The Hindu | The legitimation crisis of Indian democracy The Hindu I don't want to go into specifics; instead, I draw attention to three distinct moments of the legitimation crisis of representative democracy in India. The first I call the crisis of procedural legitimacy. For long, our representatives were elected by ... |
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The legitimation crisis of Indian democracy - The Hindu
As a child, I remember that my family regarded animated political discussions as a sporting event. Vocal wrangling never personally appealed to me, but it did teach me to appreciate an inherent aspect of our living democracy - the exchange of ideas.
We harbor thoughts about small government versus large, Jefferson versus Hamilton, federal versus state, state versus local control. We vote for or against candidates based on what we hear candidates say and how that aligns with our personal beliefs. Democracy evolves - it is messy, it's hard work, and sometimes it's loud. It doesn't end at the ballot box. To the contrary, if we truly are engaged, voting and getting elected are just the beginning and conversations around the issues we care about will grow and evolve, as well.
This Iowa legislative session has offered up a lively, up-close and personal lesson on how our form of democracy works - or should work, if we are all willing to participate. No doubt about it, the Republican Party won control of all three branches of state government, so they get to set the agenda. But our representatives still have to come home, still have to engage with their constituents - even the ones who didn't vote for them - and still be held accountable for their stands on issues.
One arena where I've witnessed tremendous opportunity to learn from an exchange of ideas is the series of town hall meetings hosted by the League of Women Voters of Sioux City with other civic groups on the last Saturday of the month during the legislative session. The January meeting was definitely boisterous, but it came from passion and reaction to what had been an unadvertised, full-throated, frontal attack on Chapter 20 that defines what can be covered under the bargaining rights of public employees. The folks who stood in line for more than 90 minutes to ask questions, express outrage or fear or confront the legislators were there because it was personal - the kind of personal that made them step out of their comfort zone and talk about how vulnerable they felt.
The three legislators present earned not just their salary as elected officials, but also the respect of their constituents. In addition to Democratic Representatives Chris Hall and Tim Kacena, Republican Representative Jim Carlin attended the January, February and March town hall meetings. They listened - sometimes over noisy audience rumblings - they shared, they explained, but most of all they made themselves available. I noticed the audience expressed appreciation to Rep. Carlin, while disagreeing with him, because he took their phone calls, answered their questions and explained his stance on issues. There has been an earnest exchange of ideas in these forums.
But where were our locally elected state senators? Where was their exchange of ideas and the give and take of opposing points of view? Please explain why Chapter 20 needed revamping. Why is it imperative to reduce compensation for work injuries even though the National Council on Compensation Insurance claims premium costs in Iowa decreased and claims have been fair for employers? Why is the stand-your-ground provision in the proposed gun bill so urgent, despite deep reservations expressed by Iowa county sheriffs, attorneys and police chiefs across the state, including Woodbury County Sheriff Dave Drew? Why are $440 million in corporate tax credits untouchable in light of the state's $220 million budget shortfall? If our corporate taxes are so onerous, why has U.S. News & World Report ranked Iowa as the nation's sixth-best state for economic development?
Lets have a public discussion about the origin of bills sent out by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for state legislators to propose. For example, the Iowa House recently passed a "Convention of the States" bill to limit the power of the federal government and limit terms of office for members of Congress. The name and language of the bill are verbatim from the model distributed by ALEC. This is just one example. What property or state income taxes does ALEC pay into the Iowa treasury?
When and where did legislation that weakens the earning power of working-class wage earners who pay state income and property taxes get publicly aired?
Public forums can be emotional, nerve-racking and uncomfortable, but making every effort to be accessible to your constituents helps both sides of the democratic equation mature and deepens our engagement in self-governance. Legislators and voters alike have a responsibility to partake, and when we do we all gain a foothold in the outcome.
Katie Colling is the executive director of Women Aware, a private nonprofit agency. She was elected to two consecutive terms on the Woodbury County Extension Council and serves on several civic-organization boards. She and her husband, Ron, live in Sioux City.
