Participation

Celia Hannon (London, Demos): In April 2007 charlieissocoollike, a 16 year-old vlogger from Bath joined YouTube. So did the British Prime Minister. Since then Charlie has amassed 70,000 subscribers. The Prime Minister has 5,000. These figures betray a very naked truth - young people are not flocking to listen to their presidents and Prime Ministers when they talk to them via internet videos. Instead, they are seizing power for themselves; taking on roles as reporters, distributors, commentators and artists. It seems that while their parents and grandparents won their freedoms by challenging governments, this generation of young people would rather find their ‘route-around’ existing institutions and forms of media.

Anthony Barnett (London,OK): There is another spate of end of political party articles, with a stronger than usual theme of blaming the internet, triggered by John Lloyd as he contemplates the fate of Labour. Mick Fealty provides an excellent overview, which means there is no need to worry about your FT registration.

I think the issue - which is a real one in terms of the steady decline of tribal voting overall - needs to be seen much more broadly. First, people have a greater sense of their need to try and make political judgements and affect matters 'at a distance': the rise of NGOs, ecological thinking, the reflexive knowledge of the market that ensures its behaviour can never be predicted (hat tip George Soros), debates over a Bill of Rights and the role of various elements of constitutions, international forces of influence. If people feel powerless it is not because of apathy.

Nor is all this leading to a wiki politics where everything is individualised. This is a wet-dream of those who want to skim the market of desires by telling us all there should be less politicians. What I think is interesting is the way that, when there may be a chance to make a difference, people act. Are political parties becoming less important in Scotland, the only place I know of where there is a government that is not supported by any major newspaper or broadcaster? Could America now have a presidential candidate who opposed the invasion of Iraq if it had not had an open primary system within its parties? Whereas in UK politics, where unlike the States a majority opposed the war, this option still seems remote.

In both Scotland with the SNP and the USA with Obama even more, new methods of communication have helped. But organisation remains decisive. The forms of organising are changing and are becoming potentially more democratic. But the need has grown as organic loyalties of place and class decline.

Keith Sutherland (Exeter, Imprint Academic): Alex Parsons’ inspired proposal for the delegated vote would help to restore democratic legitimacy. However it does nothing to address the more fundamental problem of how to facilitate informed political decision making in mass democracies. Political psychologists can predict, with 80% accuracy, voters’ judgments about complex issues, solely on the basis of emotional preferences and passions that bear no logical relation to policy issues. In 82% of twentieth-century cases, the tallest candidate won the US presidential election, and surveys show that the public does slightly worse in estimates of the parties’ positions on most issues than it would do if it proceeded by flipping a coin.

Stuart Weir & Andrew Blick (Cambridge & London, Democratic Audit): It is remarkable that empirical study of power in the UK remains almost uncharted territory. Yet for democrats political and economic power in the United Kingdom and world outside is vital - it shapes and limits the depth and quality of our democracy and constitutes the very fabric of politics, and of society itself, determining how the benefits, opportunities and disadvantages of life in this country are shared between its inhabitants and communities.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK):  According to this morning's ePolitix alert our Community Secretary (where did that title come from!) Hazel Blears is going to tell the New Local Government Network that everything is improved by the participation of local people and that,

 "Charters or so-called 'community contracts' will help councils, police and health authorities and local people to work together in tackling the issues that matter, improving their local neighbourhoods and improve public satisfaction."

Alice Casey & Laurie Waller (London, involve): Parliament: a place where tribal division, tradition and white men have created and established our entrenched political culture. A place which has decisively shaped the public's idea of what ‘politics' is. A place from which there is now an emerging awareness that such a form of rule, rooted in staid tradition and models of power, no longer effectively serves the public on which its legitimacy rests.

Alice Casey (London, involve): It is becoming clear that in facing the urgent challenges of issues as complex and deep rooted as public health provision, climate change, community cohesion and terrorism, top down government alone is not equipped to deliver an effective solution. There is growing agreement that progress on such issues can only be made through the willing participation of empowered individuals and communities as in formulating and implementing new solutions. Connecting people more closely, more meaningfully and more effectively with the institutions that serve them has never been more important than in today's Britain.

