I don’t know about you, but this term ‘Goverati’ makes me slightly nervous.
“What is the goverati? It is made up of people with first-hand knowledge of how the government operates, who understand how to use social software to accomplish a variety of government missions, and who want to use that knowledge for the benefit of [...]
Filed under: Pressure groups, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: Clay Shirky, Matthew Parris, Switzerland | 3 Comments »
In a very good edition of BBC Radio 4’s ‘Analysis’ programme towards the end of last year, the columnist David Aaronovich recounted a programme that he produced in the 1980s featuring the Archbishop of York, John Hapgood.
The Archbishop, as far as I can see, had the kind of views that would appeal to a Guardian [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Conversational localities, Deliberative democracy, Distributed moral wisdom, Pressure groups | Tagged: Certainty, Distributed moral wisdom, Eavesdroppable, Groupthink, Irony, Neutrality, Podcast, Wisdom of Crowds | 2 Comments »
I’d been planning to do this blog for years, but the thing that finally nudged me to get on with it was this story (my first post) about how an MP’s online allowance was docked by the Parliamentary authorities because he used it in the way that you would expect politicians to use such an [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Centralisation, Obstacles for democrats to overcome, Petitions, Pressure groups, Public administration, Transparency, Web 2.0 and democracy | 3 Comments »
Here’s a good post from an Australian blogger on the question: Is adversarial politics damaging to our democracy? (It’s actually an update on a previous post with that title). Here the adversarialism is opposed by a more attractive ‘deliberative’ model of the kind advocated here. The flipside of this argument is put very well by [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Democratic renewal, Neutrality, Pressure groups, Public administration | Tagged: Adversarial politics, Discretion in politics, Independence, Standards Board, Transparency | 2 Comments »
Labour-leaning ginger-group Compass is inviting policy proposals to be submitted and debated on this site and at meetings around the country.
The site says that the proposals will then be voted on by the Compass membership - forming the policy priorities for the organisation to campaign on. The successful polices will sit alongside the narrative that [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Pressure groups, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: Compass, The Labour Party, The left | No Comments »
If one argues (and I do) that democracy is at it’s most effective when people who are elected are making decisions, and that those decisions should be made without undue pressure from campaigners and lobbyists, one rapidly finds oneself explaining that this doesn’t mean that the public can have no influence on policy in the [...]
Filed under: Being a politician, Consultations, Deliberative democracy, Pressure groups, Web 2.0 and democracy | Tagged: Point-of-view-shifting, Visualisations | No Comments »
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