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THE REGULARS: Democracy: It's messy, it's hard work .. and sometimes it's loud - Sioux City Journal
On March 29, the Venezuelan Supreme Court effectively shut down Congress, the only key government institution that remained independent of executive control, making the incredible announcement that it would assume all legislative powers itself or choose some other institution to delegate them to. This ruling is the end of Maduro administrations faade of democracy.
Venezuela'sSupreme CourtPresident Maikel Moreno (C) talks to the media during a news conference, next toVenezuela'sSupreme CourtFirst Vice President Indira Alfonzo (L) andVenezuela'sSupreme CourtSecond Vice President Juan Mendoza, in Caracas,Venezuela onMarch 27, 2017.
2017 Reuters
This was not an isolated event that occurred out of the blue. Over the years the Maduro administration has steadily and very deliberately rolled back checks on its own power while running roughshod over Venezuelans fundamental human rights.
Holding periodic, free, and fair elections.The National Electoral Councilwith its majority of government supportershas deliberately stalled a recall referendum on President Nicols Maduro. It has not organized municipal and state governor elections that, under the Constitution, were supposed to take place in 2016.
Separation of powers.None of Venezuelas government institutions have maintained any ability to act as a check on executive power. Former president Hugo Chveztook overthe Supreme Court in 2004, and both Chvez and Maduro havere-packedit since then, destroying its watchdog function. Since Venezuelans overwhelmingly gave the opposition a majority in the National Assembly in 2015, President Maduro has used the court to undermine it. After months in which the court nullified every law that threatened the governments interests, itdeclaredthat Congress was in contempt of the courts decisions and took over all legislative functions, effectively shutting down the legislature.
Repression of Political Opponents and Critics.The Venezuelan Penal Forum, a non-profit group that provides legal counsel to detainees, counts more than100 political prisoners, including LeopoldoLpez, an opposition leaderwho has been behind bars for over three years. Some political prisoners were arrested on the basis of information provided by anonymous patrioticinformants. The government has been using its intelligence services to detain and prosecute political opponents and critics.
But the Supreme Courtruledthat opposition legislators support for the ongoing debate at the Organization of American States (OAS) on the Venezuela crisis may constitute treason and warned that the lawmakers responsible would not have parliamentary immunity.
Respect for freedom of expression.Very few independent media outlets remain. Security forces have detained and interrogated journalists and confiscated their equipment. International journalists have beenstoppedfrom entering the country to cover the crisis, ordetainedfor doing so. News channels have beenforcedoff the air. The government has adopted measures to restrict international funding of non-profit organizations whose work exposes abuseson the unsubstantiated grounds that they undermine Venezuelan democracy. Ordinary citizens who criticized the government have been criminallyprosecuted. The media have reported that hundreds of people werefiredfrom government jobs for supporting the recall referendum.
Respect for other civil and political rights.Venezuelan security forces have repeatedly usedbrutal forceagainst bystanders and demonstrators at anti-government protests. In some cases, they have used torture. A series of police and militaryraidsin 2015 in low-income and immigrant communities has led to widespread allegations of abuse: extrajudicial executions, mass detentions, arbitrary deportations and evictions, and the bulldozing of homes.
Respect for economic, social, and cultural rights.Venezuela is facing a dramatichumanitarian crisis. Severe shortages of medicine, medical supplies, and food have undermined the ability of many Venezuelans to get adequate nutrition and health care. The government has denied that the crisis exists, failed to alleviate the shortages, and made only limited efforts to obtain readily available international humanitarian assistance.
For years, Venezuela has been run by a government with a deplorable human rights record that has taken advantage of a tremendous concentration of power to gradually erode human rights guarantees and checks on its own power. The latest Supreme Court ruling is a turning point. Faced with something that looks more and more like a full-fledged dictatorship, the international community should reactstrong and decisive multilateral pressure on the Maduro administration is more important and urgent than ever.
JosMiguel Vivanco is Americas director at Human Rights Watch.
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Venezuela's crumbling faade of democracy - Human Rights Watch
In late February, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg published an essay that laid out the social networks vision for the coming years.
The 5,700-word document, immediately dubbed a manifesto, was his most extensive discussion of Facebooks place in the social world since it went public in 2012. Although it reads to me in places like a senior honors thesis in sociology, with broad-brush claims about the evolution of society and heavy reliance on terms like social infrastructure, it makes some crucial points.
