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February 23 - March 5, 2020
you can call these five dimensions a way of increasing the collective intelligence of a given society; a means to “deepen” democratic participation. In this regard, a deeper democracy is one that lets solutions of higher orders of complexity emerge and gain legitimacy, thereby allowing for more complex forms of society to exist and thrive.
When we “defend democracy”, this can mean two very different things: We can either defend the progression and development of these democratic ideals and their manifestation in society (which is good)—or we may be defending the current, increasingly outdated institutional form of modern “liberal democracy” from the metamodern currents of renewal and refinement. In the latter case, we may think of ourselves as heroic defenders of democracy, raging against the dying of the light, but we are in fact waging a war against the core values of democratic development because we mistake the current forms
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The point is that there is a process of free and sufficiently systematized truth-seeking and dialogue going on for small groups to be able to prove the rest of us wrong, again and again, so that values, opinions and laws can evolve and adapt.
The true north of democratic development can and will lead us beyond the institutional forms of modern society.
With a good compass, and with a critical sensitivity towards the directionality of historical development (seeing the stages of development and how these constitute historical attractor points), we may be nearing a point in history in which we are compelled not to take any form of governance for granted—and in which we must begin to dream dangerous dreams of future forms of governance.
In this view, then, “liberal democracy” with its parliamentary party politics is only a train station on a longer developmental railroad that has stopped at several earlier forms of governance. True, we have stayed here for a hundred years or so, which is a long time. But we stayed at monarchic and varieties of feudal rule for much longer. And then we moved on. It’s normal for the train to stop for a while. The system needs to stabilize and the costs of getting to the next station are high.
inventory of a few key concepts that may serve as building blocks as we begin to construct metamodern forms of governance. First out are the four forms of democracy and their interrelations: direct, representative, participatory, and deliberative democracy.
Direct democracy is when people—“the whole population”—vote directly on decisions for laws, regulations, taxes and public projects.
Participatory democracy is when people—i.e. the constituents themselves—get to participate directly in decision-making, carrying out decisions made, fulfill advisory functions and so forth.
Deliberative democracy is democratic decision-making based upon “deliberation”, i.e. carefully facilitated discussions between the stakeholders.
The idea here is that people often need to learn from one another and listen to many arguments and perspectives before they make an informed decision, and that there are often non-obvious alternatives that are not only watered-down compromises but actually synthesize different positions so that a “better” position or “higher ground” is reached. The most prominent scholar to advocate deliberative democracy is, again—and of course—Habermas, a.k.a. the patron saint of the EU and social philosopher of communication.
We can see a staggering growth of “facilitation techniques” such as Art of Hosting, Deep Democracy and Otto Scharmer’s Theory U as well as organizational forms which build upon deliberative ideals, such as Sociocracy, Holacracy and Frédéric Laloux’s phenomenally popular “Teal Organizations”.
People don’t recognize that these four forms of democracy—the possibilities for them—cannot be accepted or dismissed with eternally and universally valid arguments. They are, of course, context dependent.
First of all, there is a progression from the most basic and fundamental form to the most advanced and complex one.
Participatory democracy has existed only in a full modern form in some socialist contexts, such as during the Spanish Civil War 1936-1938, in which the Spanish Republican anarchist factions were governed with participatory principles. And then it played a significant role during the utopian leftwing surges and intellectual currents of the 1960s. And deliberative democracy has bloomed chiefly as an academic concept, being taught at universities since a few decades back. In its concrete forms it exists only on a micro scale,
In an advanced economy with significant division of labor, it simply doesn’t make sense to have everyone expend much time and effort making decisions about the minutiae of all public matters. The larger and more complex the economy, the greater the need for representative democracy; for politicians, civil servants, parliaments, cabinets and parties.
Hence, the role of participatory democracy is to re-conquer these representative structures, subjecting them to the wills and perspectives of relevant stakeholders and “common people” without bogging it all down with the impossibility of mass votes on each and every technical question.
deliberative democracy aims for a distinct form of communication: not just “debate”, where the issue is to “win”, not just “dialogue”, where the issue is to “understand one another” but deliberation, where the aim is to create something new together and to find out how to do what’s best given the circumstances.
There is an inherent developmental sequence here, paralleled in part by the value memes (modern debate, postmodern dialogue, metamodern deliberation).
The fourth and last connection between the four forms of democracy is that they each come in degenerated and pathological shapes, each constituting a distinct kind of tyranny.
Authoritarian capitalist societies like Singapore, Egypt or Pinochet’s Chile—or in our days, to some extent even China—lack even this pretension of being a “people’s republic”. A small elite simply claims to represent the country as a whole and that they know what’s best.
The logic of this progression—from direct, to representative, to participatory, to deliberative democracy (and then back again in different combinations and iterations between them)—points in a certain direction of increased capability for co-development and complex self-organization of society. But it also portends that new and subtler kinds of tyranny and oppression may emerge during the 21st century. And new sources of oppression can emerge where we least expect it: in the circles most committed to democratic ideals and to deepening democracy.
Democracy, it’s not a thing; it’s a process. Indeed, democracy isn’t real. It doesn’t exist, and never will. Democracy is forever destined to be a fairytale in a land of nowhere, a utopia we’ll never actually reach. Only democratization is really real, and only higher or lower levels of democratization can be said to exist.
It is not a question of scrapping representative democracy and replacing it wholesale; it is a question of learning where today’s system can grow, how it can be refined, and how it can be deepened.
The point here is not to discuss the implications of the different ballot systems, but simply to point out that this is another arena within which experimentation of democratic development is possible.
