UK Campaign for a Stronger Democracy?
I’ve been catching up on the podcasts from Radio 4’s ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ – always a pleasure – and I noticed that the last two programmes both had a life’s like this reportage piece from France talking about apartment living and the sort-of communal spirit that it engenders and one on the more whimsical healthcare treatments (and related anecdotes about the powerful local health lobbies) that the French state will fund.
I don’t particularly want to get into an argument about the relative merits of the la différence other than to pick up on an observation from one of the correspondents saying that the French have more of a sense of sacrificing individual liberties for agreed solutions.
So, with this juxtaposition between liberty and democracy in mind yesterday, via Peter Levine, I stumbled on the Campaign for a Stronger Democracy in the US. It looks as though it’s just got started and it doesn’t appear to have too much invested in it at the moment; but the idea is an intriguing one.
My first thought was ‘do we need one of these here’? I know we have Charter 88 but I always regarded that as a series of demands for particular outcomes instead of being something that simply stands by the principles of democracy.
I asked this on Twitter and got a couple of reactons. The first one was that it looked like a surrogate campaign for the US brand of left-liberalism. The focus has a clear appeal more to the US left than the right and one suspects that the demands for ‘democracy’ are for a version that wouldn’t have cross-partisan appeal in the US.
The second problem my interlocutors suggested was that there aren’t the kind of agreed definitions of democracy in the UK that could make for an effective campaign without being hi-jacked by the more debased forms advocated by the likes of Douglas Carswell.
For myself, I’m not sure that it would be too difficult to come up with an aspirational description of democracy without unduly inflaming any quarter of the UK political mainstream. I’d also argue that a well-managed pro-democracy pressure group could make its arguments effectively, asserting the kind of political independence that’s needed to survive changing political weather.
After all, we have a thriving pressure group called Liberty that has a complex relationship with the left and right in the UK. Given the tension between Liberty and Democracy, surely one side is massively over-represented in public debate?
However, Liberty is a good model for a ‘Democracy’ campaign. It’s a large enough, well-established enough grouping to have generic cialis online identified a particular definition of liberty that works politically.
There’s a lengthy essay to be written about which political tribe benefits most from Liberty’s work. To the irritation of lefties like me, it focuses upon the coercion that emanates from the state perhaps more than that which comes from the private sector. On the other hand, it’s a powerful human rights watchdog that challenges those who coerce people who don’t have the power to defend themselves. And it doesn’t appear too keen to run with Freedom Association-type definitions of liberty either.
Does a particular take on democracy have to be a means of either taking sides on the French approach to liberty/democracy? Does in need to conflate the two issues, picking easy left-liberal arguments without necessarily grasping the nettle of what a good democracy is? In both cases, I think it can avoid these pitfalls.
Here are some statements (in no particular order) that I think everybody (possibly including Douglas Carswell) could agree on. I doubt if anyone within the political mainstream would disagree with any of them. I may have missed something obvious – what do you think?
1) Wider participation in policy formation
is a good thing – it increases the public stake in collective decision-making
2) A more diverse polity reflecting a greater panorama of perspectives can only improve democracy
3) Decision making should not be dominated by people who have more time or wealth than others
4) Elected representatives should improve the way they promote the public welfare without regard to their own
5) Elected representatives should have a level of income and status that enables them to promote public welfare most effectively
6) People with a vested interest in particular outcomes should never have the capacity to crowd out people with mild preferences
7) For deliberation to work, doubt and equivocation must be encouraged – and not crowded out by ‘conviction’
8) A democracy will not work if minorities aren’t protected from oppression and discrimination
9) Even if many people agree with an argument, deliberation shouldn’t be sidestepped. Opinion without evidence is almost worthless
10) Interest groups are good at achieving their aims at the expense of everybody else. These powers must be counterbalanced
11) Media owners should have no more influence on policymaking than anyone else. Their abuse of this power should be challenged
12) People paid by the state are capable of serving themselves at the expense of the public interest. A good democracy must minimise this
13) Political parties can sometimes compromise deliberative policymaking. They need to be discouraged from this
14) The quality of parliamentary deliberation in all levels of government could be a lot better – we must insist that it improves
15) It should be harder for the executive to ignore or circumvent Parliament
16) Until the local governance enjoys legitimacy comparable to that of central government, ‘decentralisation’ is not achievable
What do you think? Does this have any potential as a draft charter for a UK ‘Democracy’ campaign?
Update – 10.34am: Gah! One of these points got lost in the edit. Here it is now:
17) Broad participation requires investment. Those asking questions have a duty to make it very easy and attractive to answer
I like it – but
1) Do you think there are too many principles?
2) Are all of them at the same level? Some are very high-level – basically engaging with academic political theory. Others more practical. Need for a more consistent approach?
3) Leading on from this I think some of them could be more specific – there’s always the risk with statements of principle that they end up being all things to all people, which limits their impact.
We at CfPS sort of do *some* of this but I tend to agree with you about the need for a broader approach to “democracy” in all its forms. Have you read our Accountability Works research, published last year and available on our website?
I think perhaps a more joined up approach between those organisations involved in democracy and democratic issues would have more legs – and be more sustainable – than an entirely new body. Maybe some sort of consortium of interested charities/pressure groups. Hmm
Ed Hammond
29 Apr 11 at 4:28 pm
Thanks – I saw the publicity when that document came out. It was a very good statement of what I think we’d call basic principles.
I’d agree that there’s a need for prioritisation here – and what I tried to do was come up with 140 character (or less) statements that covered all of the bases while making the key points.
I tried to come up with as many as possible that would attract wide cross-partisan acceptance, and I’d argue that what you’re describing as a ‘academic political theory’ approach can be captured in fairly simple statements – that a lot of people with a bit of experience in politics would agree with the kind of principles that someone such as the late Bernard Crick would make.
While I agree that these ones *look* like they’re ‘all things to all people’, most political activity in the UK offends gravely against a number of these principles. For example, I can’t see why there isn’t a chorus of outrage that our voting system is going to be decided by a referendum – to my mind, a huge democratic non sequitur.
It would be a good thing, surely, for these principles to be widely discussed and for more people to be using them as a yardstick by which to measure political activity?
Which brings me on to your ‘new org/consortium’ question: You’d need the latter as an effective precursor to the former I think. And I think that such a consortium around basic democratic principles would be a good thing. The only problem is that some prospective partners would insist upon one or two more contentious additions (proportionality in voting or a more ‘representative’ bunch of representatives for example).
Paul Evans
2 May 11 at 3:04 pm
[...] Paul Evans, a democracy advocate in the UK, is intrigued by our Campaign for Stronger Democracy and explores the need for a similar coalition in his country. The British have Liberty, a major lobby for human rights and civil liberties, comparable to the American Civil Liberties Union, but that is not the same as a democracy lobby. Individual civil rights and positive opportunities to participate are mostly complementary, sometimes in tension, but certainly not synonymous. Democracy lacks an effective lobby on both sides of the ocean. Paul asked his network for feedback and got some critical reactions: The first one was that [the Campaign for Stronger Democracy] looked like a surrogate campaign for the US brand of left-liberalism. The focus has a clear appeal more to the US left than the right and one suspects that the demands for ‘democracy’ are for a version that wouldn’t have cross-partisan appeal in the US. The second problem my interlocutors suggested was that there aren’t the kind of agreed definitions of democracy in the UK that could make for an effective campaign without being hi-jacked… [...]
the ideological position of a pro-democracy campaign | Peter Levine
14 May 11 at 5:13 pm