracy around the world has spread over the past few years. Emboldened autocrats and rising populists have shaken assumptions about the future trajectory of liberal democracy, both in nations where it has yet to flourish and countries where it seemed strongly entrenched. Scholars have documented a global “democratic recession,” and some now warn that even long-established “consolidated” democracies could lose their commitment to freedom and slip toward more authoritarian politics.

A 38-nation Pew Research Center survey finds there are reasons for calm as well as concern when it comes to democracy’s future. More than half in each of the nations polled consider representative democracy a very or somewhat good way to govern their country. Yet, in all countries, pro-democracy attitudes coexist, to varying degrees, with openness to nondemocratic forms of governance, including rule by experts, a strong leader or the military.

A number of factors affect the depth of the public’s commitment to representative democracy over nondemocratic options. People in wealthier nations and in those that have more fully democratic systems tend to be more committed to representative democracy. And in many nations, people with less education, those who are on the ideological right and those who are dissatisfied with the way democracy is currently working in their country are more willing to consider nondemocratic alternatives.

At the same time, majorities in nearly all nations also embrace another form of democracy that places less emphasis on elected representatives. A global median of 66% say direct democracy – in which citizens, rather than elected officials, vote on major issues – would be a good way to govern. This idea is especially popular among Western European populists….(More)”

Who governs or how they govern: Testing the impact of democracy, ideology and globalization on the well being of the poor

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Eunyoung Ha and Nicholas L.Cain in The Social Science Journal: “This paper examines the effects of regime type, government ideology and economic globalization on poverty in low- and middle-income countries around the world. We use panel regression to estimate the effect of these explanatory variables on two different response variables: national poverty gap (104 countries from 1981 to 2005) and child mortality rate (132 countries from 1976 to 2005). We find consistent and significant results for the interactive effect of democracy and government ideology: strong leftist power under a democratic regime is associated with a reduction in both the poverty gap and the child mortality rate. Democracy, on its own, is associated with a lower child mortality rate, but has no effect on the poverty gap. Leftist power under a non-democratic regime is associated with an increase in both poverty measures. Trade reduces both measures of poverty. Foreign direct investment has a weak and positive effect on the poverty gap. From examining factors that influence the welfare of poor people in less developed countries, we conclude that who governs is as important as how they govern….

  • Our paper uses a unique dataset to study the impact of regime type, ideology and globalization on two measures of poverty.
  • We find that higher levels of democracy are associated with lower child mortality rates, but do not impact poverty gap.
  • The interaction of regime type and ideology has a strong effect: leftist power in a democracy reduces poverty and child mortality.
  • We find that trade significantly reduces both the poverty gap and the child mortality rate.
  • Overall, we find strong evidence that who governs is as important as how they govern…(More)”

Governance Reforms: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; and the Sound: Examining the Past and Exploring the Future of Public Organizations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Ali Farazmand in Public Organization Review: “This paper addresses governance reforms of the last three and a half decades and looks into the future. This is done in three parts. The first part presents a birds-eye view of the massive literature on governance and governance reforms with a focus on the good, the bad, and ugly sides, then in part two argues for an alternative concept or theory of “sound governance” with characteristics and dimensions that overcome the deficiencies of other models of governance. As a consequence of reforms, the third part examines the past and explores the future of public organizations via “going home” as a conclusion with possible scenarios, challenges, and opportunities….(More)”

Our Gutenberg Moment: It’s Time To Grapple With The Internet’s Effect On Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Alberto Ibargüen at HuffPost: “When clashes wracked Charlottesville, many Americans saw neo-nazi demonstrators as the obvious instigators. But others focused on counter-demonstrators, a view amplified by the president blaming “many sides.” The rift in perception underscored an uncomfortable but unavoidable truth about the flow of information today: Americans no longer have a shared foundation of facts upon which we can agree.

