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The GVP: a new old internet tool for global democracy

Together with Democracy without Borders, the World Parliament Experiment has been working on a Global Voting Platform (GVP).

The GVP is an internet based tool for promoting global democracy which will be scalable from small numbers of participants to mass use at the global level. In a structured way it allows for creating initiatives, debating them and voting on them, with the option to delegate votes. The GVP is the successor to an internet tool implemented in the year 2000, and so builds on real-world experience.

In 2019, the programming of the GVP progressed to a stage that allowed for beta testing. A first phase with a focus on the main mechanisms was successfully completed identifying only minor bugs, and a second phase is still ongoing prior to the official launch.

In 2020, we plan to further develop the GVP under the motto generating political impact. These will be our next steps:

The GVP was used to support the World Parliament Experiments other project in 2019: the Global Democracy Lab (GDL). The GDL 2019 was a week-long leadership course for global democracy activists that took place from 21-25 October in Berlin. Participants from six countries gave positive feedback and shared good ideas for improving the format. The course was aimed at activists interested in using modern concepts of leadership, introduced by professional coaches, to be more effective in supporting the mission of Democracy without Borders.

During the lab, the GVP served as a learning and organizing tool for participants, and catalysed a discussion on how steps towards global democracy could be made workable.

We are planning a follow-up workshop on internet and democracy in April or May 2020 where we will invite experts to discuss challenges to internet governance, for example national internet shutdowns, and how free internet access and democracy-friendly internet usage can be supported by open source software, good data protection and data security, and potentially blockchain technology for decentralization and transparency. We also hope to generate ideas for using the GVP to promote global democracy, and what requirements it must meet to fulfil this purpose.

Also in 2020, there will be a second GDL that will integrate the results of the previous workshop with further ideas and concepts, such as the establishment of a GDL fellowship for committed and capable global democracy activists. We intend to link GDL and GVP more closely by using the GVP as the organizational platform for such a fellowship, preparing the next GDL event on the GVP, and feeding GDL content on future initiatives into the GVP for debate.

If this second GDL delivers good and measurable results for Democracy Without Borders, we will propose making the GDL a permanent DWB project a Global Democracy Academy.

To join our mailing list or to get involved in the above projects, please write to team@world-parliament.org. There are numerous options for creative contributions, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Continued here:
Pilot projects for a Global Voting Platform and a Global Democracy Lab - Democracy Without Borders

The December 2019 general election marked a tectonic shift in British politics. Not only was the electoral landscape redrawn but our entire understanding of the public mood was challenged. Those of us who consider ourselves part of the progressive arm of politics feel like weary travelers; once convinced that we were on the right path, walking with our faces turned towards the sun, now we are trying to decipher a map we dont fully comprehend while darkness obscures our vision.

In this atmosphere of confusion, uncertainty, and fear, Compassion in Politics brought together thinkers, activists, and influencers for a one-day conference in January 2019 in the hope of identifying exactly where we are, how we got here, and where we go next. Discussions ranged from radical reforms to our democratic system to the need to pay more attention to practices of self-care. No single narrative or strategy emerged. Rather, like a musical composition, the conference riffed and improvised around a range of central themes.

The first theme was trust. Most speakers agreed that one of the great illnesses afflicting 21st century democracy is a lack of trust - not just in politicians but in each other and ourselves. George Monbiot talked of the need for radical trust via the massive decentralisation of power and responsibility from Westminster. He argued that decentralisation enables democracy to become a habit, which in turn means that it can be owned by the public.

By the end of the day there was a sense in the room that this will become inevitable; that an extremely hierarchical system of politics cannot survive, built as it is on a spirit of paternalism which has long-since died out. Our task is to understand and shape the transition process so that it is truly democratizing and doesnt leave certain groups isolated in their locales.

The second, related, theme was the importance of the commons. Kate Raworth and Guy Standing charted the rise and fall of two economic dogmas over the last 100 years: that of the state and that of the market. They showed how these simplified narratives have excluded one of the most crucial elements of our economy - not only the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and the land we live on but the care we show to others, the love we impart, and the lessons that we teach.

Our economics has failed to quantify, value, protect or enhance these essential parts of our existence. That has to change if we are to refashion our economy so that it can mitigate, adapt to, and fight climate breakdown, and serve as a secure foundation for mass participation in politics and civic life.

