Essay by Sarah M. Brownsberger on “The dehumanizing way economics data describes us”: “…My alma mater wants to know what industry I belong to. In a wash of good feeling after seeing old friends, I have gone to the school website to update my contact information. Name and address, easy, marital status, well and good—but next comes a drop-down menu asking for my “industry.”
In my surprise, I have an impulse to type “Where the bee sucks, there suck I!” But you can’t quote Shakespeare in a drop-down menu. You can only opt only for its options.
The school is certainly cutting-edge. Like a fashion item that you see once and assume is aberrant and then see ten times in a week, the word “industry” is all over town. Cryptocurrency is an industry. So are Elvis-themed marriages. Outdoor recreation is an industry. A brewery in my city hosts “Industry Night,” a happy hour “for those who work in the industry”—tapsters and servers.
Are we all in an industry? What happened to “occupation”?…(More)”.
Article by Nick Vlahos: “There is a growing excitement in the democracy field about the potential of citizen’s assemblies (CAs), a practice that brings together groups of residents selected by lottery to deliberate on public policy issues. There is longitudinal evidence to suggest that deliberative mini-publics such as those who meet in CAs can be transformative when it comes to adding more nuance to public opinion on complex and potentially polarizing issues.
But there are two common critiques of CAs. The first is that they are not connected to centers of power (with very few notable exceptions) and don’t have authority to make binding decisions. The second is that they are often disconnected from the broader public, and indeed often claim to be making their own, new “publics” instead of engaging with existing ones.
In this article I propose that proponents of CAs could benefit from the thirty-year history of another democratic innovation—participatory budgeting (PB). There are nearly 12,000 recorded instances of PB to draw learnings from. I see value in both innovations (and have advocated and written about both) and would be interested to see some sort of experimentation that combines PB and CAs, from a decentralized, bottom-up, community-driven approach.
We can and should think about grassroots ways to scale and connect people across geography using combinations of democratic innovations, which along the way builds up (local) civic infrastructure by drawing from existing civic capital (resident-led groups, non-profits, service providers, social movements/mobilization etc.)…(More)”.
Report by POPVOX: “The report tracks current developments in the U.S. Congress and internationally, while assessing the prospects for future innovations. The report also serves as a primer for those in Congress on AI technologies and methods in an effort to promote responsible use and adoption. POPVOX endorses a considered, step-wise strategy for AI experimentation, underscoring the importance of capacity building, data stewardship, ethical frameworks, and insights gleaned from global precedents of AI in parliamentary functions. This ensures AI solutions are crafted with human discernment and supervision at their core.
Legislatures worldwide are progressively embracing AI tools such as machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision to refine the precision, efficiency, and, to a small extent, the participatory aspects of their operations. The advent of generative AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, which excel in interpreting and organizing textual data, marks a transformative shift for the legislative process, inherently a task of converting rules into language.
While nations such as Brazil, India, Italy, and Estonia lead with applications ranging from the transcription and translation of parliamentary proceedings to enhanced bill drafting and sophisticated legislative record searches, the U.S. Congress is prudently venturing into the realm of Generative AI. The House and Senate have initiated AI working groups and secured licenses for platforms like ChatGPT. They have also issued guidance on responsible use…(More)”.
Book by Donald F. Kettl: “From Caligula and the time of ancient Rome to the present, governments have relied on experts to manage public programs. But with that expertise has come power, and that power has long proven difficult to hold accountable. The tension between experts in the bureaucracy and the policy goals of elected officials, however, remains a point of often bitter tension. President Donald Trump labeled these experts as a ‘deep state’ seeking to resist the policies he believed he was elected to pursue—and he developed a policy scheme to make it far easier to fire experts he deemed insufficiently loyal. The age-old battles between expertise and accountability have come to a sharp point, and resolving these tensions requires a fresh look at the rule of law to shape the role of experts in governance…(More)”.
WEF Report: “From 2012 up until the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increase in cooperation across four of the five pillars, with peace and security being the only exception. Innovation and technology saw the biggest increase in cooperation – at more than 30%.
The report shows a “stark deterioration” in the peace and security pillar due to a rapid rise in the number of forcibly displaced people and deaths from conflict. However, there has been “continued growth” in the climate and nature pillar due to increased commitments from countries.
How cooperation has developed over the past decade, by pillar Image: World Economic Forum
Here’s what you need to know about cooperation across the five pillars.
Trade and capital
Global trade and capital flows rose moderately between 2012 and 2022. During the pandemic, these areas experienced volatility, with labour migration patterns dropping. But metrics such as goods trade, development assistance and developing countries’ share of foreign direct investment, and manufacturing exports have returned to strong growth in the post-pandemic period, says the report.
Innovation and technology
In the eight years until the pandemic, innovation and technology cooperation “maintained strong and significant growth” across most indicators, especially cross-border data flows and IT services trade. But this has plateaued since 2020, with some key metrics, including cross-border patent applications and international student flows, falling.
Discover
How is the World Economic Forum creating guardrails for Artificial Intelligence?
Climate and natural capital
This is the only pillar that has seen the majority of indicators rise across the whole decade, with financial commitments to mitigation and adaptation and a significant expansion of marine protected areas. However, emissions continue to rise and “progress towards ecological outcomes is stagnant”, says the report.
Health and wellness
Between 2012 and 2020, cooperation on health and wellness rose consistently and was “essential” to navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, says the report, citing vaccine development, if not necessarily distribution, as an example. But cooperation has dipped slightly since its peak in 2020.