Alice Casey (London, involve): Political parties can't get enough participation these days: whether red, blue or yellow, the p-word sits at the top of the list for all. There is an emerging consensus that if the state is to fulfill its objectives of improving public services to meet the demands of the modern era then the co-operation of the public is essential. One such change is the reform of NHS from a curative or sickness service to a preventative or wellness service, as demanded by Derek Wanless in his future-facing reports Securing our Future Health and Securing Good Health for the Whole Population. This is an immensely challenging policy that requires the buy-in of the British public if it is to succeed - and there are many other similarly policy challenges facing government, such as environmental and transport-related behaviour changes.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Newsnight got hold of an advanced copy of the Zac Goldsmith, John Gummer report on the Quality of Life last night and had a go at very rich men saying that in the UK now "increasing material gain is not a gift but a burden" - thus taking the cheap shot, ad hominem approach while appearing to be highbrow. Much the most interesting response was from that footman of Thatcherism Tim Congdon whose response to the report's headlines was a considered, “I think that environmentalism is the new socialism, it's an excuse for new regulation, new controls, new rules and in the end more bureaucrats, more government spending". He conceded that IF "we are responsible for global warming we may have to do something about it", but felt sure that the report's suggestion that action is needed now "is premature". Early this year Congdon wrote in the Telegraph, "I never imagined that the modern Conservative Party would again embrace old-fashioned Tory paternalism, with a frank advocacy of expanding the state's responsibilities" and he said he would consider voting for UKIP. It's a pity, because this will allow both right and left to dismiss him as a ridiculous fellow. However, though it does not necessarily mean more bureaucrats there is a way in which environmentalism is indeed the new form of socialism. With Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth welcoming the Tory report the possibility of significant repositioning is taking place. Especially as Zac also links his environmentalism with radical democracy, as we have been reporting here in OK. Taken separately, serious environmentalism and radical democracy can each be tagged as maverick. Together they start to make a politics.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): the Prime Minister's speech about participation and citizens juries left many of us baffled. It now seems there is a clear commitment to make citizen consultation a regular feature of policy preparation and, more radical, to give 'citizen's summits' actual policy forming power of some kind. I have just been sent (and not by anyone near the government or the Fabian society) a copy of Cabinet Office minister Ed Miliband's opening speech to the Fabian's 'Democracy Day' (which Guy and I blogged in the afternoon). It sets out a case for no less than "a different kind of state – in the way it governs, the way it makes decisions, the way it is held accountable".

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I have been scratching my head over Martin Bright's column in the New Statesman. In addition to welcoming Labour being united behind Brown he proclaims that "the left is brimming with new thinking for the first time in years". What is this new thinking? Seriously, I've missed it. Brimming! Could readers post their list of, say, the top ten, or even six, new lines of thought on the left. Either here or on their own websites. To make it easier this thinking does not have to be part of any coalition forming around the Prime Minister as Bright seems to imply.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): We are finally getting the OurKingdom articles section into shape. Just published in it today is a fine essay by Katrina Forrester, pictured above. As you can see Brown's boys are still using the old technology.

Daniel Leighton (London, Power Inquiry): In today’s speech opening the political season, Gordon Brown called for a new politics in which  “the democratic impulse needs to be strengthened to enable citizens to share in the decision making that affect them”…No sorry, I’ve got confused… that was in fact Tony Blair speaking in 1996.

Mark Waters (Manchester, Participatory Budgeting): The OurKingdom discussion of Porto Alegre and Direct Democracy often seems to imply that ideas for localism are completely new to Britain. But the Prime Minister and Hazel Blears aren't taking a complete shot in the dark. Here at Church Action on Poverty we have been developing pilots around participatory budgeting for the last three years, with local authorities and regeneration partnerships. CAP has now founded the Participatory Budgeting Unit, originally funded by the (now defunct) Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and we are now working with the Department for Communities and Local Government to roll this work out.

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): The media find constitutional reform dull, and local government even duller. Which means that they report Hazel Blears' perky pronouncements on citizens juries, participatory budgeting and the like at face value (Simon Jenkins apart, and, of course, OK where Tony Curzon Price responded immediately).

Dan Leighton (London, Power Inquiry): In last Thursday's Times Peter Riddell posed an important if poorly formulated question: Does 'power to the people' mean democracy or just direct participation?

Gordon Brown has called for some new participatory processes. This raises the crucial question of the balance of decision making between citizens, representatives and government. Well done Riddell for highlighting a shift in political discourse, for the way we talk about politics. It raises all manner of questions about the the old and the new. Yet the way he poses it is wrong. It puts the argument in a straight-jacket if, as he does, you define ‘democracy’ as what happens inside representative institutions and counterpose it to ‘direct participation’, meaning citizens having decision making power.

Hilary Wainwright (Manchester, Red Pepper & TNI): A retiring employee of the Audit Commission was explaining the Brazilian origins of participatory budgeting - an idea included in the latest Local Government White Paper. He was speaking to a meeting of senior local government officials. "Obviously the circumstances are very different," the man from the Audit Commission began to say, "Brazilians had just been struggling against a dictatorship …..well", he ad libbed, "maybe not so different". The remark was greeted with prolonged and sympathetic laughter.

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): Yesterday, the Social Market Foundation released its latest publication AntiSocial Britain and the Challenge of Citizenship, by former Labour MP Peter Bradley. OurKingdom couldn't be at the launch as it had been "booked out for weeks" - anti-social Britain, it seems, has never been so popular! They would not even let me stand at the back. From what I can gather, Bradley's main proposal is to use the tax system to reward those who volunteer for community service and penalize those who do not. But won't this ensure that no part of society, not even its charitable activities, will be outside the marketplace? The "challenge of citizenship" here seems to be how to privatise it. If so this is another way of trying to turn us all into consumers.

Jon Bright (London, OK): In parallel to OurKingdom's below question and answer session, the Power Inquiry have asked the six candidates for the deputy leadership of the Labour party questions on the state of democracy in Britain, focusing in particular on what can be done to increase participation. You can read their responses here (opens with Alan Johnson's answers).