To Tackle Climate Change, We Need To Update Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Mark Baldassare and Cheryl Katz: “…Engaging the public through direct democracy can provide an antidote to the widespread government distrust and extreme political polarization that is currently paralyzing the nation. As shown by the overwhelming and bipartisan support for the outcome of a ballot measure such as Proposition 20’s Coastal Commission, statutes enacted through the initiative process have the potential to stand the test of time. State lawmakers, in turn, feel the weight of public opinion and are loath to tinker with laws that have received majority endorsement. 

The seeming intractability of citizens’ initiatives could be seen as an argument against direct democracy. This was exemplified by recent failed propositions aimed at changing the low commercial property tax rates set by the 1978 Proposition 13 (i.e. 2020 Proposition 15) and at ending the ban on affirmative action programs established by the 1996 Proposition 209 (i.e. 2020 Proposition 16). One reason these efforts were doomed is that proponents failed to engage with the public on such controversial policy issues and did not overcome voters’ inherent skepticism. When voters are dubious about a measure’s intentions or outcome, the default is to say “no” — shown by the historical initiative pass rate of 35%.            

“Giving citizens agency in tackling the planet’s most pressing issue stands to motivate them to adopt difficult measures and make the lifestyle changes required.”

Another form of direct democracy is citizens assemblies, in which a large group of randomly selected members of the public engage in guided discussions and make policy recommendations. When applied to climate change, giving citizens agency in tackling the planet’s most pressing issue stands to motivate them to adopt difficult measures and make the lifestyle changes required. For example, political scientist Carsten Berg’s analysis of the citizens’ assemblies convened for the European Union’s Conference on the Future of Europe in 2022 describes how participation engendered a sense of group purpose and spurred collaboration toward a common goal. 

Direct democracy tools can help overcome the public’s feelings of helplessness in the face of the climate crisis and generate a shared sense of responsibility for mitigation. A 2022 research report examined the emotional experiences of participants in a 2020-21 Scottish citizens’ assembly convened to address the question of how Scotland could “tackle the climate emergency in an effective and fair way.” Compared to the general population, writes Lancaster University researcher Nadine Andrews, assembly members had “higher levels of hopefulness and optimism, lower levels of worry and overwhelm, and a lower proportion reporting that their emotions about climate change were having a negative impact on their mental health,” while participating in the process. Participants told Andrews they felt a sense of agency and empowerment to change their behavior and take “urgent climate action.”  

While invaluable for promoting climate justice, however, citizens’ assemblies have lacked the authority to create policy. As Berg points out, the outcome of the Future of Europe deliberations was non-binding, had a small reach and received little public attention. And Andrews found that participants’ hope and optimism about tackling climate change dropped in the wake of the Scottish government’s lackluster response to the panel’s report. The outcome of any such effort in California will need to be much more results-oriented…(More)”.

Can Cities Be the Source of Scalable Innovations?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Christof Brandtner: “Systems change to address complex problems, including climate change, is hard to achieve. What little optimism remains to tackle such complex challenges is mostly placed in supranational schemes, such as the COP climate change conferences, or transformational national policy, such as the Green New Deal in the US. Solutions of grand design regularly disappoint, however, because of their high costs, the challenges of translating big plans to local needs, and ongoing disagreement and polarization about what works and what is detrimental.

There is hope on the skyline though. Urban innovation ecosystems can provide an alternative to grand schemes, and cities’ social sectors provide a source of ongoing innovation. Companies like Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet that develops technologies for sustainable urban design, are transforming business as usual to solve complex urban problems. Social enterprises such as car-sharing programs are changing the nature of urban transportation and providing alternative options to individual car ownership. Through its iconic mobile showers, the San Francisco nonprofit LavaMae has found new ways to serve the homeless in the absence of more radical reforms of affordable housing. And the US Green Building Council (USGBC), an intermediary promoting energy-efficient construction, developed guidelines and rating systems for sustainable cities and neighborhoods.

Promising ideas are in ample supply, but the crucial question is: How can social innovators scale such innovations so that their local impact adds up to big solutions?…(More)”.

Advancing Technology for Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The White House: “The first wave of the digital revolution promised that new technologies would support democracy and human rights. The second saw an authoritarian counterrevolution. Now, the United States and other democracies are working together to ensure that the third wave of the digital revolution leads to a technological ecosystem characterized by resilience, integrity, openness, trust and security, and that reinforces democratic principles and human rights.

