Interview by David Bornstein at the New York Times: “Last year, the RAND Survey Research Group asked 3,037 Americans about their political preferences and found that the factor that best predicted support for Donald Trump wasn’t age, race, gender, income, educational attainment or attitudes toward Muslims or undocumented immigrants. It was whether respondents agreed with the statement “People like me don’t have any say about what the government does.”
A feeling of disenfranchisement, or powerlessness, runs deep in the country — and it’s understandable. For most Americans, wages have been flat for 40 years, while incomes have soared for the superrich. Researchers have found, unsurprisingly, that the preferences of wealthy people have a much bigger influence on policy than those of poor or middle-income people.
“I don’t think people are wrong to feel that the game has been rigged,” says Eric Liu, the author of “You’re More Powerful Than You Think: A Citizen’s Guide to Making Change Happen,” an engaging and extremely timely book published last week. “But we’re in a period where across the political spectrum — from the libertarian Tea Party right to the Occupy and Black Lives Matter left — people are pushing back and recognizing that the only remedy is to convert this feeling of ‘not having a say’ into ‘demanding a say.’ ”
Liu, who founded Citizen University, a nonprofit citizen participation organization in Seattle, teaches citizens to do just that. He has also traveled the country, searching across the partisan divide for places where citizens are making democracy work better. In his new book, he has assembled stories of citizen action and distilled them into powerful insights and strategies….
Can you explain the three “core laws of power” you outline in the book?
L. No. 1: Power compounds, as does powerlessness. The rich get richer, and people with clout get more clout.
No. 2: Power justifies itself. In a hundred different ways — propaganda, conventional wisdom, just-so stories — people at the top of the hierarchy tell narratives about why it should be so.
If the world stopped with laws No. 1 and 2, we would be stuck in this doom loop that would tip us toward monopoly and tyranny.
What saves us is law No. 3: Power is infinite. I don’t mean we are all equally powerful. I mean simply and quite literally that we can generate power out of thin air. We do that by organizing….(More)”
Report by The Hertie School of Governance: “Looking at recent developments around the world, it seems that democratic values — from freedom of association and speech to fair and free elections and a system of checks and balances — have come under threat. Experts have, however, disproportionately focused on the problems of democracy in the West, and pointed to familiar sets of shortcomings and emerging deficiencies. By contrast, and with few exceptions, there is less attention to assessing the numerous efforts and innovative activities that are taking place at local, national and international levels. They seek to counteract backsliding and subversion by improving resilience and consolidation and by promoting the expansion of democracy, especially in an era of limited sovereignty and, frequently also, statehood.
The Governance Report 2017 focuses on those policies, programs, and initiatives meant to address the causes of the current democratic malaise, to foster democratic resilience, and to stimulate the (re-)consolidation and development of democratic regimes. The Report’s ambition, reflecting its evidence-based approach, is to shed light on how to manage and care for democracy itself. Specifically, against the backdrop of an assessment of the state of democracy and enriched by cross-national, comparative indicators and case studies, the Report emphasizes solutions geared toward enhancing citizen participation and improving institutions in various contexts, including the rise of neo-populism. Going beyond descriptions of best practices, the Report also examines their origins, identifies the actual and potential trade-offs these solutions entail, and makes concrete recommendations to policymakers….(More)”
Report by the National Academies of Sciences’s Panel on Improving Federal Statistics for Policy and Social Science: “Federal government statistics provide critical information to the country and serve a key role in a democracy. For decades, sample surveys with instruments carefully designed for particular data needs have been one of the primary methods for collecting data for federal statistics. However, the costs of conducting such surveys have been increasing while response rates have been declining, and many surveys are not able to fulfill growing demands for more timely information and for more detailed information at state and local levels.
Innovations in Federal Statistics examines the opportunities and risks of using government administrative and private sector data sources to foster a paradigm shift in federal statistical programs that would combine diverse data sources in a secure manner to enhance federal statistics. This first publication of a two-part series discusses the challenges faced by the federal statistical system and the foundational elements needed for a new paradigm….(More)”
Elena Mesropyan at LTP: “Civic technology, or Civic Tech, is defined as a technology that enables greater participation in government or otherwise assists government in delivering citizen services and strengthening ties with the public. In other words, Civic Tech is where the public lends its talents, usually voluntarily, to help government do a better job. Moreover, Omidyar Network(which invested over $90 million across 35 civic tech organizations over the past decade) emphasizes that like a movement, civic tech is mission-driven, focused on making a change that benefits the public, and in most cases enables better public input into decision making.
As an emerging sector, Civic Tech is defined as incorporating any technology that is used to empower citizens or help make government more accessible, efficient, and effective. Civic tech isn’t just talk, Omidyar notes, it is a community of people coming together to create tangible projects and take action. The civic tech and open data movements have grown with the ubiquity of personal technology.