In particular, Zuckerberg outlined five domains where Facebook intended to develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us. This included making communities supportive, safe, informed, civically engaged and inclusive.
Silicon Valley has long been mocked for this kind of our products make the world a better place rhetoric, so much so that some companies are asking their employees to rein it in. Still, while apps for sending disappearing selfies or summoning on-street valet parking may not exactly advance civilization, Facebook and a handful of other social media platforms are undoubtedly influential in shaping political engagement.
A case in point is the Egyptian revolution in 2011. One of the leaders of the uprising created a Facebook page that became a focal point for organizing opposition to ousted leader Hosni Mubaraks regime. He later told CNN:
I want to meet Mark Zuckerberg one day and thank him This revolution started on Facebook.
As I have written elsewhere, Facebook and Twitter have become essential tools in mobilizing contemporary social movements, from changing the corporate world to challenging national governments. Zuckerbergs manifesto suggests he aims to harness Facebook in this way and empower the kind of openness and widespread participation necessary to strengthen democracy.
But while hes right that social media platforms could reinvigorate the democratic process, I believe Facebook and its Silicon Valley brethren are the wrong ones to spearhead such an effort.
The HBO show Silicon Valley focuses on skewering the industrys inflated sense of itself.
The initial reaction to Zuckerbergs manifesto was largely negative.
The Atlantic described it as a blueprint for destroying journalism by turning Facebook into a news organization without journalists. Bloomberg View referred to it as a scary, dystopian document to transform Facebook into an extraterritorial state run by a small, unelected government that relies extensively on privately held algorithms for social engineering.
Whatever the merits of these critiques, Zuckerberg is correct about one central issue: Internet and mobile technology could and should be used to enable far more extensive participation in democracy than most of us encounter.
In the United States, democracy can feel remote and intermittent, and sees only limited participation. The 2016 election, which pitted radically different visions for the future of democracy against each other, attracted only 60 percent of eligible voters. In the midterm elections between presidential campaigns, turnout drops sharply, even though the consequences can be equally profound.
Moreover, whereas voting is compulsory and nearly universal in countries such as Brazil and Australia, legislators in the U.S. are actively trying to discourage voting by raising barriers to participation through voter ID laws, sometimes targeted very precisely at depressing black turnout.
Democratic participation in the U.S. could use some help, and online technologies could be part of the solution.
The social infrastructure for our democracy was designed at a time when the basic logistics of debating issues and voting were costly.
Compare the massive effort it took to gather and tabulate paper ballots for national elections during the time of Abraham Lincoln with the instantaneous global participation that takes place every day on social media. The transaction costs for political mobilization have never been lower. If appropriately designed, social media could make democracy more vibrant by facilitating debate and action.
Consider how one Facebook post germinated one of the largest political protests in American history, the Jan. 21 Womens March in Washington and many other cities around the world. But getting people to show up at a demonstration is different from enabling people to deliberate and make collective decisions that is, to participate in democracy.
Todays information and communication technologies (ICTs) could make it possible for democracy to happen on a daily basis, not just in matters of public policy but at work or at school. Democracy is strengthened through participation, and ICTs dramatically lower the cost of participation at all levels. Research on shared capitalism demonstrates the value of democracy at work, for workers and organizations.
Participation in collective decision making need not be limited to desultory visits to the voting booth every two to four years. The pervasiveness of ICTs means that citizens could participate in the decisions that affect them in a much more democratic way than we typically do.
Loomio provides a platform for group decision-making that allows people to share information, debate and come to conclusions, encouraging broad and democratic participation. OpaVote allows people to vote online and includes a variety of alternative voting methods for different situations. (You could use it to decide where your team is going to lunch today.) BudgetAllocator enables participatory budgeting for local governments.
As Harvard Law School Professor Yochai Benkler points out, the past few years have greatly expanded the range of ways we can work together collaboratively. Democracy can be part of our daily experience.
This ICT-enabled democratic future is unlikely to come from the corporate world of Silicon Valley, however.
