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You are in the company of Roger Warren Evans
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Part of www.LivePolitics.net < Back to Home Page |
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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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How best do we communicate with each other, in this strange E-medium? Does this discursive, letter-writing style work, or is the old tabloid format better? What is the importance of the personal dimension? The dismal take-up for "Government" websites (just 3% of our fellow citizens, by end-of-2002), represents a sobering failure. The resulting questions can be addressed only by a new, coherent communications theory: this is mine.  Weglogging, the creation of "personal" websites, has been an important 2002 development - full-marks for encouraging weblogging go to The Guardian. I am still disappointed, though, by the paucity of personal socialist websites - I look forward to the emergence of a socialist weblogging community. My hunch is the individual can communicate
more effectively than
organisations. Natural persons 
My own solution is to re-balance the State, transferring some powers from the centre and re-distributing them more widely throughout society. Scottish and Welsh devolution are examples of that, and 2003 will be an important election year for both countries. I live out that personal commitment by serving as a Mumbles Community Councillor, for the village in which I was born. 
But "structure" is not enough. I am an inveterate "constitutionalist", and I ahve set out, for your perusal, my own view of the UK Constitution at Building a Better Britain. But the truth is that nobody takes the blind bit of notice of such constitutional analysis, however important I consider it to be. It is easier to make an impact with matters of governmental method, governmental style. As powers have become more concentrated at the core of the nation state, so greater reliance has come to be placed upon the use of coercion, the prohibition of "illegalities", the proliferation of the criminal law. For a "governor/Minister", placed at the very epicentre of a large power system, coercion is the only accessible governmental technique. And our society greatly "over uses" coercion. Continued in second column... < Back to Home Page Special Footnote I love the online newspapers, which are my access to the world - share them with me - click through to their Homepages from here -
back to top Diary 2002 Now up to date! I have re-structured my Diary to give you a day-to-day means of looking back, throughout the year just click through
0100A Make sure you have not missed the previous edition of LivePolitics
Check
it out Other recent topics highlighted opposite
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Too much coercion
We use too much coercion in state education,
where the school-leaving age
should be reduced to 15. We wrongly use prohibition in the management
of the drugs trade, which is
destructive and ineffective. We make excessive use of prohibition and
coercion in managing international migration
and settlement. We do not govern well in the regulation of
gambling or
prostitution, making unintelligent use of legal
prohibition. We over use imprisonment
Why is this happening? the answer is that, for a growing professional political salariat, these barren prohibitory methods represent the best that they can do. They are too remote from their communities to be able to wield influence in any other way - so they pass the buck to the "criminal" authorities = to Police. Prosecutors and the Courts. This "democratic" salariat represents a new political phenomenon, a development of the last twenty years. And it threatens to become a constraint upon the future political development of representative democracies. The answer lies in creating a more dispersed civic order, with vastly increased citizen involvement, and better checks and balances upon the powers of the salariat. That is the language of participatory democracy, rather than simply representative democracy. These changes will be difficult to effect, because they will diminish the importance of the central honey-pots of power upon which the new salariat relies. But this new political challenge must nevertheless be confronted. My three target Demons for 2003, therefore, are the following -
and I have explained why. For me, "Human Rights" are not an end in themselves: the term conjures up a growing body of legal principle which is capable of combating all three Demons. That is why I shall continue to work on the development of the Socialist Civil Liberties Association. And I shall be continuing with
institution-building, deploying the perceptions about
Recent topics
And read my own Big Theory itself, at Week 02 Monday 6 January2003
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carry more weight than artificial persons, because there is a perceived mind
behind each message.
Big company websites, Local Council and Government Department websites
necessarily lack any personal contact. "Bigness is the enemy
of humanity" said
as an instrument of civic order. Even in our counter-terrorism, we
are relying too little on improved "military" intelligence and too heavily on armed
civil intervention. And we are even far too
restrictive in our town-and-country planning,
deliberately holding back house construction to the point where a national
crisis now looms.
politics and social
change learnt from the great Michael Young. My lead projects for this
year are Libri
a new charity for the promotion of community libraries, and
community participation in the improvement of "state" libraries