Civic tech can be defined as a convergence of various fields. An example of such convergence has been given by Knight Foundation, a national foundation with a goal to foster informed and engaged communities to power a healthy democracy:
Citizen to Citizen (C2C): Technology that improves citizen mobilization or improves connections between citizens
Citizen to Government (C2G): Technology that improves the frequency or quality of interaction between citizens and government
Government Technology (Govtech): Innovative technology solutions that make government more efficient and effective at service delivery
In 2015, Forbes reported that Civic Tech makes up almost a quarter of local and state government spendings on technology….
Civic tech initiatives address a diverse range of industries – from energy and payments to agriculture and telecommunications. Mattermark outlines the following top ten industries associated with government and civic tech:
…There are certainly much more examples of GovTech/civic tech companies, and just tech startups offering solutions across the board that can significantly improve the way governments are run, and services are delivered to citizens and businesses. More importantly, GovTech should no longer be considered a charity and solely non-profit type of venture. Recently reviewed global P2G payments flows only, for example, are estimated to be at $7.7 trillion and represent a significant feature of the global payments landscape. For the low- and lower-middle-income countries alone, the number hits $375 billion (~50% of annual government expenditure)….(More)”
Unbubble: “We all live in bubbles – communities of people from similar backgrounds who think similar things.
If we are going to work together, we need to get beyond these bubbles to understand what ALL of our fellow citizens are experiencing and thinking….
Unbubble is a cross-partisan, non-commercial, non-profit, non-ideological project. There is no special interest behind it – other than some private citizens who feel we need to get beyond our bubbles and talk to each other as Americans.
The idea emerged from a group of friends/colleagues from Arizona, Connecticut, Indiana, New York, Texas, Virginia and Washington who were talking about ways to strengthen our democracy. Once this founding team reaches a few dozen people from sufficiently diverse walks of life, we’ll announce all the names behind it.
….Unbubble will launch multiple conversation forums in which 100 people from different backgrounds can talk to each other about issues that concern them. You will be able to describe how your personal story informs your views on particular topics. …
We will ask participants to answer a few questions about their background, views and favorite sources of information. Our software will gather strangers from across the political and socio-economic spectrum in order to establish as many balanced 100-person “Unbubble” groups as we can. Each group should reflect the makeup of the adult American population overall….
We are hoping to strengthen our democracy. We feel Americans should be having difficult conversations about current issues and about what kind of future we are building. We are not trying to change anybody’s mind or prove that anybody is right or wrong. We expect the arguments will be heated, but we hope that Unbubble conversations help participants achieve greater understanding and empathy toward the views of different people. This may someday point the way to areas of common ground in local and national conversations on any topic….(More)”.
Rania Fakhoury at the Conversation: “Privacy is no longer a social norm, said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2010, as social media took a leap to bring more private information into the public domain.
But what does it mean for governments, citizens and the exercise of democracy? Donald Trump is clearly not the first leader to use his Twitter account as a way to both proclaim his policies and influence the political climate. Social media presents novel challenges to strategic policy, and has become a managerial issues for many governments.
But it also offers a free platform for public participation in government affairs. Many argue that the rise of social media technologies can give citizens and observers a better opportunity to identify pitfalls of government and their politics.
As government embrace the role of social media and the influence of negative or positive feedback on the success of their project, they are also using this tool to their advantages by spreading fabricated news.
This much freedom of expression and opinion can be a double-edged sword.
A tool that triggers change
On the positive side, social media include social networking applications such as Facebook and Google+, microblogging services such as Twitter, blogs, video blogs (vlogs), wikis, and media-sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr, among others.
Today four out of five countries in the world have social media features on their national portals to promote interactive networking and communication with the citizen. Although we don’t have any information about the effectiveness of such tools or whether they are used to their full potential, 20% of these countries shows that they have “resulted in new policy decisions, regulation or service”.
Social media can be an effective tool to trigger changes in government policies and services if well used. It can be used to prevent corruption, as it is direct method of reaching citizens. In developing countries, corruption is often linked to governmental services that lack automated processes or transparency in payments.
The UK is taking the lead on this issue. Its anti-corruption innovation hub aims to connect several stakeholders – including civil society, law enforcement and technologies experts – to engage their efforts toward a more transparent society.
With social media, governments can improve and change the way they communicate with their citizens – and even question government projects and policies. In Kazakhstan, for example, a migration-related legislative amendment entered into force early January 2017 and compelled property owners to register people residing in their homes immediately or else face a penalty charge starting in February 2017.
Citizens were unprepared for this requirement, and many responded with indignation on social media. At first the government ignored this reaction. However, as the growing anger soared via social media, the government took action and introduced a new service to facilitate the registration of temporary citizens….