Politics has long been a messy, divisive business. I lived through the 1960s, a period of similar dissatisfaction, disillusionment, and disunity, brilliantly chronicled by Ken Burns’ new film “The Vietnam War” on PBS. But common, local knowledge —of history and current events — has always been the great equalizer in American society. Today, however, a decrease in shared knowledge has led to a collapse in trust. Over the past few years, we have watched our capacity to compromise wane as not only our politics, but also our most basic value systems, have become polarized.

The key difference between then and now is how news is delivered and consumed. At the beginning of our Republic, the reach of media was local and largely verifiable. That direct relationship between media outlets and their communities — local newspapers and, later, radio and TV stations — held until the second half of the 20th century. Network TV began to create a sense of national community but it fractioned with the sudden ability to offer targeted, membership-based models via cable.

But cable was nothing compared to Internet. Internet’s unique ability to personalize and to create virtual communities of interest accelerated the decline of newspapers and television business models and altered the flow of information in ways that we are still uncovering. “Media” now means digital and cable, cool mediums that require hot performance. Trust in all media, including traditional media, is at an all-time low, and we’re just now beginning to grapple with the threat to democracy posed by this erosion of trust.

Internet is potentially the greatest democratizing tool in history. It is also democracy’s greatest challenge. In offering access to information that can support any position and confirm any bias, social media has propelled the erosion of our common set of everyday facts….(More)”.

Open data, democracy and public service reform

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Mark Thompson at Computer Weekly: “Discussion around reforming public services is as important as better information sharing rules if government is to make the most of public data…

Our public services face two paradoxes in relation to data sharing. First, on the demand side, “Zuckerberg’s law” – which claims that the amount of data we’re happy to share with companies increases exponentially year-on-year – flies in the face of our wariness as citizens to share with the state….

The upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – a beefed-up version of the existing Data Protection Act (DPA) – is likely to only exacerbate a fundamental problem, therefore: citizens don’t want the state to know much about them, and public servants don’t want to share. Each behaviour is paradoxical, and thus complex to address culturally.

Worse, we need to accelerate our public conversation considerably if we are to maintain pace with accelerating technological developments.

Existing complexity in the data space will shortly be exacerbated by new abilities to process unstructured data such as images and natural language – abilities which offer entirely new opportunities for commercial exploitation as well as surveillance…(More)”.

The Supreme Court Is Allergic To Math

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 at FiveThirtyEight: “The Supreme Court does not compute. Or at least some of its members would rather not. The justices, the most powerful jurists in the land, seem to have a reluctance — even an allergy — to taking math and statistics seriously.

For decades, the court has struggled with quantitative evidence of all kinds in a wide variety of cases. Sometimes justices ignore this evidence. Sometimes they misinterpret it. And sometimes they cast it aside in order to hold on to more traditional legal arguments. (And, yes, sometimes they also listen to the numbers.) Yet the world itself is becoming more computationally driven, and some of those computations will need to be adjudicated before long. Some major artificial intelligence case will likely come across the court’s desk in the next decade, for example. By voicing an unwillingness to engage with data-driven empiricism, justices — and thus the court — are at risk of making decisions without fully grappling with the evidence.

This problem was on full display earlier this month, when the Supreme Court heard arguments in Gill v. Whitford, a case that will determine the future of partisan gerrymandering — and the contours of American democracy along with it. As my colleague Galen Druke has reported, the case hinges on math: Is there a way to measure a map’s partisan bias and to create a standard for when a gerrymandered map infringes on voters’ rights?…(More)”.

How online citizenship is unsettling rights and identities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

James Bridle at Open Democracy: “Historically, and for those lucky enough to be born under the aegis of stable governments and national regimes, there have been two ways in which citizenship is acquired at birth. Jus soli – the right of soil – confers citizenship upon those born within the territory of a state regardless of their parentage. This right is common in the Americas, but less so elsewhere (and, since 2004, is to be found nowhere in Europe). More frequently, Jus sanguinis – the right of blood – determines a person’s citizenship based on the rights held by their parents. One might be denied citizenship in the place of one’s birth, but obtain it elsewhere….