Standing took the conversation further by articulating the need for a new Charter of the Commons built on the 1217 Charter of the Forest, an ancient and radical document that set out the right of every man and woman to be able to subsist - whether they had property or not. In essence, the medieval Charter said that every person should have access to food, water, and a place of rest, and many of its articles were still on the statute book until just a few decades ago. Now is the time for a new commitment thats animated by a similar spirit, but with its content and campaigning strategies updated for the modern age.

The third theme of the conference was solidarity. This is unsurprising, given that we gathered together in the hope of warming our hearts and minds from the energy and interplay of ideas and debate. But solidarity also emerged as a significant contribution that we can all make to the furthering of environmental and social justice.

Shaista Aziz spoke of the need for all of us to speak out, not only against discrimination but at a meta-level against the idea that the British establishment is incapable of racism, sexism and homophobia the myth that the press, government and other institutions are somehow beyond reproach. She pointed to the treatment of Meghan Markle as an example of the systemic trait of racism that is embedded in British society, emphasising that there is more outrage in this country about being called racist than there is about actual racism. In response, we have to step up our individual acts of resistance so that they have societal consequences.

On a related note, Aziz and others - especially those in the audience - raised the importance of self-care and self-compassion as these processes of resistance and co-creation move forward. It was striking how mindfulness and compassion were so widely seen as political acts. Of course, theres also a danger that these ideas and practices will be co-opted, and that those in the most vulnerable circumstances will lack the time, energy or resources to access them. Nor will meditation put food on a hungry table.

But the conference did conclude that these forms of self-care have a very important role to play in the progressive movement, helping as they do to replenish our resources, help us identify with others more effectively, and encourage the empathy and compassion through which we can strengthen our communitarian bonds.

This is ultimately what Compassion in Politics aims to do. We want to break down the barriers that prevent us from working together for causes that are bigger than all of us. We want to build a new narrative of solidarity, kindness and care. And we want to reset political boundaries - to say with courage that the increasing tendency towards inequality, racism and sexism that we are witnessing in this and other countries cannot continue.

Thats why we are proposing reforms to our political system to encourage greater cooperation. Its why weve put forward the idea of a Compassion Act to set a new and radically different threshold in policy-making. Its also why were supporting the work of partners like Safe Passage, Taxpayers Against Poverty, and Action for Happiness who in their own ways are working towards better treatment for refugees, those suffering from poor mental health, and those experiencing poverty. Through concrete actions like these that are modeled on a philosophy of love and solidarity instead of fear and tribalism, we think we can change politics for good.

That final theme of optimism was provided in large doses by our final speaker, Danny Dorling, who showed how the political culture of the UK has shifted slowly yet dramatically over the last 100 years. He argued that elections are not responsible for these changes people are, in and across many different levels and institutions of society; elections are merely the surface reflection of changes that are taking place at a deeper level, but Dorling believes that we are now at a turning point.

As he argued in his talk, inequality is expensive. His thesis is that current levels of inequality cannot be sustained or tolerated, even by the ruling elites. Dorling believes that public sentiment on austerity has moved irrevocably, and that even his own institution (Oxford University) is increasingly committed to a more pluralistic, diverse and equitable approach to admissions.

Such commitments, scaled-up and spread throughout education, the health sector, local government, civil society, politics and the economy could have a transformative effect on the future of society as more people from state schools and different class and ethnic backgrounds are given the resources and opportunities they need to contribute to public life.

Danny provided the perfect tonic at the end of our day of discussion in the form of perspective, hope and optimism. Its now incumbent on the rest of us to carry that energy into 2020.

Read more:
Radical trust, deep democracy and the health of the commons - Open Democracy

A functioning democracy depends on the support of its citizens. The popularity of specific leaders and political parties may rise and fall, but ideally without affecting the extent to which citizens are satisfied with the political system and have trust in its core institutions, including the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.

In recent years, concerns have been raised about the decline in confidence in democracy in many Western countries.

Read more: Are we witnessing the death of liberal democracy?

In the Canadian context, these concerns appear overstated: on the whole, satisfaction with democracy and trust in the political system in Canada has gradually been rising over the past decade, not falling.

This national trend, however, may disguise divergent trends at the sub-national level. Given the countrys decentralized federal political structure, its essential to look deeper by focusing on provinces and regions.

Using data on Canadians from the AmericasBarometer surveys, the Environics Institute for Survey Research examined a variety of questions related to confidence in the political system.

Polls of approximately 1,500 adult Canadians were conducted online five times over the past decade: in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2017 and 2019. These questions asked about satisfaction with, pride in, support for, respect for, trust in and approval of different political institutions or politicians.

