Radical democracy: how to hack the government?
Radical democracy: how to hack the government?
written by Activist Daria Minsky
Let’s start with the fact that democracy is not just an abstract ideology or a distant political landmark. This is a very utilitarian concept that, if you follow its principles, can lead to prosperity. According to the non-fiction bestseller, “Why Nations Fail,” democracies even maintain a historical pattern of economic success. Thriving countries often have inclusive institutions that engage society in the political decision-making process. However, countries with poor economic performances tend to have extractive institutions. These institutions fail to include the majority of the population, and allow power to be usurped by a small group of people.
Democracies in Western societies are not always very democratic though. This is partially due to the fact that direct democracy requires every person to engage in the decision-making process. Countries with smaller populations, like Iceland, still encounter difficulty when trying to meet this goal. As a result, “representative” democracy has grown in popularity throughout the world. Representative democracies have citizens vote for a candidate they hate a little less than everyone else. This candidate is also expected to – somehow – represent the interests of them constitutes. This form of democracy can cause several problems:
1.Societies often vote for the most electable candidates, as opposed to candidates that they genuinely prefer or like. This frequently generates political apathy, and results in society members not wanting to vote at all.
2.Once citizens have voted, there is no guarantee that their vote will lead to tangible policies, or positive change. That’s why campaign promises tend to stay that way: promises.
3. The concentration of power in the hands of elected representatives can engender corruption. Elected officials can prioritize personal interests over public ones and all that Tweedism.
To try to address the frustration with representative democracy, the concept of liquid democracy was created. Liquid democracy is a hybrid form of direct voting, and is considered to be the future of political systems. If an individual is lazy or doesn’t have time to deal with issues, they can select the option to delegate their vote to another competent person (delegated democracy). If the selected delegate fails to represent the individual’s opinion, then the vote can be retracted. Everything is subjected to transparency, and is recorded. On the Internet. Forever. To fake, to cheat, to retroactively count the results of the vote on early elections does not work.
A few years ago, only geeks and pirate parties were obsessed with liquid democracy ideas. When the world learned about blockchain (a cryptographic technology that allows individuals to make transactions in a secure way, without any central authority), it became more and more difficult to justify the lack of transparency within the political processes. People started asking: why are politicians only using the Internet for self-promotion, as opposed to effective engagement and problem solving? Below are the top 5 platforms that were created to respond to this question.
Loomio as a main result of Occupy Wall Street movement
Launch year: 2012
Location: Wellington, New Zealand
The most popular platform of its kind, created by Occupy movement activists. It has been translated into 35 different languages, and is used in more than 100 countries. The need to constantly make decisions resulted in this open source app. Since its creation, it has been successfully adapted by various communities. From the Spanish left-wing party Podemos, to bold new startups, and healthy lifestyle lovers. Loomio founders proclaimed radical democracy and non-hierarchical decision-making as their guiding, fundamental principles. The website shows a maximally simplified interface: distribution of votes is presented in a pie chart, while you can read all the comments of voters on the side panels. If participants are not satisfied with the proposal, they can block it, or publish their own.
Ben Knight (Loomio) – Progress 2015 from AustralianProgress on Vimeo.
Loomio was inspired by a spate of protest movements in 2011, when the world faced an urgent need to quickly make collective horizontal decisions.
Pros:
Simple registration;
Intuitive interface does not require installation of any additional software;
Limited functionality (let’s consider it as a pro because other apps are too complex);
Translated into many languages;
The ability to set the voting end date and the outcome: what should be decided by the end of a certain date;
Open source: the founders encourage the community to contribute if someone believes that the platform is organized inefficiently.
Cons:
It is impossible to verify how many times the same person voted with different accounts;
There is no possibility of delegate votes.
Liquid feedback as the embodiment of Pirate philosophy
Launch year: 2012
Location: Berlin, Germany
Liquid feedback was created for the needs of the German Pirate Party, however, it soon turned into an independent project under the MIT license. Liquid feedback decided to gamify the competition of political ideas. In the “game,” proposals come from five to six candidates who must attract supporters before a certain date. The platform also allows users to transfer their votes to representatives they support. Unlike Loomio, this makes Liquid feedback a tool for delegated democracy.
The founders not only worked on the software, but also outlined their philosophy in the book, The Principles of Liquid Feedback. They also have a magazine to address their stated mission. In short, these guys are taking it seriously.
Pros:
Qualified tech support;
Open source, same as Loomio: use, make your code impact;
The ability to delegate votes.
Cons:
Requires installation;
It is designed for a limited number of users, rather than for massive involvement.
Represent.me as Youth Voice
Launch year: 2014
Location: Manchester, United Kingdom
This application aims to engage young audiences in political decision-making at the local level. “Fight with frustration and unite people who care about the same issues”: these are the goals of the “Represent” creator: Ed Dowding, a British IT entrepreneur. He emphasized that he did not want to create a revolution, but rather, help solve problems. Ideally, Represent would work in parallel with the State and help identify the best solutions for issues that are not being given enough attention.
Pros:
Immediate engagement. When you first log on, you are prompted to discuss extremely sensitive issues with the option to vote. It is very difficult to remain indifferent.
Cons:
If your country is not represented in the application, you cannot vote on specific issues but it is a great learning tool to see what other countries are debating.
Not a very large community yet, and there are missing debates on many topics.
DemocracyOS as the dreamers’ success
Launch year: 2014
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
One of the founders of the project, Pia Mancini, presented an idea to create a platform for political decision-making on TED. This decision making platform has now evolved into a new Argentine political party, El Partido de la Red (“Net party). Activists have outlined their experience in the manual called, “How to make a net party.” This is probably the most successful case, in practical terms.
El Partido de la Red got 22K votes (1.2%) in elections to the Congress. This was not enough to get a seat, but the dialogue has started. DemocracyOS operates in a similar manner to Liquid Feedback. It combines direct and delegated democracy. Now the platform still exists, but is not actively supported. Encouraged by the success, the founders decided to take the matter globally, and went to Silicon Valley.
Pros: User-friendly software to solve the internal issues with the ability to engage a mass audience; A varied and flexible functionality.
Cons: The team is no longer actively supporting the project since the founders switched to another project titled Democracy Earth, which will be discussed below.
Democracy Earth as the state of the future
Launch year: 2015
Location: Silicon Valley, United States
The most ambitious project in this area, which grew from DemocracyOS. Argentine developer, “Hacktivismo” book’s author, and Pia’s boyfriend, Santiago Siri, is also one of the Net Party founders. He recently started working in the legendary start up accelerator Y Combinator in order to develop their own model of e-governance, based on bitcoin and blockchain. The advisory board is impressive and is comprised of the boldest tech evangelists: bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, Google, and Y Combinator. The launch of the platform is scheduled for this fall.
Pros: It looks like the biggest and most revolutionary project of its kind. It combines the latest ideas on how contemporary democracy should function.
Cons: Let’s see when it starts.
You may ask, why is it important. As one of the most influential global thinkers Moises Naim stated in his book “The End of the Power”, traditional power doesn’t hold as much power as it used to have before Internet Age. New political leaders quickly appear and fade out, just like one a hit wonder. Of course, decentralization could be a huge step towards building a better society. From another perspective, decentralization mixed with populism could become a dangerous provocation. We all depend on our ability to organize political processes in the digital environment. And these projects are experimenting with the potential political system of the future.
Region: Global | Topic: Democratic Ideas & Values, Strengthening Political Institutions