Thoughts on Power

Where should power lie and at what level? Should it lie with individual citizens and their communities, with elected representatives of communities, with national leaders?

Many people, undoubtedly the majority, define success and equate social status with becoming more influential in their field, gaining personal credit for an achievement from their peers, and obtaining increased personal wealth. All of these self-motivating factors are increasingly available the more power one obtains. Therefore the prevalent tendency is for power to move into the hands of the powerful, and for power to be shared amongst a progressively smaller group. Few within society would advocate for power to be shared amongst a greater number, would willingly release the power that they have, or would champion the rights of others to have greater influence than themselves.

This tendency for power to move into the hands of the powerful operates both within and between the different levels of established civic/political structures. For example, this tendency exists between individuals and their communities, between the elected representatives of communities (MPs), and between the national representatives of MPs (the cabinet). Indeed, there exists a tendency at any level in a civic hierarchy to take over decision-making responsibilities from the level beneath. Reasons for this are often cited as concern that lower level decision makers don't have necessary experience and breadth of knowledge to make good decisions. For example, overwhelming public support for capital punishment is regularly cited as a reason for withholding decision-making authority from the masses of un-empowered people. This is a very real concern but it fails to embrace a critical consideration,

People learn to make good decisions, and gain wisdom in this process, through experiencing the consequences of having made bad decisions.

If people are excluded from decision making for fear that they lack experience and wisdom, then their capability to make good decisions will reduce, and a negative feedback cycle is established that is very difficult to break. Our existing decisions making structures are characterised by this unfortunate situation; we have an intrinsic belief that all people should be equal, and in the righteousness of democracy, but we fear the consequences of subsidiarity, as in the short term this may result in bad decisions. For many years this situation has paralysed our nations progressive democratic development and has directly resulted in the passage of power away from people and their communities, into the hands of their representatives and upwards. Consequently, people are feeling increasingly impotent in their ability to affect the outcome of even local decision-making. Of late, there has been a movement from democracy towards autocracy.

We now know that the majority of people desperately want to be involved in the decisions that affect the quality of their lives but feel excluded and consider that their involvement will 'not make a difference'. This is shown by the report of the Power Inquiry. Helena Kennedy QC, in her foreword to this report, states that the evidence presented to the inquiry suggests that voting itself seems irrelevant to increasing numbers of people and that there is a feeling that their is 'no choice' despite our living in an era where choice is the dominant political mantra. Commenting that the world has changed enormously during the last 50 years and that lives are being lived in very different ways, she suggests that the political institutions and main political parties have 'failed to keep up'. Drawing attention to the way in which people continue to volunteer to raise money for charity, join protest marches, undertake voluntary work within their communities, and sign petitions, Helena Kennedy comments that political apathy is a myth. However, people 'no longer want to join a party or get involved in formal politics' and the solution is to download power by 'rebalancing the system towards the people'.

To summarise, movement towards autocracy is propagated by the fear of those who hold power over the consequences of less experienced people exercising power. In addition, movement towards autocracy is propagated by individuals' desire for the increased social status associated with holding power. So how can we reverse this trend and 'rebalance the system towards the people'? Breaking free from this negative cycle requires the creation of forums where people and communities are able to gain experience of making decisions. Most importantly, they are fully exposed to feedback relating to the consequences of those decisions, as well as being protected from the consequences of bad decisions.

Even if the established decision making structures were to accept the need for a greater involvement of people and their communities in decision making, there remains the technical issue of enabling effective representation of all citizens in the decision making process, due to the sheer number of people that would wish to be involved in any decision. However, with the development of the internet, and the capacity for mass on-line voting and discussion on any issue, this is no longer the case.

About Digital Democracy

About a year ago, Democratise (a social company) received an investment from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust to create Digital Democracy, www.digitaldemocracy.org.uk. This website is a vehicle that will enable all people to influence the outcomes of decisions that affect their lives. It is the first of its kind in the world and is only possible at this point in the twenty-first century due to advancements in internet technology and processing power, coupled with geographical information systems. It can manage meaningful democratic interactions between people in discrete geographic communities across the Country, and has sufficient capacity to involve millions of individuals.

Digital Democracy is a virtual parliament where members directly participate in identification, prioritisation and voting on the most popular proposal. In particular:

• When you become a member, Digital Democracy uses your postcode to generate a personal profile showing your political constituency and MP;
• Every member is able to make one proposal every fortnight. You see this listed against the proposals made by others from your geographical community;
• Digital Democracy generates a discussion forum specific to your proposal. It then makes sure that you are able to discuss issues with other members from your geographical community;
• You get to promote the proposals that you think are most important, and in two weeks Digital Democracy identifies your communities most popular proposal;
• At the end of the fortnight, the whole membership votes on the top proposals and this auto-generates a report that goes straight to the appropriate MP who is invited to respond on the site to say what they will do in response - (at the moment we are in our pilot and have Roberta Blackman-Woods MP and Fiona Hall MEP actively participating, however if this new approach works then we will invite all MPs to participate);
• You can give your vote away to another member, then they get to vote twice whenever they vote and effectively become your representative. This means you don't have to be at the system all the time. However, if you don't like the way someone is using your vote, you can take it back at any time;
• Digital Democracy has social networking capabilities that enables members to send messages and make friends;
• Digital Democracy has a special button for checking how similar your views are with other members by running a correlation of promotional records. You can use this to get a list of people within a set radius who are similar to you - invaluable if you are new in town.