In general, the survey results confirm that on these questions, national trends in Canada can be misleading, precisely because they often mask opposing regional ones. The answer to the question of whether Canadians are gaining or losing confidence in their democratic institutions depends in part on which region one is referring to. This can be illustrated in more detail by contrasting the trends in Qubec and Alberta.

Those concerned with national unity will find it reassuring that confidence in Canadas political system in Qubec is not significantly lower than average. This is notable given Qubecs status as a minority nation within the larger Canadian federal state and one whose political leaders frequently contest the extent of the autonomy afforded to the province under the current federal arrangement.

Qubecers are now slightly more likely than other Canadians to be satisfied with the way the political system works in Canada, and just as likely as other Canadians to be satisfied with the way democracy works. Qubecers are also more likely than other Canadians to have a lot of respect for the countrys key political institutions, and just as likely to feel proud of living under the political system of Canada and to feel that that political system is worthy of support.

They have just as much trust as other Canadians do in elections, in Parliament and in the prime minister. They also have just as much trust in the Supreme Court, which is important since it is, among other things, the final arbiter of the federal-provincial division of powers.

Where Qubecers stand out is on questions of identity. They are much less likely than other Canadians to feel a lot of pride in being Canadian (although very few feel no pride at all, indicating that while Qubecers do not embrace a Canadian identity as strongly as other Canadians, most do not reject that identity either).

They are also much less likely to strongly agree that Canadians have many things that unite them as a country.

More worryingly, from a national unity perspective, is the finding that satisfaction with democracy and trust in the political system has declined significantly in Alberta.

Notably, the largest declines did not occur immediately after the start of the recession in the province in late 2014. The data suggest that Albertans initially remained hopeful, but that levels of satisfaction with Canadian democracy faltered after changes of government at both the provincial and federal levels in 2015 proved unable to quickly reverse the provinces economic fortunes.

To illustrate, in Alberta, between the 2017 and 2019 surveys:

Satisfaction with the way democracy works in Canada fell by 19 points;

Trust in elections fell by 10 points;

Strong agreement with the proposition that those who govern this country are interested in what people like you think fell by 19 points;

Strong respect for the political institutions of Canada fell by six points;

Strong agreement that one should support the political system of Canada fell by 10 points;

Strong pride in living under Canadas political system fell by 10 points;

Trust in parliament fell by eight points

Trust in political parties fell by five points;

Trust in the prime minister fell by 18 points; and

Trust in the Supreme Court fell by 13 points.

In short, in Alberta, a decline was registered on a wide range of measures, and in each case, the decline was greater than that in any other region (in fact, in most cases, confidence in democracy in other regions improved over this period, with the exception of Atlantic Canada, which registered several modest declines).

Importantly, the declines are not limited to questions related to party politics (such as approval of the performance of the prime minister), but also to those related to support for the political system.

These findings, drawn from a more comprehensive report entitled Public Support for Canadas Political System: Regional Trends, show that these declines leave levels of confidence in Alberta only slightly lower than average.

This is because confidence in democracy was previously higher in Alberta than in the other regions. But even though Albertans dont yet have significantly lower confidence in the countrys political system than other Canadians, they do stand out as the one region where confidence across a range of measures has declined sharply in recent years.

The main takeaway from this analysis is this: if the trend continues, a significant gap in support for the political system will emerge between Alberta and the rest of Canada.

More:
Satisfaction with Canada's democracy declines significantly in Alberta - The Conversation CA

Last winter, I found myself seated around a massive table with about forty others on the ground floor of the historic Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, in Chicago. A group of curators had invited me to participate in Parts of Speech, an exhibit consisting of six lectures by six artists held at venues across the city. Instead of a typical talk, where Id speak from a stage or behind a lectern, Id proposed hosting a debtors assemblya forum where people could share stories of their financial hardship.

Id never hosted such an assembly before. As the participants (not audience members) trickled into the room, I reminded myself that the event was supposed to be about listening, not talking. Even so, I couldnt resist making some opening remarks. I told the group that my work as an organizer and documentary filmmaker had led me to understand listening as a deeply political act, and an underappreciated one. I suggested that our lack of attention to listening connected to the larger crisis of American democracy, in which the wealthy and powerful shape the discourse while many others go unheard. After Id finished, Laura Hanna, the co-director of the Debt Collective, an economic-justice group Id helped found, reeled off statistics demonstrating that we live with Gilded Age levels of inequality. Then she invited people to share their stories. In that ornate, wood-panelled room, an ominous silence descended. Looking from one quiet face to another, I panicked. What if no one talked?