Zuckerbergs own kingdom is one of the most autocratic public companies in the world when it comes to corporate governance. When Facebook went public in 2012, Zuckerberg held a class of stock that allotted him 10 votes per share, giving him an absolute majority of roughly 60 percent of the voting rights. The companys IPO prospectus was clear about what this means:
Mr. Zuckerberg has the ability to control the outcome of matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors and any merger, consolidation, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets.
In other words, Zuckerberg could buy WhatsApp for $19 billion and Oculus a few weeks later for $2 billion (after just a weekend of due diligence). Or, a more troubling scenario, he could legally sell his entire company (and all the data on its 1.86 billion users) to, lets say, a Russian oligarch with ties to President Vladimir Putin, who might use the info for nefarious purposes. While these actions technically require board approval, directors are beholden to the shareholder(s) who elect them that is, in this case, Zuckerberg.
It is not just Facebook that has this autocratic voting structure. Googles founders also have dominant voting control, as do leaders in countless tech firms that have gone public since 2010, including Zillow, Groupon, Zynga, GoPro, Tableau, Box and LinkedIn (before its acquisition by Microsoft).
Most recently, Snaps public offering on March 2 took this trend to its logical conclusion, giving new shareholders no voting rights at all.
We place a lot of trust in our online platforms, sharing intimate personal information that we imagine will be kept private. Yet after Facebook acquired WhatsApp, which was beloved for its rigorous protection of user privacy, many were dismayed to discover that some of their personal data would be shared across the Facebook family of companies unless they actively chose to opt out.
For its part, Facebook has made over 60 acquisitions and, along with Google, controls eight of the 10 most popular smartphone apps.
The idea that founders know best and need to be protected from too many checks and balances (e.g., by their shareholders) fits a particular cultural narrative that is popular in Silicon Valley. We might call it the strongman theory of corporate governance.
Perhaps Zuckerberg is the Lee Kuan Yew of the web, a benevolent autocrat with our best interests at heart. Yew became the founding father of modern-day Singapore after turning it from a poor British outpost into one of the wealthiest countries in the world in a few decades.
But that may not be the best qualification for ensuring democracy for users.
ICTs offer the promise of greater democracy on a day-to-day level. But private for-profit companies are unlikely to be the ones to help build it. Silicon Valleys elites run some of the least democratic institutions in contemporary capitalism. It is hard to imagine that they would provide us with neutral tools for self-governance.
The scholar and activist Audre Lorde famously said that the masters tools will never dismantle the masters house. By the same token, I doubt nondemocratic corporations will provide the tools to build a more vibrant democracy. For that, we might look to organizations that are themselves democratic.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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Can Silicon Valley's Autocrats Save Democracy? - Honolulu Civil Beat
The country faces profound political disunity, a concept I learned from historian Michael Grant, whose slim but insightful volume The Fall of the Roman Empire I have been recommending since 2009.
As I noted in my 2009 book Survival+, this was a key feature of the Roman Empire in its final slide to collapse.
The shared values and consensus which had held the Empires core together dissolved, leaving petty fiefdoms to war among themselves for what power and swag remained.
A funny thing happens when a nation allows itself to be ruled by Imperial kleptocrats: such rule is intrinsically destabilizing, as there is no longer any moral or political center to bind the nation together.
The public sees the value system at the top is maximize my personal profit by whatever means are available, i.e. complicity, corruption, monopoly and rentier rackets, and they follow suit by pursuing whatever petty frauds and rackets are within reach: tax avoidance, cheating on entrance exams, gaming the disability system, lying on mortgage and job applications, and so on.
But the scope of the rentier rackets is so large, the bottom 95% cannot possibly keep up with the expanding wealth and income of the top .1% and their army of technocrats and enablers, so a rising sense of injustice widens the already yawning fissures in the body politic.
Meanwhile, diverting the national income into a few power centers is also destabilizing, as Central Planning and Market Manipulation (a.k.a. the Federal Reserve) are intrinsically unstable as price can no longer be discovered by unfettered markets.
As a result, imbalances grow until some seemingly tiny incident or disruption triggers a cascading collapse, a.k.a. a phase shift or system re-set.