Peace and security
Trends in peace and security cooperation have declined considerably since 2016, driven by a rise in forcibly displaced people and cyberattacks, as well as a recent increase in the number of conflicts and conflict-related deaths. The report notes these metrics suggest an “increasingly unstable global security environment and increased intensity of conflicts”…(More)”.
Article by Seána Glennon: “In the coming week, thousands of households across Austria will receive an invitation to participate in a citizens’ assembly with a unique goal: to determine how to spend the €25 million fortune of a 31-year-old heiress, Marlene Engelhorn, who believes that the system that allowed her to inherit such a vast sum of money (tax free) is deeply flawed.
Austria, like many countries across the world, suffers from a wealth gap: a small percentage of the population controls a disproportionate amount of wealth and attendant power.
Engelhorn is not alone in calling out this unfairness; in the US, where wealth inequality has been rising for decades, a small number of the super-rich are actually pushing for higher taxes to support public services.
The Austrian experiment is somewhat unique, however, in seeking to engage ordinary citizens in directly determining how a substantial fortune should be distributed…(More)”.
Paper by Matt D. Ryan: “This article provides an account of how innovative participatory governance unfolded in South Australia between 2010 and 2018. In doing so it explores how an ‘interactive’ political leadership style, which scholarship argues is needed in contemporary democracy, played out in practice. Under the leadership of Premier Jay Weatherill this approach to governing, known as ‘debate and decide’, became regarded as one of the most successful examples of democratic innovation globally. Using an archival and media method of analysis the article finds evidence of the successful application of an interactive political leadership style, but one that was so woven into competitive politics that it was abandoned after a change in government in March 2018. To help sustain interactive political leadership styles the article argues for research into how a broader base of politicians perceives the benefits and risks of innovative participatory governance. It also argues for a focus on developing politicians’ collaborative leadership capabilities. However, the article concludes by asking: if political competition is built into our system of government, are we be better off leveraging it, rather than resisting it, in the pursuit of democratic reform?…(More)”.
Article from Ye Zhanhang: “From unwanted ingredients in takeaway meals and negative restaurant reviews to late deliveries and poor product quality, digital marketplaces teem with minor frustrations.
But because they affect customer satisfaction and business reputations, several Chinese online shopping platforms have come up with a unique solution: Ordinary users can become “cyber jurors” to deliberate and cast decisive votes in resolving disputes between buyers and sellers.
Though introduced in 2020, the concept has surged in popularity among young Chinese in recent months, primarily fueled by viral cases that users eagerly follow, scrutinizing every detail and deliberation online…
To be eligible for the role, a user must meet certain criteria, including having a verified account, maintaining consumption records within the past three months, and successfully navigating five mock cases as part of an entry test. Cyber jurors don’t receive any money for completing cases but may be rewarded with coupons.
Xianyu, an online secondhand shopping platform, has also introduced a “court” system that assembles a jury of 17 volunteer users to adjudicate disputes between buyers and sellers.
Miao Mingyu, a law professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told China Youth Daily that this public jury function, with its impartial third-party perspective, has the potential to enhance transaction transparency and the fairness of the platform’s evaluation system.
Despite Chinese law prohibiting platforms from removing user reviews of products, Miao noted that this feature has enabled the platform to effectively address unfair negative reviews without violating legal constraints…(More)”.
Article by Robert M. Groves: “In response, the National Science Foundation (NSF) proposed the creation of a complementary group to provide decisionmakers at all levels with the best available evidence from the social sciences to inform pandemic policymaking. In May 2020, with funding from NSF and additional support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, NASEM established the Societal Experts Action Network (SEAN) to connect “decisionmakers grappling with difficult issues to the evidence, trends, and expert guidance that can help them lead their communities and speed their recovery.” We chose to build a network because of the widespread recognition that no one small group of social scientists would have the expertise or the bandwidth to answer all the questions facing decisionmakers. What was needed was a structure that enabled an ongoing feedback loop between researchers and decisionmakers. This structure would foster the integration of evidence, research, and advice in real time, which broke with NASEM’s traditional form of aggregating expert guidance over lengthier periods.
In its first phase, SEAN’s executive committee set about building a network that could both gather and disseminate knowledge. To start, we brought in organizations of decisionmakers—including the National Association of Counties, the National League of Cities, the International City/County Management Association, and the National Conference of State Legislatures—to solicit their questions. Then we added capacity to the network by inviting social and behavioral organizations—like the National Bureau of Economic Research, the National Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, The Policy Lab at Brown University, and Testing for America—to join and respond to questions and disseminate guidance. In this way, SEAN connected teams of experts with evidence and answers to leaders and communities looking for advice…(More)”.
Article by Si Ying Thian: “Assistive intelligence and language models can help facilitate nuanced conversations because the human brain simply cannot process 1,000 different positions, said Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Digital Minister in charge of the Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA).
Tang was speaking at a webinar about policymaking in the digital age, hosted by LSE IDEAS, the think tank of the London School of Economics, on 1 December 2023.
She cited Talk to the City, a large language model that transforms transcripts from a variety of datasets into clusters of similar opinions, as an example of a technology that has helped increase collaboration and diversity without losing the ability to scale…
“The idea is to establish value-based, long-term collaborations based on the idea of public code. This is evident in many of our government websites, which very much look like the UK’s,” said Tang.
Public code is defined by Foundation of Public Code as an open-source software developed by public organisations, together with policy and guidance needed for collaboration and reuse…
The government’s commitment to open source is also evident in its rollout of the Taiwan Employment Gold Card, which integrates a flexible work permit, a residence visa for up to three years, and eligibility for national health insurance and income tax reduction.
According to Tang, the Taiwan government invites anyone with experience of eight years or more in contributing to open source or a Web3 publicly available ledger to enrol in the residency program…(More)”.