The first person to speak confessed to owing a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in student loans; many people in his life were unsympathetic to his plight, he said, because he had studied art and not law or something. A young woman began to cry. Im a first-generation student, I come from a family of poverty, she said. Sorry if I get emotional, but Im here with my little one, and Im thinking about her future. Im a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in student-loan debt, and thats a huge number. When she finished, the room burst into applause.

The dam broke. A young man spoke of a mental-health crisis that had caused his debt to balloon; it included ambulance and hospital bills that took three years to pay off. A middle-aged woman described herself as teetering at that edge of poverty after she quit her job because of racist comments made by a colleague; her high debt load meant she couldnt help her college-age son. Another woman explained that her hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in student loans were overwhelming not just her but her mother, who had taken many of them out on her behalf; she described the pain of feeling judged a failure when you are trying the best you can. An older man told how, after arriving as a refugee from Liberia, hed thought education would be a lifeline. Hed gotten a degree in chemistry and then attended nursing school, but now the money he owed was a trap from which he couldnt escape.

As the forum progressed, the mood in the room changed. Some people listened silently. Others, taking it all in, felt emboldened to reveal hardships theyd been reluctant to divulge elsewhere. A few got fired up: after hearing others stories, the crying woman asked, How can this be legal? A mountain of debt and shame was becoming visiblean overwhelming burden that was also a common bond. Id suggested a debtors assembly because I wanted to create a space in which both sides of the communicative coinspeaking and listeningcould be valued equally. Even so, I found myself surprised by listenings power. Though I work on issues of inequality, I was stunned by how much suffering the circle held.

We have two ears and one mouth so we can listen twice as much as we speak, the stoic philosopher Epictetus wrote, two thousand years ago. Thats long been one of my favorite quotes. The truth, though, was that it had been a long time since Id had an opportunity to listen, silently and at length, to what many other people had to say. Afterward, walking in the cold, I couldnt help but think of listening as something were all entitled toa right were often denied, and that the assembly had just reclaimed. Today, we are constantly reminded of the importance of free speech and the First Amendment; we exalt freedom in the expressive realm. Is there some corresponding principle of listening worth defending?

We expect powerful people to be talkers, not listeners.

The idea that the right to listen to one another should be defended in a democracy seems strange. Thats probably because we lack a shared vocabulary or framework for understanding listening as a political act. We pay lip service to the idea of listening: stage-managed town-hall meetings, at which politicians and candidates respond to curated questions from a screened audience, are a familiar part of the political landscape. In 2017, Mark Zuckerberg embarked on a highly publicized national listening tour, which yielded photographs of him riding a tractor with a farmer, going to church in a small town, helping out on an automobile assembly line, and so on. No one really imagined that Zuckerberg would listen to anything the people he visited had to say. We expect powerful people to be talkers, not listeners.

Philosophers, too, have thought mostly about speechbiased, perhaps understandably, toward dazzling utterances. When Aristotle declared man a political animal, he argued that what distinguished us from other creatures was our capacity for rational discourse. Modern philosophers have developed a framework of deliberative democracy in which oration and argument, declamation and debate, play out in an idealized public sphere. Careers have been made studying speech-act theory, which examines how certain verbal expressions do things in the world (a judge declaring a defendant guilty, for instance, or a couple married). A corresponding listening-act theory doesnt yet exist.

But to listen is to act; of that, theres no doubt. It takes effort and doesnt happen by default. As anyone who has been in a heated argumentor whos simply tried to coexist with family members, colleagues, friends, and neighborswell knows, its often easier not to listen. We can tune out and let others words wash over us, hearing only what we want to hear, or we can pantomime the act of listening, nodding along while waiting for our turn to speak. Even when we want to be rapt, our attentions wane. Deciding to listen to someone is a meaningful gesture. It accords them a special kind of recognition and respect.

In 2015, I began making a documentary called What Is Democracy?a feature exploring the fate of self-government in the Trump era. Immediately, I remembered that one of the hardest things about beginning to shoot a new documentary is remembering how to listen. I had to make a concerted effort to bite my tongue, so as not to babble over my subjects, ruining the footage (the way I had, to my eternal embarrassment, during my first film shoot, more than fifteen years ago). I found that listening well, so that I could respond genuinely and substantively, was exhausting work.