But the campaigns that result do not always evolve into positive change.
Egypt and Libya are still facing several major crises over the last years, along with political instability and domestic terrorism. The social media influence that triggered the Arab Spring did not permit these political systems to turn from autocracy to democracy.
Brazil exemplifies a government’s failure to react properly to a massive social media outburst. In June 2013 people took to the streets to protest the rising fares of public transportation. Citizens channelled their anger and outrage through social media to mobilise networks and generate support.
As in the Arab Spring countries, the use of social media in Brazil did not result in economic improvement. The country has tumbled down into depression, and unemployment has risen to 12.6%…..
Government typically asks “how can we adapt social media to the way in which we do e-services, and then try to shape their policies accordingly. They would be wiser to ask, “how can social media enable us to do things differently in a way they’ve never been done before?” – that is, policy-making in collaboration with people….(More)”.
Chapter by Koen Van Aeken in: Prins, C. et. al (eds.) Digital Democracy in a Globalized World (Edward Elgar, 2017), Forthcoming: “The research question is how technologies characterized by ubiquitous Web 2.0 interactivity may contribute to democracy. Following a case study design, two applications were evaluated: the Belgian CitizenLab, a mobile, social and local private application to support public decision making in cities, and the Dutch governmental website Internetconsultatie. Available data suggest that the Dutch consultation platform is mainly visited by the ‘usual suspects’ and lacks participatory functionalities. In contrast, CitizenLab explicitly aims at policy co-creation through broad participation. Its novelty, however, prevents making sound empirical statements.
A comprehensive conceptualization precedes the case studies. To avoid instrumentalist reduction, the social setting of the technologies is reconstructed. Since its constituents, embedding and expectations – initially represented as the nation state and representative democracy – are increasingly challenged, their transformations are consequently discussed. The new embedding emerges as a governance constellation; new expectations concern the participatory dimension of politics. Future assessments of technologies may benefit from this conceptualization….(More)”
Report by David Cuillier: “People must have access to reliable public information to make informed decisions and hold their elected officials accountable. Without transparent government at all levels—local, state and federal—representative democracy is threatened. For a generation, presidents of both parties have in different ways tightened controls on government information. “The natural progress of things,” Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation commissioned this study to better understand the landscape involving public access to government records by gathering information and insights from 336 freedom of information experts—journalists, advocates, record custodians, technology companies, scholars and others. In all, from December 2016 through January 2017, 108 experts were interviewed and 228 surveyed online. The study is not representative of journalists or society as a whole, but rather a cross section of those who deal with public record laws routinely. They are the active members, and in some cases the leaders, of America’s freedom of information community. Freedom of information is not decided only in Washington, D.C. All levels of government are involved, bringing into view a diversity of government officials. Our objective was to canvass experts to identify barriers to information access and possible solutions, looking broadly at the law, public education, networking and new technology. We found dissatisfaction, uncertainty and worry.
Key points:
1. MANY EXPERTS SAY ACCESS IS WORSE TODAY COMPARED WITH FOUR YEARS AGO: About half of the 228 experts surveyed online reported that access to state and local records has gotten worse during the past four years (41 percent said it stayed the same, and 13 percent said it has gotten better2 ), and 41 percent said access to federal records has worsened. “What I hear from reporters in Washington and my students is that exemptions are being used in way too many cases and delays are still very long,” said Leonard Downie, former Washington Post executive editor and current Weil Family Professor of Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. “I hope the door doesn’t get shut tighter.”
2. NEARLY 4 IN 10 SEE A RISE IN DENIALS: Though most respondents (57 percent) said denials have stayed the same during the past four years, 38 percent said they have been denied records at any level of government more frequently, and only 6 percent said denials have decreased. …
3. OVERWHELMINGLY, EXPERTS PREDICTED THAT ACCESS WILL GET WORSE: Nearly 9 out of 10 predicted that access to government will worsen because of the new presidential administration. “I think it’s going to be a backyard brawl,” said Ted Bridis, investigations editor for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C. Over the past several months, nonprofit organizations scrambled to save data purged from federal websites and listed the many restrictions placed on communications with the public.
This report lays out problems with freedom of information and synthesizes solutions aimed at making freedom of information laws work as their creators intended—as an open, honest way for the public to know what its government is doing….(More)”
Adele Peters in Fast Company: “On March 11, in a state parliament election in West Australia, 24 candidates made only one campaign promise: If they won, they promised to vote on every bill according to the wishes of their constituents, as determined via an app called Flux. (While the votes are still being tallied, it looks unlikely that any will win.)