Martin Hilbert (but this field seems to remain within highly academic circles), and there are plenty of online tools out there, such as Loomio, Delib and GlassFrog, designed and marketed by countless companies, small and large.
Given the strength and spread of these trends, why aren’t we seeing a major transition in terms of systems of governance happening around the world? I’d like to suggest, again, that these developments are up against too strong forces of social and political inertia inherent to the existing structures of governance for them to spread, take hold and begin a true journey of iterative improvement. It is simply too heavy, difficult and, in a general sense, “expensive” to shift the systems of governance for any rich plethora of small actors to succeed in doing so.
My suggestion is that the hitherto dominant bottom-up approach must be matched by a coordinating and centralized effort.
There must be central planning which coordinates and strengthens a genuine multiplicity of experimental, iterative emergences, including local and private initiatives.
This is the essence of Democratization Politics: The idea is that the state itself and its democratic governance in many layers, from the local to the transnational, becomes a developmental project, continuously discussed and improved upon. On a state level this would mean the establishment of a Ministry of Democratization,
Ministry of Democratization is the hub in a larger de-centralized multiplicity of ongoing democratic experiments.
Hence, there is a cycle of experimenting with new forms of governance, evaluating and pruning these, and continuously updating actual governance on all levels.
It builds upon what is actually existing and real to the people involved, and it takes the potentialities and visions seriously. It works both to revolutionize the political system, and it builds upon a slow, conservative development which respects the culture and values of people on the ground. It works both with short-term projects that solve tangible here-and-now problems, and it works on a long-term scale with cycles of decades or longer of updating the institutional code of society.
We have states which can change their laws as society evolves—but we do not have states with built-in mechanisms at the meta-level, where the way we propose laws and make decisions is itself continuously developed.
Think about it—all latter-day social science points to the simple fact that the quality of a state’s institutions has a larger impact on the stability of a society, its economic development and the wellbeing of its citizens than any other factor.
Would it be a bad idea if late modern society would expend perhaps half a percent of its GDP on ongoing serious experiments of governance?
Would it make sense to educate a number of new professionals who are not only democracy experts, but facilitators, communication coaches, counselors, organizers, organizational developers, democratic software developers, theorists, evaluators and democratic project designers?
Because all the most pressing issues are global and transnational, they must be dealt with and regulated at the corresponding level. This will place most real power at a hopelessly long distance from the common citizen of the world. A person goes about her life and casts a vote in India or Brazil, but the decisions governing her life conditions are made in a closed room on the other side of the planet by people she’s never heard about and may not even know exist.
Either we begin the slow and cumbersome process of continuously reinventing and updating democracy, or it simply drifts away into space.
Where do we start? We start at the meso-level, the middle level of institutions, organizations and regional clusters of innovation (based around a “triple-helix” of companies, city administrations and universities) so often overlooked.
We start at the meso-level and then we use the increasing organizational and institutional leeway to gradually go back and forth between the micro- and macro-levels. Development starts at the middle and bounces its way up and down in increasing magnitude: from changing people’s ideas and habits, to changing national, transnational and supranational structures of governance. Democratic development oscillates.
“Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace”. —Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an undelivered address for Jefferson Day, intended for April 13th, 1945. The quality of ordinary citizens’ relations with one another can make or break a country. Societies characterized by a strong sense of community, high levels of trust and mutual respect and understanding tend to be richer, less corrupt and more peaceful.
Whereas Gesellschaft can be roughly translated into “society”, Gemeinschaft does not have a satisfying equivalent in the English language. It is often translated into “community”, but that sounds more like we’re talking about a local neighborhood or a soccer club. And since we furthermore don’t want to imply it is the same as the political philosophy of “communitarianism”, we will use the original German word
So we’re getting at a “politics of fellowship”, if you will, a strand of politics which actively and deliberately seeks to improve the sense of fellowship among citizens and other aspects of our general relatedness to one another. A politics, perhaps even, of friendship. To cultivate a society based more upon friendship, camaraderie, collaboration. A call to an expansion of personal relationships as well as universal, impersonal love.
Whereas Democratization Politics is the politics of developing our formal relations, our governance (corresponding to Tönnies’ Gesellschaft), Gemeinschaft Politics is the politics of developing our informal relations; the many personal and civic relationships so vital to every aspect of a good and sustainable society.
loneliness there is, how much bullying there is, how much peer pressure there is, cross-generational relations, social safety nets for old age and disability, the quality and prevalence of friendships, acquaintance network relations,
degree to which people are willing to help strangers, norms for treating one another in public spaces and in general,
Once a postindustrial level of affluence has been achieved, with an annual per capita GDP above 25,000 US dollars, the reason people suffer is no longer because of an actual lack of material resources. The main source of society’s ailments is that people’s behaviors, psychologies and social relations don’t function properly. In late modern society, suffering is social rather than economic. If you look at an issue like unemployment, the challenge isn’t really to feed and shelter the unemployed, but rather to provide them with social status, meaning, dignity, activities and a daily rhythm—to
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Gemeinschaft Politics is closely linked to Democratization Politics. Democracy implies that there is a “demos”, a people that governs society. But for there to be a people, there must be a certain something to bind citizens together; a feeling of communal togetherness, a sense of fellowship, a reason why we should belong to the same society to begin with. In short, if you don’t have Gemeinschaft, you’ll struggle to get a Gesellschaft—i.e. to get sound and sustainable institutions.
The development of a demos can occur within the borders of a state and justify its existence by a shared citizenship as in the case of France or the US, or it can develop from shared cultural ties stretching beyond state borders as in the case with the formation of Germany or Italy.