One of the places we see traditional notions of the nation state and its methods of organisation and control – particularly the assignation of citizenship – coming under greatest stress is online, in the apparently borderless expanses of the internet, where information and data flow almost without restriction across the boundaries between states. And as our rights and protections are increasingly assigned not to our corporeal bodies but to our digital selves – the accumulations of information which stand as proxies for us in our relationships to states, banks, and corporations – so new forms of citizenship arise at these transnational digital junctions.

Jus algoritmi is a term coined by John Cheney-Lippold to describe a new form of citizenship which is produced by the surveillance state, whose primary mode of operation, like other state forms before it, is control through identification and categorisation. Jus algoritmi – the right of the algorithm – refers to the increasing use of software to make judgements about an individual’s citizenship status, and thus to decide what rights they have, and what operations upon their person are permitted….(More)”.

Collaborative Platforms as a Governance Strategy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chris Ansell and Alison Gash in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory: “Collaborative-Platforms-as-a-Governance-Strategy?redirectedFrom=fulltextCollaborative governance is increasingly viewed as a proactive policy instrument, one in which the strategy of collaboration can be deployed on a larger scale and extended from one local context to another. This article suggests that the concept of collaborative platforms provides useful insights into this strategy of treating collaborative governance as a generic policy instrument. Building on an organization-theoretic approach, collaborative platforms are defined as organizations or programs with dedicated competences and resources for facilitating the creation, adaptation and success of multiple or ongoing collaborative projects or networks. Working between the theoretical literature on platforms and empirical cases of collaborative platforms, the article finds that strategic intermediation and design rules are important for encouraging the positive feedback effects that help collaborative platforms adapt and succeed. Collaborative platforms often promote the scaling-up of collaborative governance by creating modular collaborative units—a strategy of collaborative franchising….(More)”.

Building Civic Capacity in an Era of Democratic Crisis

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Hollie Russon-Gilman and K. Sabeel Rahman at New America Foundation: “For several years now, the institutions of American democracy have been under increasing strain. Widening economic inequality, the persistence and increased virulence of racial and ethnic tensions, and the inability of existing political institutions to manage disputes and solve problems have all contributed to a growing sense of crisis in American democracy. This crisis of democracy extends well beyond immediate questions about elections, voting, and the exercise of political power in Washington. Our democratic challenges are deeper. How do we develop institutions and organizations to enable civic engagement beyond voting every few years? What kinds of institutions, organizations, and practices are needed to make public policies inclusive, equitable, and responsive to the communities they are supposed to serve? How do we create a greater capacity for and commitment to investing in grassroots democracy? How can we do all this while building a multiracial and multiethnic society inclusive of all?

The current political moment creates an opportunity to think more deeply about both the crisis of American democracy today and about the democracy that we want—and how we might get there. Few scholars or practitioners would content themselves with our current democratic institutions. At the same time, generating a more durable, inclusive, and responsive democracy requires being realistic about constraints, limitations, and tensions that will necessarily arise.

In this report we sketch out some of the central challenges and tensions we see, as well as some potential avenues for renewal and transformation. Based on a convening at New America in Washington, D.C. and a series of ongoing conversations with organizers, policymakers, and scholars from around the country, we propose a framework in this report to serve as a resource for continuing these important efforts in pioneering new forms of democratic governance….(More)”.

Civic Creativity: Role-Playing Games in Deliberative Process

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Eric Gordon, Jason Haas, and Becky Michelson at the International Journal of Communication: “This article analyzes the use of a role-playing game in a civic planning process. We focus on the qualities of interactions generated through gameplay, specifically the affordances of voluntary play within a “magic circle” of the game, that directly impact participants’ ability to generate new ideas about the community. We present the results of a quasi-experimental study where a role-playing game (RPG) called @Stake is incorporated into participatory budgeting meetings in New York City and compared with meetings that incorporated a trivia game. We provide evidence that the role-playing game, which encourages empathy, is more effective than a game that tests knowledge for generating what we call civic creativity, or an individual’s ability to come up with new ideas. Rapid ideation and social learning nurtured by the game point to a kind of group creativity that fosters social connection and understanding of consequence outside of the game. We conclude with thoughts on future research….(More)”.