Together, we are organizing and mobilizing to ensure that technologies work for, not against, democratic principles, institutions, and societies.  In so doing, we will continue to engage the private sector, including by holding technology platforms accountable when they do not take action to counter the harms they cause, and by encouraging them to live up to democratic principles and shared values…

Key deliverables announced or highlighted at the second Summit for Democracy include:

  • National Strategy to Advance Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing and Analytics. OSTP released a National Strategy to Advance Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing and Analytics, a roadmap for harnessing privacy-enhancing technologies, coupled with strong governance, to enable data sharing and analytics in a way that benefits individuals and society, while mitigating privacy risks and harms and upholding democratic principles.  
  • National Objectives for Digital Assets Research and Development. OSTP also released a set of National Objectives for Digital Assets Research and Development, whichoutline its priorities for the responsible research and development (R&D) of digital assets. These objectives will help developers of digital assets better reinforce democratic principles and protect consumers by default.
  • Launch of Trustworthy and Responsible AI Resource Center for Risk Management. NIST announced a new Resource Center, which is designed as a one-stop-shop website for foundational content, technical documents, and toolkits to enable responsible use of AI. Government, industry, and academic stakeholders can access resources such as a repository for AI standards, measurement methods and metrics, and data sets. The website is designed to facilitate the implementation and international alignment with the AI Risk Management Framework. The Framework articulates the key building blocks of trustworthy AI and offers guidance for addressing them.
  • International Grand Challenges on Democracy-Affirming Technologies. Announced at the first Summit, the United States and the United Kingdom carried out their joint Privacy Enhancing Technology Prize Challenges. IE University, in partnership with the U.S. Department of State, hosted the Tech4Democracy Global Entrepreneurship Challenge. The winners, selected from around the world, were featured at the second Summit….(More)”.

How Design is Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Amber Case: “At a fundamental level, all design is governance. We encounter inconveniences like this coffee shop every day, both offline and in the apps we use. But it’s not enough to say it’s the result of bad design. It’s also a result of governance decisions made on behalf of the customers during the design process.

Michel Foucault talked about governance as structuring the field of action for others. Governance is the processes, systems, and principles through which a group, organization, or society is managed and controlled.

Design not only shapes how a product or service will be used, but also restricts or frustrates people’s existing or emergent choices, even when they’re not a user themselves. My neighbor at the cafe, who now has a Mac power cord snaked under her feet, can attest to that.

In a coffee shop, we’re lucky that we can move chairs around or talk with other customers. But when it comes to apps, most people cannot move buttons on interfaces. We’re stuck.

When we create designs, we’re basically defining what is possible or at least highly encouraged within the context of our products. We’re also defining what is discouraged.

To illustrate, let’s revisit this same cafe from a governance perspective…(More)”.

What We Gain from More Behavioral Science in the Global South

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Pauline Kabitsis and Lydia Trupe: “In recent years, the field has been critiqued for applying behavioral science at the margins, settling for small but statistically significant effect sizes. Critics have argued that by focusing our efforts on nudging individuals to increase their 401(k) contributions or to reduce their so-called carbon footprint, we have ignored the systemic drivers of important challenges, such as fundamental flaws in the financial system and corporate responsibility for climate change. As Michael Hallsworth points out, however, the field may not be willfully ignoring these deeper challenges, but rather investing in areas of change that are likely easier to move, measure, and secure funding.

It’s been our experience working in the Global South that nudge-based solutions can provide short-term gains within current systems, but for lasting impact a focus beyond individual-level change is required. This is because the challenges in the Global South typically navigate fundamental problems, like enabling women’s reproductive choice, combatting intimate partner violence and improving food security among the world’s most vulnerable populations.

Our work at Common Thread focuses on improving behaviors related to health, like encouraging those persistently left behind to get vaccinated, and enabling Ukrainian refugees in Poland to access health and welfare services. We use a behavioral model that considers not just the individual biases that impact people’s behaviors, but the structural, social, interpersonal, and even historical context that triggers these biases and inhibits health seeking behaviors…(More)”.

Policy Guide on Social Impact Measurement for the Social and Solidarity Economy

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OECD Report: “As social and solidarity economy (SSE) entities are increasingly requested to demonstrate their positive contribution to society, social impact measurement can help them understand the additional, net value generated by their activities, in the pursuit of their mission and beyond. Policy plays an important role to facilitate a conducive environment to unlock the uptake of social impact measurement among SSE actors. Drawing on a mapping exercise and good practice examples from over 33 countries, this international policy guide navigates how policy makers can support social impact measurement for the social and solidarity economy by: (i) improving the policy framework, (ii) delivering guidance, (iii) building evidence and (iv) supporting capacity. Building on the earlier publication Social Impact Measurement for the Social and Solidarity Economy released in 2021 the guide is published under the framework of the OECD Global Action “Promoting Social and Solidarity Economy Ecosystems”, funded by the European Union’s Foreign Partnership Instrument…(More)”.