Flux’s app is one of a handful of new platforms that aim to use technology to let people participate directly in politics, at scale. All are premised on the fact that–around the world–representative democracy isn’t working well. But technology could potentially help end corruption and lobbying, allow people to delegate votes to trusted friends rather than politicians, and empower experts in a field to meaningfully impact policy.
Does Democracy Work?
In 2015, shortly after Donald Trump announced that he was running for president, polls found that only 19% of Americans trusted the government “always” or “most of the time.” (The survey has not been repeated, but presumably, the numbers have not improved.) Only 11% approved of Congress.
Those numbers are historic lows; in 1958, when a poll first asked the question, 73% of Americans said that they could trust the government most of the time. The results can be partisan–people are less likely to trust the government when the opposing party is in power, and Republicans are less likely to trust government, in general, than Democrats. But the overall message is clear. Most people don’t think democracy is working in its current form….
The problems may stem from our form of government. “The problem, fundamentally, is representative democracy,” says Nathan Spataro, cofounder of both the Flux political party in Australia and XO.1, the startup making the software that powers the Flux app. “It is not that your politicians are corrupt, it’s that the politicians are corrupt because of the system. You don’t have to look far to watch how politicians start their career, and how then the system fundamentally changes them by the time they get to the end of it.”
Liquid Democracy
True direct democracy, in which every member of a society votes on everything, could eliminate the problem of lobbying, but has rarely existed. In ancient Athens, assemblies made up of all the citizens gathered to make decisions (women and slaves were not allowed to be citizens). In some Swiss cantons, citizens can participate directly in local government. In both cases, though, issues facing voters were relatively simple and limited in scope. While direct democracy might be the ideal–a government that’s literally by the people and for the people–it’s hard to scale up. In a large society with complex issues, it isn’t possible for even the most dedicated individual to keep up with every possible item that requires a vote–or have an informed opinion about them.
Representative democracy, which ideally solves that problem, also struggles with size. “One of the key problems of the U.S. political system is that it runs into scaling limits,” says Bryan Ford, a computer scientist who leads the Decentralized/Distributed Systems lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
Sixteen years ago, Ford began thinking about what he calls delegative democracy, now also known as liquid democracy. “The whole idea of delegative democracy is to try to create a representative system that responds to the needs of individuals but also scales,” he says. “In some sense, delegative or liquid democracy is an approximation to the completely impractical idea of fully participatory, direct democracy.”
It works like this: Rather than asking citizens to vote on every issue, it gives each person the power to vote or to appoint a delegate to vote for them. Unlike a typical representative, that delegate could be changed at any time depending on the issue….(More)”.
Thamy Pogrebinschi at Open Democracy: “The advancement of tools of information and communications technology (ICT) has the potential to impact democracy nearly as much as any other area, such as science or education. The effects of the digital world on politics and society are still difficult to measure, and the speed with which these new technological tools evolve is often faster than a scholar’s ability to assess them, or a policymaker’s capacity to make them fit into existing institutional designs.
Since their early inception, digital tools and widespread access to the internet have been changing the traditional means of participation in politics, making them more effective. Electoral processes have become more transparent and effective in several countries where the paper ballot has been substituted for electronic voting machines. Petition-signing became a widespread and powerful tool as individual citizens no longer needed to be bothered out in the streets to sign a sheet of paper, but could instead be simultaneously reached by the millions via e-mail and have their names added to virtual petition lists in seconds. Protests and demonstrations have also been immensely revitalized in the internet era. In the last few years, social networks like Facebook and WhatsApp have proved to be a driving-force behind democratic uprisings, by mobilizing the masses, invoking large gatherings, and raising awareness, as was the case of the Arab Spring.
While traditional means of political participation can become more effective by reducing the costs of participation with the use of ICT tools, one cannot yet assure that it would become less subject to distortion and manipulation. In the most recent United States’ elections, computer scientists claimed that electronic voting machines may have been hacked, altering the results in the counties that relied on them. E-petitions can also be easily manipulated, if safe identification procedures are not put in place. And in these times of post-facts and post-truths, protests and demonstrations can result from strategic partisan manipulation of social media, leading to democratic instability as has recently occurred in Brazil. Nevertheless, the distortion and manipulation of these traditional forms of participation were also present before the rise of ICT tools, and regardless, even if the latter do not solve these preceding problems, they may manage to make political processes more effective anyway.
The game-changer for democracy, however, is not the revitalization of the traditional means of political participation like elections, petition-signing and protests through digital tools. Rather, the real change on how democracy works, governments rule, and representation is delivered comes from entirely new means of e-participation, or the so-called digital democratic innovations. While the internet may boost traditional forms of political participation by increasing the quantity of citizens engaged, democratic innovations that rely on ICT tools may change the very quality of participation, thus in the long-run changing the nature of democracy and its institutions….(More)”