One of the things I heard, when I listened, was that many of the people I spoke withimmigrant factory workers, asylum seekers, former prisoners, schoolchildrensimply assumed that no one was interested in listening to them. At a community center in Miami, I asked a group of teen-agers if they ever discussed democracy at school. Yes, but its about branches of government, a boy said. They dont ask us, How do you feel about the school? As far as the kids could tell, their opinions didnt matter to their teachers or the administrators in charge, and they didnt feel there was much they could do about it. My voice isnt going to change anything, a girl told me, with a shrug. I asked them whether they thought the adults in their lives had more of a say than they did. I dont think people of higher power really want to hear a black mom thats poor in a ghetto, the girl responded, matter-of-factly. Similarly, a boy warned, an adult standing up for himself at work would only get into trouble; it was better not to speak out and just get it over with. Their certainty about going unheard was painful to hear.

The rest is here:
The Right to Listen - The New Yorker

An anvil, of course, is a block of iron, on whose flat top a piece of metal is hammered and battered to give it the desired shape and give it strength. Anvils went out of fashion along with the old blacksmiths bellows and forge, in which fire, muscle and sweat worked together to let strength work tools from metal. But a metaphorical anvil has cropped up practically in every place in India and, on it, democracy is being bashed and battered but bearing up and, it is to be hoped, would emerge stronger for the experience.

At no point in Indias history as an independent nation has democracy been the central theme of widespread popular protest, not even during the Emergency. Yes, people have mobilised themselves in large numbers, on several occasions, for specific causes: for or against reservations, to rebel against governance failure, particularly on holding the price line, against corruption, against the rape of middle class women, against disrespect to a language, to celebrate the triumph of a popular leader, to mourn the death of another, and so on. But todays protests are about the state and citizenship, peoples rights and their ability to assert them against state power. Never before has political mobilisation has been on matters that form the core of democracy.

This is a great development.

Women, young people and the minorities are in the forefront of these protests. Much as the ruling party would like to attribute the protests to the evil machinations of the Opposition, the reality is that a spontaneous current of political awakening, stirred by seeming state contempt for popular opinion and the basic ethos of the Constitution, has been surging across India, among people of all classes and ages, in country and town, bringing people out on to the street, marching, shouting slogans and reiterating the Preamble to the Constitution, in defence of the idea of India as a multicultural nation in which everyone has the right to live with dignity.

In India, political parties have paid lip service to secularism while practising patronage politics. Instead of negotiating the meaning of the secular and the democratic, to re-forge ties amongst communities and within them, parties have chosen to present themselves as protectors of minorities, who would enable them to lead their lives as before, complete with some customs that have little in common with democracy. Such claims to patronage are not just false but undermine minority rights as well.

The ability of minorities to live with security and dignity in Independent India is grounded in liberal democracy and the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and minority rights, not patronage. The weaker the democratic framework, the weaker also minority rights. It is in strengthening democracy that all subaltern groups have to seek their emancipation not in this party or that leader. A party would be relevant to the extant it champions strengthening democracy.

The premium the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill, the National Population Register and the National Register of Indian Citizens have placed on the Constitution shows that this awareness is seeping in. The coming together of two relatively oppressed groups, Dalits and Muslims, in these protests is yet more proof of this new subaltern solidarity for democracy.

Women are yet to join this fight for democracy as those who strengthen the fight for minority rights by fighting for their own rights. Women in India have made progress, of sorts, from the normative status assigned to them in tradition, of being eligible to be beaten, along with dhol, gawar, shudra and pashu (the drum, the rustic idiot, a member of the caste of servitude and animals), yet not recognised as human beings in their own right. The present outcry for their safety and security is the bleating of mens insecurity of their own honour being tarnished by the violation of their women. The normative order that denies women freedom, especially freedom of sexual choice, also reduces them, as a corollary, to objects of desire that need be contained only when such objects are located within coordinates of space and time that are considered decent. For women to gain full equality in access to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, deepening of democracy is the only answer.

Yes, India has acquired the ability to feed itself, it has stayed together as a nation, retained relative strategic autonomy and alleviated poverty and illiteracy. Yet, democracy remains more form than substance, in most parts of the country. Periodic elections are only a means or a symptom, not the totality of democracy. However, on the 71st anniversary of the Republic, substantive democracy is receiving a booster shot.

Jai Hind.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Democracy on the anvil on Republic Day - Economic Times