The Synchronized Society: Time and Control From Broadcasting to the Internet

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Randall Patnode: “…traces the history of the synchronous broadcast experience of the twentieth century and the transition to the asynchronous media that dominate today. Broadcasting grew out of the latent desire by nineteenth-century industrialists, political thinkers, and social reformers to tame an unruly society by controlling how people used their time. The idea manifested itself in the form of the broadcast schedule, a managed flow of information and entertainment that required audiences to be in a particular place – usually the home – at a particular time and helped to create “water cooler” moments, as audiences reflected on their shared media texts. Audiences began disconnecting from the broadcast schedule at the end of the twentieth century, but promoters of social media and television services still kept audiences under control, replacing the schedule with surveillance of media use. Author Randall Patnode offers compelling new insights into the intermingled roles of broadcasting and industrial/post-industrial work and how Americans spend their time…(More)”.

A shift in paradigm? Collaborative public administration in the context of national digitalization strategies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Gerhard Hammerschmid, Enora Palaric, Maike Rackwitz, and Kai Wegrich: “Despite claims of a paradigmatic shift toward the increased role of networks and partnerships as a form of governance—driven and enabled by digital technologies—the relation of “Networked Governance” with the pre-existing paradigms of “Traditional Weberian Public Administration” and “New Public Management” remains relatively unexplored. This research aims at collecting systematic evidence on the dominant paradigms in digitalization reforms in Europe by comparing the doctrines employed in the initial and most recent digitalization strategies across eight European countries: Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom. We challenge the claim that Networked Governance is emerging as the dominant paradigm in the context of the digitalization of the public sector. The findings confirm earlier studies indicating that information and communication technologies tend to reinforce some traditional features of administration and the recentralization of power. Furthermore, we find evidence of the continued importance of key features of “New Public Management” in the digital era…(More)”.

Professional expertise in Policy Advisory Systems: How administrators and consultants built Behavioral Insights in Danish public agencies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jakob Laage-Thomsen: “Recent work on consultants and academics in public policy has highlighted their transformational role. The paper traces how, in the absence of an explicit government strategy, external advisors establish different organizational arrangements to build Behavioral Insights in public agencies as a new form of administrative expertise. This variation shows the importance of the politico-administrative context within which external advisors exert influence. The focus on professional expertise adds to existing understandings of ideational compatibility in contemporary Policy Advisory Systems. Inspired by the Sociology of Professions, expertise is conceptualized as professionally constructed sets of diagnosis, inference, and treatment. The paper compares four Danish governmental agencies since 2010, revealing the central roles external advisors play in facilitating new policy ideas and diffusing new forms of expertise. This has implications for how we think of administrative expertise in contemporary bureaucracies, and the role of external advisors in fostering new forms of expertise….(More)”.

How Democracy Can Win

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Samantha Power: “…At the core of democratic theory and practice is respect for the dignity of the individual. But among the biggest errors many democracies have made since the Cold War is to view individual dignity primarily through the prism of political freedom without being sufficiently attentive to the indignity of corruption, inequality, and a lack of economic opportunity.

This was not a universal blind spot: a number of political figures, advocates, and individuals working at the grassroots level to advance democratic progress presciently argued that economic inequality could fuel the rise of populist leaders and autocratic governments that pledged to improve living standards even as they eroded freedoms. But too often, the activists, lawyers, and other members of civil society who worked to strengthen democratic institutions and protect civil liberties looked to labor movements, economists, and policymakers to address economic dislocation, wealth inequality, and declining wages rather than building coalitions to tackle these intersecting problems.

Democracy suffered as a result. Over the past two decades,as economic inequality rose, polls showed that people in rich and poor countries alike began to lose faith in democracy and worry that young people would end up worse off than they were, giving populists and ethno­nationalists an opening to exploit grievances and gain a political foothold on every continent.

Moving forward, we must look at all economic programming that respects democratic norms as a form of democracy assistance. When we help democratic leaders provide vaccines to their people, bring down inflation or high food prices, send children to school, or reopen markets after a natural disaster, we are demonstrating—in a way that a free press or vibrant civil society cannot always do—that democracy delivers. And we are making it less likely that autocratic forces will take advantage of people’s economic hardship.

Nowhere is that task more important today than in societies that have managed to elect democratic reformers or throw off autocratic or antidemocratic rule through peaceful mass protests or successful political movements. These democratic bright spots are incredibly fragile. Unless reformers solidify their democratic and economic gains quickly, populations understandably grow impatient, especially if they feel that the risks they took to upend the old order have not yielded tangible dividends in their own lives. Such discontent allows opponents of democratic rule—often aided by external autocratic regimes—to wrest back control, reversing reforms and snuffing out dreams of rights-regarding self-government…(More)”.