As the Power Elites squabble over the dwindling crumbs left by the various rentier rackets, theres no one left to fight for the national interest because the entire Status Quo of self-interested fiefdoms and cartels has been co-opted and is now wedded to the Imperial Oligarchy as their guarantor of financial security.
When the system is rigged, democracy is just another public-relations screen to mask the unsavory reality of Oligarchy.
Democracy in America has become a hollow shell.
The conventional markers of democracy elections and elected representatives exist, but they are mere facades; the mechanisms of setting the course of the nation are corrupt, and the power lies outside the publics reach.
History has shown that democratic elections dont guarantee an uncorrupt, functional government. Rather, democracy has become the public-relations stamp of approval for corrupt governance that runs roughshod over individual liberty while centralizing the power to enforce consent, silence critics and maintain the status quo.
If the citizenry cannot replace a dysfunctional government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only.
In other words, if the citizenry changes the elected representation but the financial Aristocracy and the Deep State remain in charge, then the democracy is nothing but a PR facade for an oppressive oligarchy.
If the erosion of civil liberties and rising inequality characterize the state of the nation, democracy is both dysfunctional and illiberal. A state that strips away the civil liberties of its citizens via civil forfeiture, a war-on-drugs Gulag and unlimited surveillance may be a democracy in name, but it is at heart an oppressive oligarchy.
If the super-wealthy continue to become ever wealthier while the bottom 95% of the citizenry struggle in various stages of debt-serfdom, the state may be a democracy in name, but it is at heart an oppressive oligarchy.
Author/commentator Fareed Zakaria recently addressed the illiberal aspects of Americas faded democracy in an article Americas democracy has become illiberal.
Zakars prettified critique avoided the real worm at the heart of our democracy: the state exists to enforce cartels. Some might be private, some might be state-run, and others might be hybrids, such as our failed Sickcare system and our military industrial complex.
The ultimate role of democracy isnt to give the people a voice; the only meaningful role of democracy is to protect the liberties of individuals from state encroachment, break up cartels and monopolies and limit the corruption of private/public money.
Americas democracy has failed on all counts.
Civil liberties in a nation of ubiquitous central-state surveillance, a quasi-political Gulag (that nickel bag will earn you a tenner in Americas drug-war Gulag) and civil forfeiture (we suspect youre up to no good, so we have the right to steal your car and cash) are eroding fast.
In America, the central governments primary job is enforcing and funding cartels. A mere $10 million in lobbying, revolving-door graft (getting paid $250,000 for a speech or for a couple of board meetings) and bribes (cough-cough, I mean campaign contributions) can secure $100 million in profits either by erecting regulatory/legal barriers or by direct federal funding of the cartels racket (healthcare, defense, National Security, etc.).
The fact that the corruption is veiled does not mean it isnt corruption. In the sort of nations Americans mock as fake democracies, the wealthy protect their wealth and incomes with bags of cash delivered at night to politicians.
In theory, democracy enables advocacy by a variety of groups in order to reach a consensual solution to problems shared by everyone. In practice, the advocacy is limited to a select group of insiders, donors and the various fronts of the wealthy: foundations, think-tanks, lobbyists, etc.
Does anyone think Americas democracy is still capable of solving the truly major long-term problems threatening the nation? Based on what evidence?
What we see is a corrupt machine of governance that kicks every can down the road rather than suffer the blowback of honestly facing problems that will require deep sacrifices and changes in the status quo.
We see a dysfunctional machine of governance that changes the name of legislation and proposes policy tweaks, while leaving the rapacious cartels untouched. (See the current sickcare debate for examples.)
We see an Imperial Project setting the states agenda to suit its own desires, and a corporate media that is quivering with rage now that the public no longer believes its tainted swill of news and reporting.
The divide between the haves and the have-nots is not limited to money its also widening between the few with political power and the teeming serfs with effectively zero political power.
When the system is rigged, democracy is just another public-relations screen to mask the unsavory reality of oligarchy.
Regards,
Charles Hugh Smith for The Daily Reckoning
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Our Hopelessly Dysfunctional Democracy - Daily Reckoning